From a recent (4/29/99) interview: Lomax: Above, you said that you were "no damn good at writing short stories".What about these days? Do you think you will write exclusively in the longform? Oh, and what's the deal with the Big U. Will that ever see printagain? Stephenson: I still find short stories very difficult to write, and I admirepeople who can do that. At the moment, novels are working for me and so Ithink I'll stick with them. Concerning the Big U… It is an okay novel,but I'm in no hurry to put it back into the world. There is a lot of othergood stuff that people could be reading