Ok–thanks for all the input. I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, and I, too, am puzzled at this being categorized as such–it is historical fiction so far, with Enoch (as near as I can tell) a sort of being who can transcend time and eras. If that is the only aspect of the novel which contains a sci-fi element, I cry foul.
Daniel is still meh–I’m on page 179 now–but I am interested in Isaac Newton and the Duke of Monmouth, although so far, they are not connected except via Daniel. It took a bit for me to adjust to NS flipping between Daniel’s youth and adulthood. I have little interest in Puritans, so Drake is a washout for me. Daniel is bland, but at least he dares to question all that theology.
It sounds like I won’t like Jack one bit (although who knows–I’ll have see). I’m sorry, but I’m not going to now stop and read Cryptonomican. I’m not much in the mood for a roller coaster ride, by action in the OP, I meant something other than descriptive narration.
I think part of my problem is that I was never taught physics. I can hazily remember some of the science of light from chemistry, but I think I’d get a lot more out of this is I were more familiar with “natural philosophy” behind it all.
I have sort of entered into 17th century London, so that’s good. And I agree with whomever upthread–this time frame is almost overwhelming in its leaps of knowledge and thought. When I posted the OP, I was bogged down in alchemy and impatient with the whole thing. It’s better now. I just wish Daniel’s ship would actually set sail instead of piddling around the Cape Cod coast…
I can’t see Snowcrash as a graphic novel. I can see it as an animated feature. I am not up on GNs, though, so there’s my ignorance.
I read the Baroque Cycle first, then Cryptonomicon, so it’s certainly possible to make sense of everything even in that order. (For that matter, I then went back and read The Diamond Age, and only last did I get to Snow Crash, so I did the whole thing in reverse.) I suppose you miss out on certain a-ha! moments while reading the Cycle, when you meet ancestors of Cryptonomicon characters and such, but it’s fun going the other way and meeting all the descendants.
There are a few other elements that I might call sci-fi, most notably a material that doesn’t exist in the real world, but I think of the Cycle as an historical-adventure-scientific-romance-political work, spanning too many genres to make it easily describable.
I would probably detest Jack in real life, but found him hugely entertaining on the page.
I really liked the them (and can’t wait for Anathem) , but I think you have to change your perspective a bit when reading Stephenson’s books… especially the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon. Reading them is much more about the journey as opposed to the destination. They are not like a detective book where there are great big “Ta-Da!” moments, but a series of very satisfying junctures, great word play, a deep level of knowledge, and enticing historical interludes.
That being said, if you’ve given it a good crack and you are 300 or so pages into it and you can’t stand the writing style, it’s not going to change through the rest of the 2000+ pages.
Publishers use genre labels like “science fiction” for marketing purposes.
You can find plenty of real SF books on the “Literature” or “Fiction” shelves of your local neighborhood corporate bookstore. This is strictly for business reasons. They’re trying to sell books, and they’ll stick whatever label they want on it if they think it’ll push more copies out the door. Keeping Stephenson’s historical works in the Science Fiction section might fly in the face of all reason, but it sort of… preserves the “brand name”, so to speak. I don’t rightly understand this, but that’s how it works.
I love Neal Stephenson (possibly more than he loves himself, rikc). I couldn’t put the Baroque Cycle down once I’d started it, and I felt like crying once I’d finished the last book because there wouldn’t be any more. I say stick with it, it’s one of the most unique reading experiences you’ll ever have.
As for why it’s in science fiction - the reason is that Stephenson wants it to be classed as science fiction, he’s said so himself (I can’t remember a cite but it may have been on his own website). I know the history of the period enough to know that the books are pretty faithful, but it has historical figures doing things that didn’t actually happen as well as some other vaguely sci-fi elements that others have alluded to (Enoch Root being one, the other you’ll come to eventually). Personally I’d be happy to have them classed as historical fiction, but I can see why Stephenson would want them in sci-fi.
By the way, Stephenson apparently wrote the books in long hand with a fountain pen as a character method - it must have taken him fucking ages! I too am amazed that someone could churn out close to 3000 pages of text in less than five years.
I reconcile the science fiction label by more or less pretending that it happens on an alternate Earth…as Illuminatiprimus notes, historical figures do things they never actually did, the whole thing with Enoch Root, the upcoming other fantastical thing, and there exist at least two island nations that don’t exist in our world (Qwghlm and Queenakoota/Kinakuta).
Funnily (given I’m of Manx origin) I assumed it was Wales, just from the name. According to Wikipedia Inner Qwghlm seems very much like Anglesea (“being joined to Britain by a sandbar that comes and goes with the tide”) and Outer Qwghlm like the Isle of Man, moved to be closer to Wales.
If you’re tired of him going on and on for hundreds of pages, borrow or buy The Big U, one of his earliest novels, and read it in between Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver. It is compact, fast-paced, well-plotted in parallel, and goes off the rails by the numbers, with an ending that I enjoyed much more than the endings to Snow Crash or The Diamond Age.
It reads like a primer on Stephenson’s favorite plot devices and manages to incorporate geeks, computer-assisted LARPing, profit-driven conspiracies, war history buffs, sci-fi weaponry, pipe organs, fake countries, computer viruses, bureaucracy, cults, roommates, the idiocy of large universities, and more.
