The day before Thanksgiving, I finished Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, the first volume of his Baroque Cycle trilogy.
Stephenson takes the ancestors of the protagonists in Crytonomicon (his most recent book) and sprinkles them through 17th century Europe, in key roles, especially among the nascent scientific community coming together (in England) as the Royal Society. I studied history and literature of France and England in the ‘modern era,’ meaning from 1750 to the present, so I hope I have an excuse for knowing so little about European history prior to 1750. I enjoyed this historical fiction, with its quite modern references to cryptology mixed with the period obsession with religious leanings as they apply to politics. (We have our own current obsessions with religion, of course). Also, the various characters Stephenson creates and follows throughout Europe are always close observers/participants with the real historical personalities… kings and would-be kings alike.
I’m pleased to see that the next two books are coming in 2004, not too far in the future. The Confusion arrives in April 2004, and The System of the World arrives in September 2004. With books this long, you wouldn’t necessarily expect each one to be ready so quickly. That said, maybe Stephenson wrote them like on the same schedule as The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed: all at the same time.
The words that really put me onto Stephenson as an author are found in his article Mother Earth Mother Board for Wired magazine (December 1996 issue). This 56-page opus chronicles how, physically, the internet gets wired, specifically across continents and under seas. Certainly, much of what Stephenson learned while researching and writing this article became part of Cryptonomicon, which I found to be one of the best stories I’ve read in years (better than this first volume of the Baroque Cycle).
There is a nifty experiment started with the MetaWeb, where Stephenson offers his book as a catalyst for putting deeper explanations out onto the web. As he states in the site introduction.
[We] are hoping that the annotations of the book on this site will seed a body of knowledge called the Metaweb, which will eventually be something more generally useful than a list of FAQs about one and only one novel. The idea of the Metaweb was originated by Danny Hillis.
I’m always impressed to see a person who makes his living by writing find an appropriate outlet for contributing “free” writing to the web without derailing their career. No blog that I know of for Stephenson, and I think he’s explicitly said that he needs to focus. Focus away! Keep writing.