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The System of the World
The third book in Neal Stephenson's epic Baroque Cycle shares its name with the third volume in Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica; this is no coincidence, as a large part of this book deals with Newton himself. The vast majority of this volume follows Daniel Waterhouse, aging Fellow of the Royal Society, occasional foil and possibly the only friend of Newton, as he attempts to complete the charge assigned to him by Princess Caroline, his future monarch. Of course, Waterhouse doesn't really believe in the monarchy, but he has an agenda of his own, and can see the wisdom in trying to reconcile Newton and Leibniz.
The System of the World is the most chronologically compact of the trilogy. Quicksilver took place over a sixty-year time period and The Confusion over a decade and a half. Most of the action in this book takes place in the middle of 1714, as the ailing Queen Anne nears death, and the question of who should be the next monarch brings England near to another civil war. On one side of the debate are the Whigs, supporters of the Hanoverian succession, free trade, and industry. On the other side are the Tories, who would undo the effects of the Glorious Revolution and bring back the Catholic James III from exile in France -- supporters of landed aristocracy, unlimited monarchy, and slavery.
The Tories seem to be winning, due in no small part to the machinations of Louis XIV, whose support has allowed "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe to build himself into the most powerful counterfeiter and criminal mastermind in London. Shaftoe has matured, though, and gained a powerful gravitas. Waterhouse also is not the indecisive young man or even the uncertain old man of Quicksilver; he has accepted his old age and his mortality and for once in his life shapes events rather than being borne along by them.
There is real pathos in Waterhouse's character. The choices that he has made will lead England toward steam and industrialization, and in two powerful scenes he has the chance to see the downside of the future he has made. At one point he visits a large-scale industrial operation that has left the earth around it poisoned and wasted, finding nothing to compare the scene to except Hell. At the other he witnesses workers toiling around a machine that might explode at any point, and wonders how many other dangers will be created by inventors simply trying to get things done a little faster. Still, he perseveres; for as near as the Baroque Cycle has one point, it is to explore how the nation-state, modern banking, and modern scientific method arose from the chaos of the 17th century.
In Stephenson's world, this is accomplished by plots, dueling, daring escapes, bribery, and the occasional disruption of orchestral concerts. As always, when writing a thrilling action scene, he is second to none. When this book is moving, it moves really well.
Stephenson's writing style is essentially the same as in the first two novels, although he does seem to be engaging in more deliberate anachronisms here (I counted two Monty Python references, and what I'm fairly certain is a scripting language joke). This makes his constant use of Inappropriate Capitalization and Barock Spelling somewhat more tedious to me, but I phant'sy any reader that has gotten this far will probably be able to overlook it. He still has the ability to make the reader smile once per page, and his meticulous attention to detail shows. It's clear that Stephenson is fascinated by the period, and indicative of a good writer that he actually got me to care about it as well -- his books motivated me to read some of his references, and others besides. There are also some classic hilarious scenes, chief among them a duel fought with naval artillery.
The typical flaws of a Stephenson novel are also present, unfortunately. A rather large number of characters are built up for dozens of pages and are then abruptly killed, never to be mentioned again -- and a fair number of established characters meet the same fate. This volume also contains the worst sex scene Stephenson has ever written, which is saying something. And, as is typical of Stephenson, the book goes until the end, and then just stops, after another Deus Ex Aurum ending. This time he's included a few short codas as a postscript, but be warned now: there are many unanswered questions left at the end.
In fact, the ending of the book made me somewhat angry. Fully explaining why would spoil everything, so I will tread lightly. Let me instead go back to Isaac Newton. Newton is a tragic figure because he was a bridge between two eras; he possessed one of the finest rational minds the world has ever known, and yet he spent the majority of his long life with alchemical and mystical researches. Stephenson is too lenient on Newton with regards to his paranoia and murderous rage, but curiously lessens him by suggesting that Newton simply failed to accomplish some of the things he set out to do.
I have been an avid reader of each Neal Stephenson book, and I will probably read the next book he writes. Still, I hope that his editor cracks down on him in his next endeavor, and that he doesn't allow his fondness for some characters to override the point he's trying to make.
You can purchase The System of the World from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This book fails to shore up the otherwise good trilogy, and yet this book is rated higher than the trilogy as a whole? Is this that new math?
Godammit! Why couldn't Amazon screw up my order instead.
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> I have been an avid reader of each Neal Stephenson book, and I will probably read the next book he writes. Still, I hope that his editor cracks down on him in his next endeavor, and that he doesn't allow his fondness for some characters to override the point he's trying to make.
