Slashdot Mirror
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.
Quicksilver, Volume One of the Baroque Cycle, is the new doorstop...
;)
You know, it's a good thing I love Neil Stephenson, 'cause 900 pages is not so much doorstop sized as *door* sized.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
900 more pages about Waterhouse and Shaftoe.... How many generations can these families bump into each other?
The Cryptonomicon was terrific! I hope I enjoy this one just as much. A lot of his complaints about Quicksilver appeared in the Cryptonomicon, esp. the plot jumping. Nothing like leaving the plot to discuss the revolutions of a bicycle chain.
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
between another 900-page epic from stephenson, FzeroGX and Freevo, ill be surprised if i manage to graduate this semester...
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
I'll eagerly read it, regardless, but I wonder -- has Stephenson learned to write:
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. Writing a book without an ending would be tricky, though, and might invite a lawsuit from Lionel Hutts.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
W.W.S.D?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
C'mon guys, couldn't you have waited until TOMORROW when the book is actually released? Now I'm gonna have a major case of blueballs waiting to go to the store tomorrow.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
"...and the profound effect on European history of stockbrokers and syphilis."
Ah, yes, stockbrokers and syphilis. You just can't have one without the other.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
dude, get out more often. :)
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Well, first, when IT fucked up all the networked laser printers, he'd parachute into their building, impaling himself mortally on a letter-opener on someone's desk. Then, he'd machine-gun the front-line support staff. Then, he'd lob a few grenades into the server room. Finally, for good measure, he'd jump in there himself to make sure the job got done, going out in a big ball of glory.
Now *that's* some fucking adaptability. If you're going to do it like Shaftoe, you fucking do it right, soldier.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
sPh
Aw, c'mon. The vignettes on eating Cap'n Crunch and the aphrodisiacal effects of granny-grade furniture are pure genius. Clearly Stephenson has far too many ideas to fit them all into the real flow of the narrative, so he takes the odd sidetrack. I like that--I enjoy these diversions immensely and hope he doesn't stop.
Check here or here for books that maybe more your speed.
>K
One word answer: No.
:)
There, that was easy enough
Then you had better wait until the funeral (and post-mortem frenzy) of Neal, just to be sure he will never write anything that starts in the stone age, or earlier (see 2001).
How would you ever dare to read anything that involves the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, without first reading absolutely everything in the whole literature?
What about all those stories that do not specify exactly when they happen? How can you be sure to read them in a chronological order? And what about overlapping timelines? Will you read them all in parallel???