Quicksilver 314
| Quicksilver: Volume One of the Baroque Cycle | |
| author | Neal Stephenson |
| pages | 944 |
| publisher | William Morrow |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Christina Schulman |
| ISBN | 0380977427 |
| summary | More than you ever wanted to know about the English Restoration and the invention of calculus, with lots of explosions, syphilis, and piracy thrown in for good measure. |
First, let's make it clear that Quicksilver is not science fiction. It's historical fiction, occasionally about science, for people who like science fiction, i.e. geeks. It has math, optics, and vivisection, but no computers, no code, and no high-speed pizza delivery.
This is also not a book that gets anywhere quickly. It's 900-plus pages, and it's not padded so much as it is fractal. Stephenson wanders down side tracks, stages elaborate adventures and morality plays, explores philosophical issues and geometric proofs, assembles obscure puns, and drags in all manner of famous people and events, purely for his own amusement. Either you sit back and enjoy the game, or you hurl the book (with effort) at the wall somewhere in the first few hundred pages.
Daniel Waterhouse is a seventeenth-century geek; his father's a prominent associate of Oliver Cromwell, but Daniel's more interested in Natural Philosophy than in decapitating kings and Catholics. At Cambridge, he befriends Isaac Newton; later he becomes sort of a grad student and chief bottle-washer to the Royal Society. He starts out as naive observer of London politics, but over a few decades, gravitates into the intrigues of both the Court and the European intelligentsia. Just as Lawrence Waterhouse befriended Turing in Cryptonomicon, Daniel Waterhouse orbits Newton and Leibniz. It seems to be the fate of Waterhouse men to be brilliant thinkers eclipsed by the geniuses of their age.
Jack Shaftoe is a legend in his own time, a thief and mercenary who propels himself around Europe on sheer balls and avarice. He bumbles into and out of ridiculous scrapes, including an ostrich-chase at the Siege of Vienna that results in his rescue of the slave-girl Eliza from a Turkish harem. Eliza's business savvy draws the pair back across Europe to Amsterdam, where Eliza becomes entwined in both the Dutch stock exchange and the court of Versailles.
Cryptonomicon readers will remember the improbably long-lived Enoch Root, who shows up occasionally to nudge the plot along. Most of the story takes place between 1655 and 1689, but it opens with Enoch in Massachusetts in 1713, interrupting Daniel's efforts to found MIT by presenting him with a summons from England. Daniel spends the next several weeks being chased around Plymouth Bay by the pirate Blackbeard, only to have his plot thread left dangling with no apologies. Either it will be picked up in the sequel, or Stephenson is attaining a new degree of sadism.
Where Cryptonomicon was about secrecy and deception, Quicksilver is about revealing the hidden and the unknown, and the free dispersal of ideas and money. Stephenson uses quicksilver as an unsubtle symbol of the scientific discovery that was beginning to percolate through the known world. He highlights the dichotomy between the religious viewpoint, of a world that began in perfect knowledge and order and has steadily decayed since the Fall, and the scientific viewpoint, of a chaotic world that is slowly being brought into order and the reach of understanding. Much of this understanding was accomplished through the efforts and correspondence of the Royal Society, which operated in a state of excitement, enthusiasm, and confidence that they would decipher the mechanisms of nature: an attitude not unlike that of the dot-com startup era, but fueled more by wonder and less by naked greed.
Lesser writers dump blocks of expository prose into the narrative; Stephenson shamelessly shovels it into his dialogue. As a result, much of the dialogue is stilted, and the banter is painfully odd. You get used to it. Some bits are more blatant than others, such as a dialogue between Waterhouse and Newton and a Jewish prism-merchant, in which Stephenson trots out a brief overview of European coinage of the time, while cycling through a catalogue of synonyms for "Jew."
So, is Quicksilver worth the effort? On the one hand, it's an insightful look at both the Scientific Revolution and the Glorious Revolution. On the other hand, it's got plague, pirates, astronomy, sex, explosions, daring rescues, religious strife, and the profound effect on European history of stockbrokers and syphilis. It's a terrific book, but don't expect it to resemble Stephenson's prior books in anything but ambition and length.
You can purchase Quicksilver from bn.com -- the official release date is September 23rd. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Another good hi-fi book about the Period.... (Score:3, Informative)
Can't wait to read Quickselver, though. I'll even spring for the hardcover to go next to my Cryptonomicon.
-- ac at work
Re:Damn you Neal Stephenson! (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, the series is mostly complete and each volume is being released at six month intervals.
