Чудесная — и очень длинная — фантазия о науке, истории и политике. Вообще представлять развитие науки (да и чего бы то ни было) как деятельность тайного общества — она очень согревает , особенно если помнить, что не отдельными гениями-подвижниками наука двигалась, а клерками, гонцами, посланниками, от нода к ноду. Мысль такая, конечно, не нова — взять тот же «Криптономикон»: тут Стивенсон тоже пытается создать в линейной развертке некий образ прото-интернета. «Ртуть» — пока о первом томе «Барочного цикла» речь — великий либертарианский эпос о свободе мысли, сочлененный с авантюрным романом-пикареской (главным образом т.е., но экскурсы в другие жанры он здесь тоже совершает), что постепенно перерастает в роман энциклопедический, крипто-исторический, вполне пинчонианский.
Но есть разница. В мире, как его себе представляет Стивенсон, познаваемая система есть. Ее не может не быть — таковы его персонажи, таков этос натурфилософов. Оставаясь, в первую очередь, романтиком-гуманистом, Стивенсон верит в человеческий разум (пока, во всяком случае), он в широком смысле, я бы сказал, позитивист. Да и чего еще можно ждать от физического географа? Основное образование автора я упомянул недаром: для них, должно быть, вся окружающая реальность читается как карта — ну или должна. И, соответственно, все подлежит кодировке и нанесению на карту. В частности, «Ртуть» (и, я подозреваю, следующие тома) — это вполне себе проекция Меркатора, где исторический период разворачивается так, что некоторые аспекты необходимо искажаются, что-то расширяется и привлекает больше внимания, что-то наоборот, уходит чуть ли не за край карты (и там будут чудовища). Некоторые, между прочим, считают, что это единственно верное представление об окружающем нас мире, какое и способна дать нам литература.

What a mess! This volume commits several heinous sins; the Sin of Protagonist Switching occurs twice. The Sin of Rambling Aimlessly occurs through out. The Sin of Being Pointless might possibly be redeemed in the remaining volumes...but can I be bothered to read them?

There are fun and exciting passages that account for the two star rating but they are islands floating on the structural swamp.

A long, meandering, Europe-trotting historical which alternates stretches of ponderous natural philosophy with stretches of hilarious piratical shenanigans, to somewhat dubious effect. I enjoyed this, the way you enjoy a book that you read in 100 page chunks over the span of a year, and it's worth noting that I could do that since there's very little throughline. But the thing is.

The thing is, Stephenson made a conscious choice to mix his oodles of historical research with a modern prose sensibility. Which is fine, since it's not like the novel as we understand it – and as Stephenson writes it – was actually invented yet when this book is set. But his particular modern prose sensibility is basically a transcription of the stylings of an overeducated hipster douche kicking back in a hipster douche bar, telling his hipster douche friends about that time he got lost on vacation and nearly died of malaria, but the entire point of the story is to be arch and ironic and detached about the whole thing, because let's be honest, nothing bad could truly ever happen to this hipster douche, that just isn't how the world works and he knows it. I mean, he's a funny dude! He tells a great story! But there's a very fine line.

Basically, somewhere around page 700, right about where a couple of characters were observing a rape and contemplating their imminent enslavement and death, and all they did was make arch, detached, hipster douche comments to each other about it, just as every other character had done on every other occasion from the wrenching to the banal to the sublime, right about then was when I thought oh come on, a single moment of genuineness wouldn't kill you.

Except this is Stephenson, so actually . . . it might.

4.0/4.0

It's the Moby-Dick question.

The plot's about an angry guy chasing a whale. There's not a lot of variation on this theme: he catches it, or he doesn't. Maybe he catches it and wishes that he didn't, maybe he doesn't and regrets that he failed. But this basic plot, a straightforward quest for revenge, is such thin gruel that you'd have to be on the lower end of the intellectual spectrum to fail to realize that the book's about something a little bit more than hunting a big fish.

