Neal Stephenson’s writing has in many ways shaped post-cyberpunk science fiction as well as having a massive influence on real-world technology, so his move to realism with 2011’s Reamde offers an opportunity to understand science fiction’s changing relationship to realism in the twenty-first century. Stephenson is considered a core cyberpunk writer thanks to 1992’s Snow Crash, a novel that depicts an online virtual world known as the ‘Metaverse’. This novel is based on the premise that the actions of an online world could have a material impact on participants outside of the game: namely, gamers can be brain damaged by a computer virus. Stephenson has continued to explore these themes throughout his career, but recently through contemporary settings, rather than the futures of his science fiction. Stephenson’s Reamde could therefore be considered an example of ‘science fiction realism’, a term coined by Veronica Hollinger to describe William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (2003), a novel which also uses science fictional tropes and techniques, but in a contemporary setting
