‘Useless for business, but he's one of my favorite authors’ — met at PC Forum 2004, documented in dated email
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
The author — famously publicity-averse, rarely at tech conferences — was at PC Forum 2004 because George Dyson, a close personal friend of his, brought him. Jonathan Hare's campaign to meet him is documented in his own dated correspondence before and after the event (S-116): the advance ask to Doug Merritt — 'if you know the author Neal Stephenson, that would be awesome! (Useless for business, but he's one of my favorite authors.)' — and the after-action report: 'I got some good one-on-one time with Neal Stephenson... his humor is dry as the Gobi desert, and he is hilarious in person.' Merritt's verdict closed the thread: PC Forum was worth it, if only for Neal Stephenson.
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Seated with Stephenson at the Dyson-circle dinner, Hare got the dry-as-the-Gobi hour his emails celebrate — until Adeo Ressi, who did not actually know Stephenson but recognized him, came over and completely dominated the conversation: his plans to buy a rocket from the Russians with his college roommate — who turned out to be Elon Musk — and a poll of the table, guest by guest, on how important it was that humans travel to Mars. In March 2004 this sounded like the eccentric ramblings of a persistent dinner guest. The record preserves the comic timing as the story's point.
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Historian of the impossible — Esther's older brother, Freeman's son, and the reason Stephenson was in the room
Open →table ambushed byThe dinner guest who polled the table on Mars, three years before anyone believed it
Open →the meeting's documentation runs throughMet at the PC Forum lunch table
Open →the Asimov asideExecutive-in-Residence at Mohr Davidow when he helped shape the original Resilient plan; MuleSoft; EVP at Salesforce after Benioff bought it
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-116The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-119The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-120The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-191The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
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