Even so, there's no guarantee that you're going to tolerate 20 pages about rope. At the end of the digression, you're either going to respond in one of two ways. You might be of the sort to go, "Hmm, that was some fascinating rope discourse. I had no idea that rope could be used in such multifaceted ways, and having read that, I am now a different and slightly more rounded person." Then again, you could respond with a "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, enough with the stupid rope already! For fuck's sake, where's that son of a bitch whale? The white sea mammal is the TITLE of the book, and I'm reading about some shitty rope?! Christ, I need some vodka."

You should know what sort of reader you are before picking this book up, because The Baroque Cycle is about 3,000 pages long, and Neal Stephenson digresses like an ADHD kid on speed. Melville's focus is a goddamn space laser in comparison. Quicksilver has economics, mining, mathematics, piracy, slavery, early Puritan philosophy and I forget what else.

It is genius, pure and simple.

This is one of the first great works of the 21st century, and I can't recommend it highly enough. But odds are great that you'll hate it mightily if your concern is the destination instead of how you get there.

[This audiobook contains Book 1 of the print edition of the Quicksilver omnibus. Book 2 is King of the Vagabonds. Book 3 is Odalisque.]

I’m a scientist by profession and I love history. Thus, I’m fascinated by the history of science, especially the era of Isaac Newton et al. So, Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver should be just my thing and I was fully expecting to love this book (it’s been on my list for years), but I’m sad to say that I was disappointed in this first installment of The Baroque Cycle, though I still have high hopes for the remaining books.

Quicksilver is well-researched and well-written and chock full of plenty of stuff I love to read about: 17th and 18th century scholars and politicians exploring the way the world works. What an exciting time to be alive! Neal Stephenson successfully captures the feeling of the Baroque world — its architecture, fashion, nobility, plagues, and lack of waste management. He’s done his research, so he clearly and enthusiastically informs us about such diverse topics as alchemy, astronomy, botany, calculus, coinage, cryptography, the Dutch Wars, economics, free will, Galilean invariance, geometry, heresy, international relations, Judaism, kinematics, logic, microscopy, natural philosophy, optics, politics, the Reformation, the Restoration, relativity, sailing, sea warfare, slavery, taxonomy, warfare, weaponry, and zoology... I could go on. Quicksilver will get you half way through a liberal arts education in only 335 pages.

This is quite an accomplishment, but it’s also a problem. I love historical fiction, but great historical fiction uses the context of an exciting plot, engaging characters, and some sort of tension in the form of mystery and/or romance. Quicksilver has none of that. It’s purely what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) “historical science fiction.” Daniel Waterhouse, the character whose eyes we see through (mostly in flashbacks), has no personality, passion, or purpose. In Quicksilver, he exists to look over the shoulders of the men who are the real subjects of the book: the members of the Royal Society.

These men are fascinating, yes, but if the purpose of Quicksilver is to relay a huge amount of information about them in an interesting way, I’d rather read a non-fiction account. Then at least I’d know which of the numerous anecdotes about Isaac Newton (et al.) are factual. I can think of no reason to read this history as a fictional account if it contains none of the elements of an entertaining novel.

As an example, I’ll contrast Quicksilver with Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. I read all 20½ of those novels and was completely enthralled. Not only did I learn a lot about the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, but I was also thoroughly entertained by the fictional stories of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. That is excellent historical fiction.

Quicksilver was funny in places (such as when the Royal Society members talk about time, kidney stones, and opiates during one of their meetings) — and engrossing a couple of times (such as when Daniel Waterhouse and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz discuss cognition, free will, and artificial intelligence), and though I enjoy learning about the invention of clocks, calculators, and coffee, Quicksilver is mostly information overload without a story to back it up.

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version, which was beautifully read by Simon Prebble (always a treat). Due to its length, Brilliance Audio has split Quicksilver into its three sections: “Quicksilver,” “King of the Vagabonds,” and “Odalisque.” The next audiobook, then, is called King of the Vagabonds, and it shifts focus to a London street urchin who becomes an adventurer. Now that sounds like fun! I’m going to read King of the Vagabonds and hope that the introduction of some non-academic characters will give this saga some life!

