Neal Stephenson has handled many sorts of fiction. Quicksilver, 2003, is an historic fiction and is followed by two sequels in a series he has titled “The Baroque Cycle”. The other two novels are titled: The Confusion, 2003, and The System of The World, 2004.
The author is a student of cryptography (the study of deciphering codes), and a writer of science fiction. I couldn’t foresee him conveying such convincing characterization of post-Renaissance people and events. As I read this novel I learned about authentic history through Stephenson’s ability to paint the landscape and mindsets of great thinkers of the Royal Natural Philosopher’s Society. His research is extensive. The bloodline of the Heirs of Ascendancy to European royalty is an exhausting read, and I can only imagine what he went through to map it. We’re both Americans, and I can say that here in the USA we are seldom inculcated with rote learning on these historic facts as they do in Europe. In the final novel he acknowledges the myriad sources for these facts and tells that it took him seven years to put it all together. I’d no clue as to why he went down this literary path after succeeding in Cyber-Punk and cryptographic stories. I was looking for a device that fit into cryptography, and behold, it is in the calculus and “The Logic Engine”. Both of these discoveries led to some types of computer logarithms, which are used to generate security codes.
Alchemy plays a large part in the plot. Stephenson has Sir Isaac Newton seem like a crackpot who won’t rest until he has proved that alchemy works. We never really get into Newton’s mindset in the first two novels where the author mostly alludes to him through critiques of the protagonist, Daniel Waterhouse, and by others who characterize Newton in great detail.
And one should be an avid reader to undertake this trilogy of three thousand pages. Quicksilver alone is nine hundred and eighteen pages and not always a ripping good drama or much of a mystery.
The author starts it on home ground in Massachusetts during early colonial times with quite a blast. That was clever because it takes a bit to warm to some parts that flash back to London. His device is to have an ongoing sea battle against pirates to keep the reader turning pages on the more mundane settings or confusing historical episodes. By the time I read to book two “The Story of Half-cock Jack”, I knew I was hooked into finishing this novel though it took me many years to finish the cycle.
Quicksilver is basically the easiest read of these three novels. The author portrays the pirate adversaries as both human and surprisingly business-minded. The modern reader forgets with the peril of a mere oceanic voyage in this era that there were equally perilous foes of the common voyager. Stephenson goes over-the-top in a few scenes but keeps it realistic in the main.
The Confusion is not as reader friendly as Quicksilver simply because Stephenson prefers first person floating narrative in the form of missives and letters throughout this novel. Also the pervading elements of stocks trading and investment banking/business lends itself to boring the reader. There is the heist in “Bonanza” and the voyage around the world, but this doesn’t compare favorably to the broadsides with the pirates of the first novel. The fact that the main protagonist is female might have been a literary trap for Stephenson who writes about men with more flair. The author leans heavily toward the pulp type of hero vs. villainous foe physical combat and there can be little of this when the protagonist is female and engaging her wiles rather than her swordsmanship. Yet the setting of this novel affords the author more detail of the bloodline to the English and French thrones
In truth I cannot recall all of the plot twists in all three novels but what I carry away is the progression of a theme throughout. Adventurers were responsible for many important discoveries and helped out the human condition in some cases by conveying new ideas to remote parts of the globe. The fathers of modern thought were alive in England and would soon infect progressive thinkers in America. Case in point was Sir Isaac Newton who single-handedly changed our view of the universe as much as Copernicus, DiVinci, or Galilleo. He is the author of the first ‘modern’ work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. To be the front runner is unique in most fields, and the genius that was Newton is at least consistent in the author’s portrayal of Newton’s abilities. Reader, we are speaking of the man who invented Calculus. I still can’t do Calculus, but to think of Newton seeing all the proofs that pointed to its rise; well Stephenson can argue about Leibniz’s claims to Calculus but it is as much as saying Einstein didn’t really write E=MC squared first.
That the author can give Newton so many Doyle-esque facets is a tribute to his imagination. As he states in his “Acknowledgements”—
When necessary I just made something up.
Often the author’s imaginings save this writing from being merely a lengthy description of Europe in the 18th Century. Imagining what sailors might think who were among the first to sail into the San Francisco Bay; did they find their Shangri-La? Should they set aside their dreams of fortune for the agrarian life in some of the world’s mildest climate?
The final novel, The System of the World brings back all the characters from the first two and arranges Sir Isaac Newton at the center. The author gives us climax and resolution on the matter of philosophic gold and thus the earnest worth of alchemy. Sadly the hero, Daniel Waterhouse, must wait for Edison and electric power in order to build a functioning computer, but he takes mechanical binary computation further than modern science buffs realized before reading this. Stephenson even leaves himself an opening for a sequel, as Bluebeard doesn’t materialize by the conclusion.
If you are interested in the early development of encryption, physics, surgery, calculus, mining, or numismatic studies then read these novels.
