September 24, 2003

  • Neal Stephenson's new tome, 'Quicksilver' was finally released, and I finally picked up a copy.

    It's the first of three volumes, and it's 927 pages. Consider somewhere around 3000 pages of novel... I'm hefting the book and committing to reading it feels a bit like being engaged to marry. Hopefully the children won't have six toes.

    It has an Acknowledgements section, and then an Invocation, which I think is beautiful:

    State your intentions, Muse. I know you're there.
    Dead bards who pined for you have said
    You're bright as flame, but fickle as the air.
    My pen and I, submerged in liquid shade,
    Much dark can spread, on days and over reams
    But without you, no radiance can shed.
    Why rustle in the dark, when fledged with fire?
    Craze the night with flails of light. Reave
    Your turbid shroud. Bestow what I require.

    But you're not in the dark. I do believe
    I swim, like squid, in clouds of my own make,
    To you offensive. To us both, opaque.
    What's constituted so, only a pen
    Can penetrate. I have one here; let's go.

    The book's about the transition of science from alchemy to the scientific method. Seriously. It's about the transformation of thought from superstition to reason. Things we take for granted as being taught in grade school were once the province of shadowy heretics, and somehow that changed.

    The first chapter opens with a witch hanging in Boston, and ends with our main character meeting an 8-year-old Ben Franklin. The second chapter has a young Issac Newton being picked on by bullies in school.

    Only 893 more pages to go. I'm jazzed.

Comments (8)

  • Sounds cool...

  • I've tried some of his early stuff and found it dull with a capital D...has his writing style gotten better?  It sounds like I would REALLY enjoy this so I want to give it a try, but I've been burned, ya know?

  • I'm still trudging through Cryptonomicon.. I guess I'll follow that with Quicksilver, since (from what I hear) the same families run into each other earlier in history. Should be interesting.

    I gotta admit though - Cryptonomicon is a lot harder to get into that, say, Snow Crash or Zodiac... when does the pace pick up??

    No wait, don't tell me

  • 'The Diamond Age' is still my mostest favoritest, but 'Cryptonomicon' is a close second. And... it picks up right from the start. Did you get to the Cap'n Crunch part yet?

  • Good LORD, that's long! Wow. I might be too A.D.D. to start something that big, but more power to you.

    The excerpt here is incredible. Sounds like a fantastic read.

  • I just read your Fremont Bridge blog.  Amazing.  Femme wrote about you.  The book sounds interesting - I have a bookshop, but I don't have customers with more than teeny-weeny attention spans!

  • I don't recall Cap'n Crunch, but I've stretched the first 100 or so pages out over a looooong period of time, so there's a distinct possiblity that I've forgotten something.. I ought to start all over!

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