Re:same price at amazon (Score:3, Informative)
here [amazon.com]
Re:*which* English Civil War? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Has he....? (Score:4, Informative)
Homer: All you can eat - Hah!
Hutz: Mr Simpson, this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, The Neverending Story.
Homer: Do you think I have a case?
Hutz: Now, Homer, I don't use the word "hero" very often. But you are the greatest hero in American history.
Re:Some shocking statements for a '9' (Score:5, Informative)
I gave it a 9 because I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I think most of those who made it all the way to the end of Cryptonomicon will too. But it's also going to drive a lot of people nuts, and they should be warned; this shouldn't be anyone's first Stephenson book.
Re:Eco Book (Score:4, Informative)
Sample Here (Score:3, Informative)
Seems a little dry, IMO. I'll probably still buy the hardback.
Re:Familiar... (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, it reminded me the most of Robert Anton Wilson's Historical Illuminatus trilogy, which concerned the ancestors of several characters in the Illuminatus and their dealings with famous people in the late 1700s.
I still don't get cryptomoncomonmon (Score:5, Informative)
So am I interested in another 900 pages from an author without any apparent editor? No. I'm not interested in reading chapter upon chapter of stuff that has absolutely no bearing on the plot, is uninteresting in its own right, and will be forgotten as soon as the next totally unnecessary twist.
The thing that Neal seems to forget is that the essence of writing is deciding what to leave out. Until he figures that out or hires an editor that can make the decision for him, I'll pass.
Re:Looking forward... mostly (Score:5, Informative)
My sister gave a tentative thumbs-up to the general outline of Stephenson's history, and suggested that two of his source books were probably 1688: A Global History [amazon.com] by John E., Jr. Wills and Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 [amazon.com] by Jonathan I. Israel.
I'm so glad I don't do that for a living.
Re:Looking forward... mostly (Score:2, Informative)
Not enough sex, eh? ;-) (Score:3, Informative)
a) an ending
b) a sex scene that doesn't make one cringe
At least with sex scenes, he could just leave them out since he's so obviously uncomfortable writing them.
Stephenson uncomfortable writing a sex scene? We talking 'bout the same author?
I find his sex scenes- at least the one in Cryptonomicon - classic at worst. I nearly laughed my head of. And if *you* cringe at his sex scenes, you should maybe come to think that that could be what he intended for *readers* that are uncomfortable with sex scenes.
At least that sex scene made me horny *and* laugh at the same time. Quite good a writing if you ask me.
'...imperial pint of semen...' - I'll *never* forget that one. Absolutely classic. LOL!
NY Times review (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stephenson == very educated avantgardistic writ (Score:5, Informative)
Um, actually Stephenson's writing has been written up (from Snow Crash through Cryptonomicon) in the New York Times Book Review so I don't know what "'big' literature critics" you're talking about.
Are you talking about academic literary critique? I know for a fact that several universities (those that aren't so Canon-bound; Penn State is one) read Stephenson at the graduate level. Likewise they read PKD and detective fiction. Sure, Martin Amis hasn't written a critique of Stephenson but I bet there is some published work being done.
I assume your problem is the fact that SF is being "marginalized" as genre fiction and not accepted into the Canon along side Ulysses, Old Man and the Sea and Canterbury Tales. Well the problem is that Literary Criticism is interested in 'literature' not 'reading'. A good story is a good story, yes, but that isn't what literary study is about: it is about understanding the way people write. Style, technique, editing. Gravity's Rainbow is considered big not because it reads "well" but because of its post-modern design (i.e. the entire story is parabolic, starting with a single thread, building to a central mass, and then, simplifying at the far tail... tracing the parabolic tragectory of the V-2 rocket at the beginning and the end). For all of Stephenson's positive traits, his writing doesn't expand the landscape of literature.
Literary criticism isn't about reading good books. It's about understanding the theory of writing itself.
Re:How did Randy read Japanese plaintext? (Score:2, Informative)
Randy was decrypting the Arethusa intercepts, which were not sent by the Japanese at all; they were sent by the Root/Von Hacklheber/Bischoff/Shaftoe conspiracy.
The Japanese were using the lesser version of that code (the name escapes me at the moment), the one Rudy weakened prior to giving it to Goring.
Books 2 and 3... (Score:4, Informative)
HC: When can we hope to see the next volumes in the Baroque Cycle?
NS: They're coming out at six-month intervals, so April 2004 for The Confusion, and then October 2004 for The System of the World.
http://www.baroquecycle.com/interview.htm [baroquecycle.com]
Re:Looking forward... mostly (Score:4, Informative)
You must be new around here. .