Ah, don't worry. Half the fun of a Neal Stephenson novel is knowing that all the characters he abruptly kills off get to come back to life in the next series.
Due to a shipping error at Amazon.com, I received my copy of this book early.
So, he means he's got first post!
Neal Stephenson really needs to learn how to shut up. I put about 2 months into reading Quicksilver, and I absolutely loved the characters, the individual scenes and even some of the subplots. But the main plot of the book was such a pointless, endless and rambling mess that I never had the desire to stay up until 4AM reading it. The historical detail was wonderful, and this was a great book to geek out on, but I felt like I was reading an ancient, endless tome and there's only so much of that one can take. This is one series where it might be wise to invest in the abridged audiobook, I did that with Snow Crash and it was fantastic. And what's the deal with kidney stones? I mean, I know they were a frequent cause of death at the time but do we have to hear about them CONSTANTLY!
I admit that I haven't been following what's going on with Stephenson's writing plans, but it just seems to me that there were so many loose ends at the end of Cryptonomicon, all of them fertile ground for more work...
I don't even feel like I scratched the surface with this list.
Cheers,
Richard
Well, the first words out of the submitter's mouth were "Due to a shipping error, I received it early," or did you miss that part?
People who have read Stephenson's books know that he's not really good at endings. Most of his stories have a lousy ending, it feels like he just got bored or tired and decided to wrap things up real fast and just leave it at that.
I think the only Stephenson ending I like is from Jipi and the Paranoid Chip.
However, he can come up with great stories which I enjoy very much, despite the ending (which is not much of a letdown now, because the moment I start reading a Stephenson book I expect the ending to suck but it doesn't bother me).
Go hug some trees.
It's out this month? I thought it was November! I need to pay attention better...
it comes out tomorrow (sept 21)
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Stephenson has an editor? If so he needs to actually get off his ass and some work. Good story, but about 2000 pages too long.
Of course what you mean, is that he started writting about stuff that you dont care about. That is to say that his books do not nessesarily suck, just that you are not interested in them. This is a very different kind of statement.
I don't particularely like mystery novels (lets say). that doesn't mean that the whole genre of mystery sucks -- just that it doesn't appeal to me, personally. In fact, becuase i don't like the genre of mystery, i am even less qualified to make statements concerning the quality of any particulare mystery novel. I just don't have the knowlege of the subject, the exprience, nor love of the genre to make statements about them that would matter to those who would be interested in the book.
He also really really needs an editor. His latest books could be, no should be, trimmed down to at least half their current size.
Again, this is a personall prefference. You are saying that you do not like reading books that are that long-winded. Stephenson has just changed his writting style (really apparent starting with cryptonomicon). He is much more wordy now than he was earlier in his life. Is this inherintly a bad thing? Of course not. He is changing and maturing as a writter. As such, his style and genre is changing with him.
I don't really mean to pick on you here, it is just that all to often, i see people making absolute statements (ei. that movie sucks) when what they really mean to express is an opinion (ie. I didn't like that movie). It is just somewhat annoying. Espcially, when poeple don't seem to realize that they are just expressing an opinion.
How do i konw that what you stated was just an opinion? Well, for one I liked the book. And i know many people that like his barouque cycle so far. I also like the fact that Stephenson is changing. Personally, I don't really like reading the same type of thing all the time. that is one reason why i can't read anymore asimov, heinlien, anthony, ect. After a while all the books start to be the same old same old. Dispite the fact that i really enjoy the way the author expresses himeself.
I am simple delighted that I have found an author (stephenson) who changes. That way i can enjoy the expression that that author has, but not be bored to death by the same type of story all the time.
but then again, that is just my opinion :)
Anyone else find "The Buy It Here" Barnes & Noble link ironic, given that it was Amazon that provided the original copy ...
I'm desperately resisting the temptation to place my own AWS id in here...
Lucky for us Amazon's shipping error resulted in the book being sent to someone actually capable of writing a cogent and coherent review.
Digging into the results of six years of latin class, it means "God from gold," similar to "deus ex machina," which means "God from (a/the) machine."
Divide et impera!
His endings remind me of ol' school Kung-Fu movies. Usually after the climatic battle, no sooner than the final blow is struck and the head baddie is dead
they roll credits.
Stephenson's endings are like that, after the story is resolved they just end with no post to wrap things up with the characters.
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...a Neil Stephenson book that ends unsatisfyingly?
