Oh, this is badass.
The project was born out of swordfighting. Stephenson, an avid swordfighter, practices this martial art with a small group in Seattle which includes software developer Jeremy Bornstein and others. Over time, and after a lot of input from martial arts experts, Stephenson realized that the descriptions of swordfighting in his novels would have been much better if they’d been shaped by knowledge contributed by people reading the books. And so the idea for a collectively written novel was born. With the help of authors Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, and Mark Teppo, along with Bornstein and others, Stephenson began to outline a book called The Mongoliad - a medieval adventure full of swordfighting and mysticism.
