The biggest machines, in those days, were already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with reasonable amounts of money." "I hadn't known that," I said. "I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." "There might as well be," Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.

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.