I’m on page 279 now. I normally don’t count page numbers; I do so here so that those who have read this already have an idea of where I am.
I’ve settled into it now–the at times awkward spelling of things doesn’t bug me nearly as much as it did. What it is most reminding me of right now is that James Burke series, “Connections”. It is hard to keep things straight, the late 17th century being somewhat complicated, convoluted and contradictory in its nature. Wilkins is dying of bladder stone and Leibniz (sp?) has arrived. I am left with a question:
Except for who his father was, what use is Daniel to the Royal Society? He seems to be a sort of natural philosophy chameleon. I don’t believe for a minute that he struggles with piety or fears for his immortal soul–he’s a cardboard Puritan/Calvinist/Barker/choose your moniker. He’s likable enough, I suppose, but he doesn’t do anything. He’s reminding me of Forrest Gump (w/o the polio or the mild retardation)–he just seems to witness/stumble across various important events.
I am also toying with looking up some of these people to see if they really were as eccentric as portrayed, but I think I’ll wait till I’m done.
Daniel was Isaac Newton’s roommate in college and at times the only person who could reason with him. Consequently, he is asked by the Society to mediate the feud between Newton and Leibniz. It’s an awful lot more complicated than it sounds, but I can’t say more without blowing plot points.
Books are driven solely by the marketing departments of publishers. They work with the big bookstore chains to determine what section of the store a book will do best in and then aim all the promotional efforts at that. Whatever section will bring in the most customers for a particular title gets the book.
Publishers hate, hate, HATE, books that cross sections. Just put the book in both, you say. No, you can’t do that because each inch of shelf space is zealously fought over by every publisher. Putting one book in two sections means another book doesn’t get placed at all. Publishers will reject books if the marketing department can’t decide what section of the bookstore to place it in. This happened to me, so I know it’s not one of those FOAF ULs.
All publishers care about is the current book. Customers who want to read all of an author need to do the work. This is made much harder these days by authors who find that they have diminishing sales under one name and so resort to a second or third or sixth pseudonym to sell books. Everybody works hard to keep the public from knowing who is hiding behind that name because the real name indicates sales death.
This may sound insane to you. That’s because it is insane.
Well, I got that they were roommates, I meant that his significance to the plot seems to lie in his being the son of Drake Waterhouse and unlike his siblings in worldview. He sees the rivalries etc, but remains passive (so far). I haven’t gotten to the full details of the feud as yet–it’s been alluded to, and Oldenberg is being friendly to Leibniz who is w/o a patron. And there are A LOT of pirates in Cape Cod bay. And that’s about it for now.
Daniel is us. He’s the ordinary person among all of these luminaries who brings massively significant personalities and events down to our level. There’s really not a whole lot special about him, except as a surrogate for the reader to enter into the historical events described.
Eh, this is true and not true. Some authors are “out” about their pseudonyms but continue to use them to designate their different styles of writing. For example, every romance reader knows that when Jayne Ann Krentz writes a “Time Travel” romance, her pseudonym is Jayne Castle, and her pseudonym for Historical romance is Amanda Quick. She actively uses all three and makes no effort to hide it. Another big name romance author, Healther Graham, writes her historicals as Shannon Drake. She hasn’t exactly buried that fact in her website! So, in some circumstances a pseudonym can be a value builder - this might be unique to the Romance novel biz though… however that biz does account for more than 50% of all fiction books sold…
–used to work in marketing for one of those major booksellers.
And back to the OP, when does Quicksilver start having a point? In my opinion, never. When I give 900 pages of my life to a book, I expect to have something to show for it at the end other than bemusement and a sense of “WTF was that?” YMMV.
absurd name dropping spoilered for your protection
I had dinner with Neal Stephenson the day after the New York Times Book Review said essentially the same thing, and were he and his editor PISSED! I kept my thoughts on that to myself! He was not a barrel of monkeys to hang out with, at any rate, and I had just had dinner with Terry Pratchett the night before, and HE was the most delightful man you could ever hope him to be. So, basically I was quite unimpressed.
I used to read Wired magazine back during its heyday (and boy was I stupid back then not to pick up on their rather broad hint to buy up generic internet domain names :smack: ). They would occasionally have special contributions by science fiction authors; notably Wm. Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Stephenson. As much as I consider Gibson to be almost poetic when writing fiction, I found his non-fiction to be fairly leaden and plodding; I didn’t find the rarity of his contributions to be as lamentable as did the general readership. As much as I find Sterling to be ham-fisted in his science fiction (I am fairly certain I can distinguish his work from Gibson’s in The Difference Engine), his non-fiction contributions were brilliantly written. It was only Stephenson that I could enjoy equally in his fiction and non-fiction writing style.
After I posted, I went out and read on my front porch and thought about this thread. I thought that Daniel stood in for Everyman–exactly what you said.
I kind of like this reading by committee…
Hello Again–I’m starting to lean that way myself, but I’m only up to 321. Lots of history is happening, but not much story. Maybe I’m just not all that interested in the schools of thought re theology vs science and their fundamental contradictions.
(I’m kinda feeling a bit lectured to, about late 17th century England, too).
