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Quicksilver
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.
STOP NOW! That way, you will save yourself a good 700 pages of gibberish. Seriously. You will finish Cryptonomocrap and then walk directly to the person that recommended it to you and kick that person square in the jeepers. Mark my words. It does not get better.
Is that an insult or compliment?
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
Every time I read about people swooning over Cryptonomicon, I just don't get it. I've read the first few hundred pages and after failing to be excited on any level - emotional, intellectual, spiritual - I had to put it down. There is no decent plot, zero (!) action and yet zero deep introspection. If a book is going to be slow and without much action and plot, dear God, please at least let it be deep?
To contrast this with something, I loved every single Dune book. While some books had more action, others, without much action, had plenty of depth to keep me satisfied. I felt like swimming in another mind and in another soul, and it was great. When I was reading Cryptonomicon, I felt like chewing paper. The taste was very dry, void of any nutritional value, nothing whatsoever was happening in the book, with the most exciting action scene being the american guy adventuring in a bar full of asians - boooooooriinnggg....and this is coming from someone who is fascinated with asian culture. On the other hand, there is absolutely zero spiritual, OR intellectual content. Zero. I don't expect great spiritual depth from this author, but at least, as a hacker (or a hacker wannabe, or a hacker in spirit, what have you), he ought to be more engaging mentally at least.
I also find it amusing that the stale styrofoam such as Cryptonomicon got a link and yet, the arguably better book, Snowcrash is without a link.
I realize that many people love this book, but I don't understand why. Why?
I seriously hope that you don't think you are the only one on Slashdot with a deep understanding of computer science. Would it surprise you to discover that there are people here who are more highly educated and more experienced than you in the fields of computer science, cryptology, and physics but who *do* greatly admire Cryptonomicon as a novel?
The fact is that Stephenson is a highly underrated and gifted writer, regardless of the topic. Do you seriously believe that any of us read Cryptonomicon for its educational value. Give me a break. If, as a CS major, you want to criticize his portrayal of Perl scripting that's fine, but isn't plot criticism a bit out of your area of expertise?
Your arrogance is appalling. I certainly hope you are under 30. At least then it is somewhat excusable. When you grow older you will realize how much less you knew than you thought you did. What is not excusable is the assumption that a technical geek crowd would not already understand the basic concepts you allude to.
It's ironic that that same kind of condescending attitude is one that "hard" science majors had towards CS majors for many years. I keenly remember the disapproval of the head of the EE department when I mentioned that I was considering switching to a CS major. His attitude was that it was for intellectual lightweights, and that if I were interested in serious AI research (which he knew I was) I shouldn't even consider it. After all, he knew, a real thinking machine of the future was not just going to be some kind of better written program on a traditional computer, it would need to be an entirely new architecture, perhaps even some kind of wetware. If you are going to criticize Cryptonomicon, at least base it on facts, not on some exaggerated ideas of your superior intellectual capacity.
Stephenson is not some kind of Carl Sagan. Nor does he pretend to be. He is a writer of fiction, of novels. If you don't like them, fine. But to claim that Cryptonomicon is objectively a very bad story and thin, ratty trash says nothing about the novel, and everything about you. You are obviously just some narrow-minded (everythin is about your field), recent CS graduate who thinks he knows everything about every field (including even literature) and everyone else knows nothing.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.