Neal Stephenson is an American writer known for works of speculative fiction, which have variously been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and post-cyberpunk. Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, linguistics, cryptography, philosophy, mythology, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired and was the first employee at Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos. Born in 1959 in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum), Stephenson came from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists. Stephenson received his undergraduate degree from Boston University, where he first specialized in physics before switching to geography, finding that this allowed him to spend more time with the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family. In addition to Snow Crash, he is the author of Seveneves, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Zodiac, and the three-volume historical epic The Baroque Cycle, among other works.

Tony Sheeder is an artist - painting, printmaking, various digital and interactive media - with an abiding interest in language, artificial intelligence, and propaganda. Tony had the good fortune, some time ago, to collaborate with his friend - a then fairly unknown writer - on a comic book. The comic book didn't get far, but the writer did. Since then Tony has concentrated on, among other things, crafting transmedia experiences involving conversational interactions with virtual characters.

Sterling Crispin (born 1985) is a conceptual artist and software engineer who creates smart contracts, generative art, machine intelligence, and techno-sculpture. Crispin’s artwork oscillates between the computational beauty of nature, and our conflicting cultural narratives about the apocalypse. His work asks, “Are we going to merge our bodies with machines and become gods that live forever? Or will we face a global climate collapse and all go extinct?” Somehow, we are moving towards both of these conclusions at once.

Crispin’s artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including ZKM Karlsruhe, The Mexican National Center for the Arts, The Seoul Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, The Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden, and the Venice Biennale. As well as published in The New York Times, Frieze, Wired, MIT Press, BOMB, Rhizome, ARTNews and Art in America.