'Quicksilver' Website and Release Date

EvilBastard writes "Neil Stephenson's next book in the Baroque Cycle, Quicksilver, now has a publishing date of the 23rd of September, 2003. This book appears to follow the Shaftoe, Waterhouse and Root family line back to the early 18th Century. You can find a short extract online."

Enoch again?

[AssFace]

sure seems to like the name Enoch.

sounds interesting

[I Want GNU!]

I heard Stephenson give a lecture at Carnegie Mellon University on Thursday of last week, where he discussed this novel. It sounded very interesting, albeit a departure from his normal science fiction type novels. He discussed what he considered to be the "soap opera" of the Newton-Leibniz controversy regarding the invention of calculus, which spread to other areas. Eventually this led up to a description of Leibniz's ideas metaphysics, which he regards as highly relevant in regards to computer science, cellular automata, and quantum physics. His descriptions of these events were slightly convoluted but that was part of their charm, and while I expected some type of discussion of technology or Snow Crash / Cryptonomicon type topics, I was pleasantly surprised to hear his 18th century tangent. He's a very talented and fascinating man.

On a side note, he mentioned that he only speaks about once every five years and that he's very anti-social. He said his books are not a social process and come entirely from him, as opposed to including feedback from others. Still, I'm glad to have this man off in his little corner of the world thinking and researching about fascinating topics, broadcasting his findings to the rest of us.

Why I like Cryptonomicon so much:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably because of things like this (excerpt from the linked website):

Daniel Waterhouse possesses a brilliant scientific mind -- and yet knows that his genius is dwarfed by that of his friends Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Robert Hooke. He rejects the arcane tradition of alchemy, even as it is giving birth to new ways of understanding the world.

just the imagine of this guy, who is friends with Newton or Leibniz (or like his grandfather, who is friends with Turing and von Hacklheber), and telling turning events of history from his point of view. Stephenson delivered a great performance on Cryptonomicon and I'll itching to get my hands on Quicksilver...

Forget that crap, read:

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul Bowles

Kobo Abe

William Gaddis

Vladimir Nabokov

Herman Melville

E.A. Poe

At least that way you don't wake up the next
morning not remembering anything and feeling
dirty...

Re:Enoch again?

[Anonymous Coward]

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It might be possible that we are talking about Enoch Root, not only a relative with the same name, but the same person who appears on Cryptonomicon. It's been hinted a few times in several places, Cryptonomicon included. Stephenson himself said that there's a "SciFi" turn in Cryptonomicon which will become more evident in Quicksilver.

Re:Enoch again?

[duct_tape_n_wd40]

Presumably, as the other two main characters from the blurb on the site have the surnames Waterhouse and Shaftoe, we're talking some sort of 18th Century prequel to Cryptonomicon somehow.

Presumably the Waterhouse and Shaftoe characters are ancestors of the characters in Cryptonomicon. Whether "Enoch" is an ancestor to Root in Crypto, or is (ahem) something entirely different remains to be seen.

Re:For those of you who don't know who this is...

[cygnus]

Insight into modern issues I might agree with. Great author? In short spurts maybe (like first 1/3 of Snow Crash) but often writes as if he's just trying to get the damn thing done (third 1/3 of Snow Crash). His stuff is good, and I read it, but seriously, this guy will be completely forgotten in 30 years.

my girlfriend's parents are both literature professors and editors of a prominent literature anthology, and they teach Snow Crash in class. so i beg to differ.

Question RE: Stephenson and Gibson

[ARR0]

I read Cryptonomicon a year or so ago and loved it, and also really liked Snow Crash. So I went to check out one of William Gibson's books and found that Idoru was the only one at my local library. I checked it out, but after a couple of chapters I gave up. It just didn't impress me.

My question is, is Idoru considered to be among Gibson's best work? If not, what's the best introduction to his style?

Re:Enoch again?

[indole]

As this page reminds [ibiblio.org], Enoch died in cryptonomicon and came back later on.

I knew that wasn't a plot hole.

Interesting indeed.

Re:Neal Stephenson's short fiction

[AAron the Weird]

That's because Stephenson wrote a several thousand page monster of a manuscript, and the folks at HarperCollins had to cut it down to a marketable length. I read an 1100 page version of Volume 1 last fall. Like Cryptonomicon, it's got some great bits, fascinating characters, and some interesting digressions, but the overall structure of the story needed some editing to make it more coherent. I'm curious to see what the 'final' product is like this September.

Re:Umm...

[myLobster]

I'm sure I'm not the only person for whom ITBWTCL catalysed our interest in Linux.

Re:Will it have a good ending?

[anonymous loser]

I agree completely that none of those books had a decent ending. However, I was quite satisfied with the ending of Interface which he published under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. I'm not sure how much his uncle (apparently partly responsible for the book) contributed to that.