Most of Csongor's time in T'Rain had been spent blundering about in a state of hapless newbie confusion. Only his long experience as a system administrator, struggling with Byzantine software installations, had prevented hum from plummeting into despair and simply giving up. Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.

Style
In his earlier novels Stephenson deals heavily in pop culture-laden metaphors and imagery and in quick hip dialogue as well as in extended narrative monologues. Since 1984 Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family. A.

His novels have been variously categorized as science fiction historical fiction cyberpunk and "postcyberpunk. He has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. " Other labels such as "baroque" often appear.