A hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred carving") is a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Partially pictographic logographic scripts reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatonism, especially of the Renaissance, a hieroglyph was an artistic representation of an esoteric idea, which actual Egyptian hieroglyphs seemed to the Neoplatonists to be. The word hieroglyphics (τὰ ἱερογλυφικά [γράμματα]) may refer to writings in a hieroglyphic system.

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.

Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. Other labels such as 'baroque' often appear.

Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired.

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 cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He has also written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.

Born on October 31, 1959 in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and hard scientists; his father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960 and then in 1966 to Ames, Iowa, where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson studied at Boston University, first specializing in physics, then switching to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on 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.