Re:Good read, if you can get through it.
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 1
1) Please excuse my presumption regarding your having read the book based on your review.
No problem at all.
2) Maybe not "technomancy" per se but maybe "period piece technomancy".
It does have that wide-eyed geekly flair. It's way too early to be called steampunk. Candlepunk, maybe.
I liked that he was able to branch out away from just technology to more fundamental subjects.
I agree; I'd much rather see SF writers stretch themselves than churn out the same old thing with less and less original thought [coughWebercough].
I did think it odd that, despite the breadth of subjects Stephenson weaves into Quicksilver, he avoids the arts except where they impinge on architecture. When Jack and Eliza are in Amsterdam, Rembrandt and Vermeer are still cooling in their graves; and in Germany and Italy, Pachelbel and Corelli are writing music for the ages; but that doesn't color the story at all. I'm curious as to whether that will continue to be the case in the sequels.
Re:Good read, if you can get through it.
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 1
5) I don't think Christina Schulman, the reviewer, (and despite the Epiphyte reference) made it through the book. The Quicksilver metaphor is important in the first book. The second and third books in the Quicksilver volume go on to other metaphors.
To clarify: Quicksilver is internally broken into three sections; jea6 is speaking of the second and third sections.
Of course I finished the book. My review originally contained a long and rather dull paragraph about the different themes tied together by quicksilver and Mercury, who was god of (among other things) commerce, thievery, invention, and land-travel. Commerce, of course, is the big one, and Stephenson's playing with the same abstract concepts of wealth and money flow that he brought into Cryptonomicon. I trimmed that bit because the review was starting to sound too much like a term paper, and the information wasn't likely to be interesting to anyone who hadn't yet read the book.
I said: don't expect it to resemble Stephenson's prior books in anything but ambition and length.
jea6 responded: Ummm, I disagree. The parallel story line method is Stephenson's trademark, whether you are reading The Big U, the Diamond Age, or most noticeably Cryptonomicon. This book is more of what Stephenson does best, but in a very different setting.
I agree that the storytelling is Stephenson all over, but I think the average reader (although not, perhaps, the average Slashdot reader) still thinks of Stephenson as "that Snow Crash guy", lumped in with Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Paul di Filippo, and the rest of the adrenaline-twitch cyberpunk crowd. Anyone who expects Quicksilver to have that same sort of bleeding-edge technomancy is going to be surprised at best and disappointed at worst.
Complete side note: If you preferred Snow Crash to Cryptonomicon, check out Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward, an adrenaline-twitch cyberpunk novel that's got Stephenson's footprints all over it. It's a few years old, but it deserves to be better known.
Re:Looking forward... mostly
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I did some rudimentary checking on the reliability of Stephenson's research, which is to say, I ran the high points past my sister, who's a historian specializing in the Dutch Golden Age. (On a side note, having received countless calls from friends and family with computer questions; it's pleasant to be on the other side of the equation for once.)
My sister gave a tentative thumbs-up to the general outline of Stephenson's history, and suggested that two of his source books were probably 1688: A Global History by John E., Jr. Wills and Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 by Jonathan I. Israel.
I'm so glad I don't do that for a living.
Re:Some shocking statements for a '9'
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This isn't the sort of book where audience reaction follows a Gaussian distribution.
I gave it a 9 because I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I think most of those who made it all the way to the end of Cryptonomicon will too. But it's also going to drive a lot of people nuts, and they should be warned; this shouldn't be anyone's first Stephenson book.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Please excuse my presumption regarding your having read the book based on your review.
No problem at all.
2) Maybe not "technomancy" per se but maybe "period piece technomancy".
It does have that wide-eyed geekly flair. It's way too early to be called steampunk. Candlepunk, maybe.
I liked that he was able to branch out away from just technology to more fundamental subjects.
I agree; I'd much rather see SF writers stretch themselves than churn out the same old thing with less and less original thought [coughWebercough].
I did think it odd that, despite the breadth of subjects Stephenson weaves into Quicksilver, he avoids the arts except where they impinge on architecture. When Jack and Eliza are in Amsterdam, Rembrandt and Vermeer are still cooling in their graves; and in Germany and Italy, Pachelbel and Corelli are writing music for the ages; but that doesn't color the story at all. I'm curious as to whether that will continue to be the case in the sequels.
5) I don't think Christina Schulman, the reviewer, (and despite the Epiphyte reference) made it through the book. The Quicksilver metaphor is important in the first book. The second and third books in the Quicksilver volume go on to other metaphors.
To clarify: Quicksilver is internally broken into three sections; jea6 is speaking of the second and third sections.
Of course I finished the book. My review originally contained a long and rather dull paragraph about the different themes tied together by quicksilver and Mercury, who was god of (among other things) commerce, thievery, invention, and land-travel. Commerce, of course, is the big one, and Stephenson's playing with the same abstract concepts of wealth and money flow that he brought into Cryptonomicon. I trimmed that bit because the review was starting to sound too much like a term paper, and the information wasn't likely to be interesting to anyone who hadn't yet read the book.
I said:
don't expect it to resemble Stephenson's prior books in anything but ambition and length.
jea6 responded:
Ummm, I disagree. The parallel story line method is Stephenson's trademark, whether you are reading The Big U, the Diamond Age, or most noticeably Cryptonomicon. This book is more of what Stephenson does best, but in a very different setting.
I agree that the storytelling is Stephenson all over, but I think the average reader (although not, perhaps, the average Slashdot reader) still thinks of Stephenson as "that Snow Crash guy", lumped in with Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Paul di Filippo, and the rest of the adrenaline-twitch cyberpunk crowd. Anyone who expects Quicksilver to have that same sort of bleeding-edge technomancy is going to be surprised at best and disappointed at worst.
Complete side note: If you preferred Snow Crash to Cryptonomicon, check out Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward, an adrenaline-twitch cyberpunk novel that's got Stephenson's footprints all over it. It's a few years old, but it deserves to be better known.
I did some rudimentary checking on the reliability of Stephenson's research, which is to say, I ran the high points past my sister, who's a historian specializing in the Dutch Golden Age. (On a side note, having received countless calls from friends and family with computer questions; it's pleasant to be on the other side of the equation for once.)
My sister gave a tentative thumbs-up to the general outline of Stephenson's history, and suggested that two of his source books were probably 1688: A Global History by John E., Jr. Wills and Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 by Jonathan I. Israel.
I'm so glad I don't do that for a living.
This isn't the sort of book where audience reaction follows a Gaussian distribution.
I gave it a 9 because I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I think most of those who made it all the way to the end of Cryptonomicon will too. But it's also going to drive a lot of people nuts, and they should be warned; this shouldn't be anyone's first Stephenson book.