Neal Stephenson's The Confusion Released

Jon Lasser writes "Neal Stephenson's 'The Confusion', second volume of his Baroque Cycle is released today. I received an advance copy and have a book review up here. The hypertext site for the trilogy is here. The short review: if you liked 'Quicksilver', this one is better; if you didn't, don't bother."

Comments

Re:Still haven't finished Quicksilver

[squidfood]

When I got Cryptonomicon, I put off reading that until I had a 15 hour flight. I got through the bulk of it in the 30 hour round trip.

I took Quicksilver on a 12-hour flight, and at hour 4 I was fervently praying for it to alchemize into a different book.

One the way back I bought three Terry Pratchetts in the airport instead.

Re:Why I didn't like Cryptonomicon or Quicksilver

[disappear]

In The Confusion, Newton's homosexuality becomes a plot point.

The Neal Stephenson mini-HOWTO

[Onan The Librarian]

I'm assuming you mean you don't know who Neal Stephenson is, and/or why his work should be interesting to /. readers. His famous Snow Crash is a novel with about half its storyline taking place in a higher-tech cyberspace. Various other NS works and activities put him on /. readership radar, including his non-fiction "In The Beginning Was The Command-line..." (in which he espouses Linux with the memorable analogy with the Hole Hawg) and his novels dealing with the favorite post-cyberpunk theme of The Impact of Technology on Society (tm). I'm a fan, have read most of the novels, and even got all the way through QuickSilver. If any of this interests you, I'd recommend starting with Snow Crash for the fiction, and I think you can find some of his non-fiction on the Web. Btw, his Cryptonomicon was "echt geek", with a pretty good story and another memorable character (Bobby Shaftoe).

Visit Neal Stephenson on the web at:

[trickofperspective]

A somewhat more focused website than the link provided above (which essentially just recreates the wikipedia with references to the events of Stephenson's books).

Turing -- persecuted because of his sexuality

[sdedeo]

The weird ickyness kind of pervades your post here, but the ordinary viewer might be interested to know that Turing was hounded by the British government because of his sexuality, and forced to undergo weird pseudoscience injections of estrogen.

If that isn't a creepy tragedy that inspires sympathy (and also a fascinating story), I don't know what is. Scientist saves country, is slightly off-beat, is forced into suicidal depression by same government because of said off-beatness.

Meanwhile, if you want to watch persecuted Christian characters, why not go with the other fifty million people and watch Mel Gibson's film?

Re:Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver

[ehiris]

Cryptonomicon was awesome. I was able to read it completely and I didn't have many problems understanding it.
Quicksilver is awful considering I'm a non-native English speaker. I had to look up almost every other word. It is no fun reading it that way. I wasn't even able to finish the first chapter.

Re:Why I didn't like Cryptonomicon or Quicksilver

[Scrameustache]

MILD SPOILER WARNINGS

BEWARE

Both books feature sympathetic and heroic characters (Isaac Newton and Alan Turing) that are homosexuals (although I think Stephenson is speculating about Newton.) However, their homosexuality has nothing to do with the story. Why mention it at all?
Instead, Stephenson goes out of his way to talk about it, especially in the case of Turing. If Stephenson doesn't have a personal issue with "gay" people, fine, but he doesn't have to turn his books into an advertisement for homosexuality. I notice that he doesn't lavish similar praise and attention on Christian characters.

Turing makes a pass at a character, and then has a fight with his ex. That's pretty much all I remember about his sex life.

Newton is girly, and teased a young boy for being girly, and then its assumed (wrongly) that his best friend and concerned roomate was his lover, and he has secret meetings with this other gay character.
The book is, what, 800, 900 pages long?

Yeah...that was such an advertisement for homosexuality! Sheesh...
You didn't like it because you want homo characters to be either not in there at all, or punished for their sins. Fine, let the rest of us read books and not care about wether some character is gay or not.

P.S. Whatever you do, don't read American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Re:Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver

[drinkypoo]

These books are for people who like to read, who are amused by the English language and what Americans have done to it, and who find Stephenson to be a fount of wit. All of his books to date have been like this (with the possible exception of those written under a pen name, they were a little different) so it really shouldn't surprise anyone.

Also, the point I originally wanted to make is that it helps if you read quickly. They put me (and a couple of the other GATE students) in front of a speed reading machine in the library of my grammar school for a couple years in a row, meeting approximately once a week, and as a result I have been ruined for most fiction because I can read the average novel in about two to four hours. If I'm seriously bored I can read a trilogy of thick like the lord of the rings in a weekend without any trouble. I've read Stephen King's The Stand in one day, the unabridged version mind you. So for me, even slow-paced books (with exceptions such as Clavell's Shogun, which is so slow I could write a book faster than I can read that one) play out rapidly, like a movie. Hence, I usually don't have time to get bored.

Finally, I found all of the characters (in Quicksilver) interesting enough to follow, and the prose entertaining to read. The books are full of clever people saying clever things which tends to keep me going. If the remaining books are similar, I'm sure I'll be drawn in. Time to go order yet another hardcover...

Metaweb

[Bullet-Dodger]

Didn't see it mentioned so, The Metaweb is Stephenson's wiki about Quicksilver (presumably information on the rest of the trilogy will be added). It's very interesting, has all kinds of information on the people and ideas in the book. Especially the annotations, add a lot of interesting background and details.

Re:Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, & the downward

[Witchblade]

One of the things Newton prided himself on was his virginity. Despite being married, he claimed to be a virgin up until his death. I can see a few options for this. 1. Being the ubergeek of his time, he simply couldn't get laid. 2. He was lying. 3. He was confused as to what 'virgin' meant. 4. He was gay. Now, I should mention that, for #4 to hold true, he'd either have had to not act on his impulses, or to have defined sex as being between a man and a woman. I think the latter's probably quite likely. So depicting Newton as gay, while potentially controversial, isn't entirely improbable.

I don't have a history book in front of me, but to the best of my knowledge Newton never married. I think he mayhave proposed to a woman once, but was rejected. I think the evidence comes from one letter that isn't really clear.

Newton had several roommates, all young men except for late in his life he took in his niece. Many accounts by others from that time seem to strongly imply that there were romantic relationships between Newton and one or two men, but most likely he did maintain his virginity until he died. Although the suggestion that he strictly regarded that as being between a man and a woman sounds very probable, also.

If someone can recall more details, or better yet has a reliable biography handy please post. But I'm pretty damn certain Sir Isaac never had a Lady Newton.

Released TODAY?

[Stormie]

I saw it in a bookshop several days ago.. and I'm in Sydney, Australia. I still haven't finished reading Quicksilver though, so I didn't buy it..