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Sneak Peek At Neal Stephenson's "Anathem"
Shawn M. Smith writes "Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle) has a new novel coming out in just a couple weeks — Anathem. Boing Boing has an excerpt from the amazing glossary (including a definition for 'bulshytt') so take a peek at a copy of an abridged glossary of neologisms and language-bending goodies from the book."
This guy used way too much energy
excruciating like the Baroque books
Interesting.In no way did I find the Baroque Cycle "excruciating". But then, I'm on the far side of 50, and I possess a well-developed attention span. Something sadly lacking in the current generation it seems...IMO, the Baroque Cycle is the best historical fiction written in the last 20 years.
I read all 3 Baroque books, and I don't know why but I found them immensely entertaining while everyone else I know stopped somewhere in the first book (which in subsequent publications was itself turned into 3 books). They were like a kid's serial novel from the 1800's or something. Like reading an entire narrative based on all the "150 years ago in Scientific American" sections. The only thing that frustrated me about the books at all was not knowing whether I actually knew any accurate history after reading them, since large portions of the events and characters are fiction with enough reality thrown in to make it interesting. (Kind of like some of the Illuminatus Trilogy that way.)
E pluribus unum
Here's an opinion to add to your dissenting column:
The Baroque Cycle is brilliant. Well worth the read. The philosophical argument that the differences between Leibnitz's worldview and Newton's still infect the discourse of modern american politics and religious thought - that alone is brilliant enough to make it worthwhile. On top of that, it's also damn fun.
Funny, I couldn't get through Snow Crash after trying several times. But the Baroque Cycle is one of favorite series (an experience much enhanced by the language). In any case, whether you like Stephenson's earlier books or his later books, he is inarguably one of the more daring speculative fiction writers out there. If authors don't experiment then literature goes nowhere. I am very much looking forward to this book.
My belief is that Stephenson still hasn't found a way to finish a novel properly, so he keeps writing them longer and longer, trying to find the ending.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
For what it's worth, Gene Wolfe didn't make up any of the weird words in The Book of the New Sun. Instead, he trawled through the Oxford English Dictionary and wove his text out of authentic English lexical items that for some reason or another fell out of use. If you are interested, there's an essay entitled, IIRC, "Words Weird and Wonderful" in Wolfe's collection Castle of Days/cite, which has plenty of other interesting tidbits about the writing of that science fiction masterpiece.
Hi.. I'm a Slashdot reader and I either LOVE anything by Neal, or I don't understand what the fuss is about. 50/50 split. I called it.
You didn't get to the Confusion, where Jack sails around the world and gets all the gold. That's the heart of the story and where the plot really starts to pick up and get interesting. The Baroque Cycle is one of those rare trilogies where the second book is probably better than the first. And without doubt, Quicksilver is merely a setup so everybody can get to where they need to be.
:)
You just didn't read enough into it.
p.s. There was soooo much going on in those first 500 pages that you have no idea about because you didn't finish the trilogy. If you get to System of the World, you'll be going back-and-forth between all three books, cross-referencing journal entries and passages, trying to figure out where all the gold is. I won't give spoilers, but there's a lot of hidden information in those first 500 pages, which is part of why it's so dry. Most encrypted messages require some additional material to obfuscate with.
That being said, Baroque Cycle is definitely his most sophisticated and challenging read. It may well be his War and Peace.