Sword Fighting with Neal Stephenson and His Mongoliad Co-
AuthorsS  It's not even 10:30 in the morning, and I'm already
holding an archaic deadly weapon in my hands. I'm in a
nondescript warehouse in Seattle, to which I've traveled so that
award-winning science fiction novelists can demonstrate how they
could cut me in half if they felt like it. Somebody has just
pulled a sword out of its scabbard and is passing it around. I'm
holding its hilt in both hands, just to make absolutely sure it
doesn't slice off something it's not supposed to. It's lighter
than I always figured a sword would be.  I'm at the weekly
meeting of a bunch of "Western martial arts" enthusiasts, some
of them very well-known writers—most prominently Neal Stephenson
and Greg Bear. They gather (with various friends, partners and
advisors in tow) to talk about swords and pikes and bucklers,
occasionally to go upstairs and practice attacking each other
with them, and more recently to plan out the open-ended
transmedia project they've been worki