After reading Cryptonomicon I thought that was the whole point of the man. To make cool works of fiction and then have them end in arbitrary and sucky ways. The ol' "Set-em up and fail to knock-em down" technique.
-Pinkoir
I'd guess it's an intentional riff on deus ex machina. I've never heard the term used before, but the original term referred to a god descended from a crane to the stage, to come in and resolve an otherwise impossible dilemma at the end of a play.
Since Cryptonomicon basically had this type of ending, where instead of a god, it was a massive amount of gold that basically made everyone's problems go away, I'd assume that's what they were referring to.
>Still, he perseveres; for as near as the Baroque Cycle has one point, it is to explore how the nation-state, modern banking, and modern scientific method arose from the chaos of the 17th century.
Indeed, the trilogy is the story of how modern money and banking arose. The protagonist is capital, and how it arose from its former life as coveted metals, like silver and gold. Empiricism is seen as being dragged along by the pragmatic bankers (and hustlers like Shaftoe and the Duchess of Several Places.)Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Dovetailing nicely with this review, an antique katana of "Damascus steel" has recently gone up for auction on eBay. Readers of the Baroque Trilogy will be familiar with watered steel after wading through dozens of pages of Stephenson's discourse on its nature and origin. If you'd like to see what watered steel looks like for yourself, check it out!
"Newton is a tragic figure because he was a bridge between two eras; he possessed one of the finest rational minds the world has ever known, and yet he spent the majority of his long life with alchemical and mystical researches."
;) and from his history. And how are the legitimate questions of alchemy and mysticism to be answered, except by experimenting with their subjects, however skeptically?
There's no contradiction in a rational mind researching alchemy and mysticism. Especially in the 1600-1700s, when science was built on a the techniques and pursuits of those prior investigative models. Four centuries from now, quantum mechanics will be indistinguishable from alchemy in "rationality", or whatever mental mode practiced by generators of new information about systems of events. It will either seem too deterministic, or clumsy guesswork, depending on future evolution of science. Newton applied his fine instruments to fuzzy material, both from his lab (and orchard
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make install -not war
Those guys blow. At least Stephenson has written some good stuff.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Did anyone discover an encrypted message in any of the Baroque Cycle books? I noticed that they were relatively free of typos, but a friend of mine (who gets involved in too little sleep and too much thinking as a result) began to see a pattern in the typos in Cryptonomicon.
And while I remembered a lot of typos in that book, I wondered what would happen if I made note of them. I mentioned this to my friend, and he naturally had already written them all down. Between first and next e-mails on the subject, he'd done a bit of experimenting.
"I find deliberate errors on pages 43, 86, 129, 155, 283, 319, 341, 342, 357, 385, 430, 437, 462, 477, 479, 481, 483, 526, 534, 535, 539, 574, 585, 611, 620, 887, and 918. Hope I didn't miss one there.
"take the delta between each page number and run it through a mod 26 function - like solitaire, from the book? - there's first a block of 16 seemingly garbage letters (two bytes?) beginning with a Q, followed by three Bs in a row (spacing characters?) and another Q, then the words HADIK ZIMTER. whattf?!"
Another friend of mine, Douglas Barnes, read the first draft of Cryptonomicon, which had a lot more text than the final printed copy. The eerie thing is, and this is what makes me think it worth mentioning to the slashdot crowd, early drafts had none of the typos that the first-printing hardback ended up with. Doug swears that the text was actually very clean, and that he wondered what was up when he saw the first edition, as though the typos had been inserted on purpose.
Enoch Root care to weigh in on the matter? Any budding young crytologists think they can answer Mr. Stephenson's message? Who or what is HADIK ZIMTER?
energylad
...when it comes to Stephenson. Many people love him and don't even *see* those flaws as flaws, and many think he's just an overblown researcher with diarrhea of the pen. Read him for yourself, but don't expect a Hollywood ending.
I, for one, love his endings, beginnings, and middles. As the about reviewer said, he makes me grin like a maniac on a very regular basis. But hey, to each their own -- I hear Pam Anderson book is positively scintillating. Or you could pick up a Dan Brown and relive the stress of hundreds of events and encounters packed into less than a week. Neal's not for everyone, but he *is* an excellent author.
I'm a pretty calm guy, but the 200+ pages of meandering (although the description of the experiments were interesting) in Quicksilver made me want to break something. How anyone could get past that and even onto two other books needs the literary equivalent of the purple heart for grace under incessant crap
Stay away from Foucault's Pendulum. You have been warned.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.