Those of us who have read Stephenson's novels know he is a genius at weaving multiple subplots into amazing literary tapestries. The Diamond Age is a perfect example of this. The story is set in the late 21st century when nanotechnology is as much a part of society as the Internet is today. The Primer is an interactive tutoring book meant for the offspring of a powerful aristocrat. Revolution on a massive scale occurs when it falls into the wrong hands.

This is the quintessential cyberpunk novel. Gibson is credited with coining phrases like cyberspace. The hero, Case, is a "console cowboy", a next generation computer hacker who jacks into the computer matrix, the three dimensional fully interactive Internet of the future, to break into top secret systems. Sound familiar? Keep in mind that he wrote the novel in 1984, fifteen years before Neo met Morpheus. Gibson's descriptions of the urban sprawl, virtual landscapes, and action sequences as experienced by bodyguards with bionically enhanced nervous systems paint vivid pictures in the mind's eye.

I realize this is a cheap way to squeeze three Neal Stephenson books into one Top 10 spot, but they deserve to be here. These books are so much fun, especially for those of us who have read other Stephenson works and recognize that this 3000 page trilogy is basically a massive prequel to Cryptonomicon. Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. "Quicksilver", a.k.a. "Half-Cocked Jack", a.k.a. "L'Emmerdeur", a.k.a. "King of the Vagabonds", is one of the great literary figures I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He is able to play all sides against each other and yet remains the good-guy no matter which side you tend to favor. Daniel Waterhouse is a fellow of the Royal Society and interacts with some of the greatest scientific minds of the 17th/18th Centuries including Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, Wren and others. The Baroque Cycle takes place over three-quarters of a century and chronicles the birth of modern science, politics and economics and brings history to life in a way that I never found in a textbook.

William Gibson invented the cyberpunk genre with the Sprawl Trilogy, and Neal Stephenson picked up and ran with it when he wrote Snow Crash. Hiro Protagonist, the protagonist, is a hacker, a samurai sword fighter, and a pizza deliver guy for the Mafia. The story takes place in North America in the not-too-distant future. The Federal Government no longer exists and has been replaced by huge corporations and franchised enclaves like "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong". It's actually a distant prequel to The Diamond Age. The Metaverse is a 3-Dimensional evolution of today's Internet where Hiro goes to do freelance snooping for the Central Intelligence Corporation, or to beat up other people's avatars samurai-style. In the Metaverse a drug called Snow Crash is rapidly gaining popularity and threatens to wreak widespread havoc when the online version starts flatlining people in real life. Like all his other work, Stephenson researches some very interesting scientific and historical topics to mix in with the wildly careening plot like Sumerian mythology and the viral nature of language.

The world government, created after the "First Invasion" 80 years past, is training young children to be soldiers for the defense of Earth against the "Buggers". Most of the training at Battle School, an orbiting space station, involves futuristic war games in zero gravity. Ender Wiggin, a brilliant six year old, seems to be the likely candidate for the next Fleet commander. The Fleet Command has kept Mazer Rackham, the legendary commander who defeated the Buggers the first time, in near light-speed travel for the last 80 years so he can personally train the young prodigy. Ender may, in fact, be the savior of the human race.