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Stephenson’s Three Novels
The Baroque Cycle
Neal Stephenson
Paris Parts, June 2009
Neal Stephenson has handled many sorts of fiction. Quicksilver, 2003, is an historic fiction and is followed by two sequels in a series he has titled “The Baroque Cycle”. The other two novels are titled: The Confusion, 2003, and The System of The World, 2004.
The author is a student of cryptography (the study of deciphering codes), and a writer of science fiction. I couldn’t foresee him conveying such convincing characterization of post-Renaissance people and events. As I read this novel I learned about authentic history through Stephenson’s ability to paint the landscape and mindsets of great thinkers of the Royal Natural Philosopher’s Society. His research is extensive. The bloodline of the Heirs of Ascendancy to European royalty is an exhausting read, and I can only imagine what he went through to map it. We’re both Americans, and I can say that here in the USA we are seldom inculcated with rote learning on these historic facts as they do in Europe. In the final novel he acknowledges the myriad sources for these facts and tells that it took him seven years to put it all together. I’d no clue as to why he went down this literary path after succeeding in Cyber-Punk and cryptographic stories. I was looking for a device that fit into cryptography, and behold, it is in the calculus and “The Logic Engine”. Both of these discoveries led to some types of computer logarithms, which are used to generate security codes.
Alchemy plays a large part in the plot. Stephenson has Sir Isaac Newton seem like a crackpot who won’t rest until he has proved that alchemy works. We never really get into Newton’s mindset in the first two novels where the author mostly alludes to him through critiques of the protagonist, Daniel Waterhouse, and by others who characterize Newton in great detail.
And one should be an avid reader to undertake this trilogy of three thousand pages. Quicksilver alone is nine hundred and eighteen pages and not always a ripping good drama or much of a mystery.
The author starts it on home ground in Massachusetts during early colonial times with quite a blast. That was clever because it takes a bit to warm to some parts that flash back to London. His device is to have an ongoing sea battle against pirates to keep the reader turning pages on the more mundane settings or confusing historical episodes. By the time I read to book two “The Story of Half-cock Jack”, I knew I was hooked into finishing this novel though it took me many years to finish the cycle.
Quicksilver is basically the easiest read of these three novels. The author portrays the pirate adversaries as both human and surprisingly business-minded. The modern reader forgets with the peril of a mere oceanic voyage in this era that there were equally perilous foes of the common voyager. Stephenson goes over-the-top in a few scenes but keeps it realistic in the main.
The Confusion is not as reader friendly as Quicksilver simply because Stephenson prefers first person floating narrative in the form of missives and letters throughout this novel. Also the pervading elements of stocks trading and investment banking/business lends itself to boring the reader. There is the heist in “Bonanza” and the voyage around the world, but this doesn’t compare favorably to the broadsides with the pirates of the first novel. The fact that the main protagonist is female might have been a literary trap for Stephenson who writes about men with more flair. The author leans heavily toward the pulp type of hero vs. villainous foe physical combat and there can be little of this when the protagonist is female and engaging her wiles rather than her swordsmanship. Yet the setting of this novel affords the author more detail of the bloodline to the English and French thrones
In truth I cannot recall all of the plot twists in all three novels but what I carry away is the progression of a theme throughout. Adventurers were responsible for many important discoveries and helped out the human condition in some cases by conveying new ideas to remote parts of the globe. The fathers of modern thought were alive in England and would soon infect progressive thinkers in America. Case in point was Sir Isaac Newton who single-handedly changed our view of the universe as much as Copernicus, DiVinci, or Galilleo. He is the author of the first ‘modern’ work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. To be the front runner is unique in most fields, and the genius that was Newton is at least consistent in the author’s portrayal of Newton’s abilities. Reader, we are speaking of the man who invented Calculus. I still can’t do Calculus, but to think of Newton seeing all the proofs that pointed to its rise; well Stephenson can argue about Leibniz’s claims to Calculus but it is as much as saying Einstein didn’t really write E=MC squared first.
That the author can give Newton so many Doyle-esque facets is a tribute to his imagination. As he states in his “Acknowledgements”—
When necessary I just made something up.
Often the author’s imaginings save this writing from being merely a lengthy description of Europe in the 18th Century. Imagining what sailors might think who were among the first to sail into the San Francisco Bay; did they find their Shangri-La? Should they set aside their dreams of fortune for the agrarian life in some of the world’s mildest climate?
The final novel, The System of the World brings back all the characters from the first two and arranges Sir Isaac Newton at the center. The author gives us climax and resolution on the matter of philosophic gold and thus the earnest worth of alchemy. Sadly the hero, Daniel Waterhouse, must wait for Edison and electric power in order to build a functioning computer, but he takes mechanical binary computation further than modern science buffs realized before reading this. Stephenson even leaves himself an opening for a sequel, as Bluebeard doesn’t materialize by the conclusion.
If you are interested in the early development of encryption, physics, surgery, calculus, mining, or numismatic studies then read these novels.