I think it's official: I hate Neil Stephenson's books. I hated his so called cyberpunk classic Snow Crash --a fact that sets me apart from most of the nerdegalian-- and I really hated Quicksilver.

Quicksilver is kind of hard to classify, if you in fact insist on classifying it. It's kind of historical fiction in that it's set in the 17th and 18th century and follows the rise of empiricism and science. It features real people from that period, like Isaac Newton, Gotfried Leibniz, Robert Boyle, Robert Hook, King Louis XIV, and others. But the "fiction" part of "historical fiction" comes into play because the main characters --an aspiring natural philosopher (read: scientist) named Daniel Waterhouse, a former concubine turned finance tycoon named Eliza, and a charming vagabond named Jack Shaftoe-- never really existed and were fabricated for the sake of the book, which traces the activities of these three main characters as they live through the era.

The main problem I have with Quicksilver was that it was largely plotless. I kept waiting for something to happen or some plot to coalesce out of the noise, but it didn't. The characters are really just there to give Stephenson an excuse to carry on about the development of science as a discipline, the ephemeral nature of money, and pirates --sometimes all three in the same passage. There's no narrative, just a seemingly endless burbling of scenes --the damn thing is nearly 1,000 pages long, and I READ the paper version of this one. I actually kind of liked the some of the parts with struggling scientist Daniel Waterhouse the best, because the history of science interests me, but even these moments of engagement were covered up by obscure details and diversions that were like overgrown plants in a sprawling garden.

In fact, the whole book is bloated with details about experiments, geneologies, dissertations on stock markets, battles, family histories, and other verbal flotsam that it made it downright hard to read the book and impossible to enjoy. I get the impression that Stephenson gorged himself on research for the book, and then decided to use it all --every last syllable-- no matter what hellacious effect it has on the narrative or the goal of actually telling an interesting story. Quicksilver may be more entertaining than a high school textbook on the same topics, but only marginally.

And the thing is that it's only the first THIRD of a trilogy, plus a tie-in to Stpehnons's book Cryptonomicon. What's worse is that I went ahead and picked up the other books in hardback, though I did so at a thrift store and only set myself back a total of like three bucks. I think I'm just gonna eat that cost and not even think about picking them up, given how much I disliked Quicksilver. Life is too short.

Parking this one. Loved the first part, sheer brilliance. The 2nd and 3rd parts are a real chore.

DNF

I loved Stephenson's "Snow Crash". Really liked "Cryptonomicon". But, this novel was terribly boring. It is divided into three books. Book 1 follows the scientist Dan Waterhouse. Book 2 followed Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds. Book 3 sees Eliza, a former slave girl, caught up in a spy ring between the French, English & Dutch governments. Sounds good, but it isn't. The writing is too long, and too detailed to remain focused on what should be important to the story...the story. I found myself skipping paragraphs of setting and science-speak to find the plot of the novel, but to no avail. Oh, there are moments of real conflict and intrigue, but they are few and far between. I know their are two more books which will tie up loose ends, (and there are many) but I don't think I will waste my time wading through another 1800 pages (900 per book) to learn...nothing

öncelikle bu müthiş baskı için alfa'ya teşekkür ediyorum ve okuyan herkesin müteşekkir olacağından eminim. kusursuz bir iş çıkartmışlar ki son zamanlarda denk gelmenin ötesinde hayal dahi edemeyeceğim bir durum bu.

kitapları ayrı ayrı puanlamam gerektiğini ve nihayetinde üçünün ortalamasını alıp bu cildi puanlamanın daha doğru olacağını düşündüm.

puanlarım ilk kitap için 4/5, ikinci kitap için 3/5 ve üçüncü kitap için 5/5 şeklinde. bu yüzden bu cilt ortalama olarak tarafımdan naçizane 4 yıldız alıyor.

yer yer ayrıntılarla boğuyor olsa da kitabın geneli gayet akıcı. neal stephenson hikayelerin geçtiği mekanları ve zamanları ustalıkla anlatıyor ve bu pek çok öğretici bilgiyi de içeriyor. daniel waterhouse'un macerasını okuyorken bir anda viskiye irlanda ve iskoçya'da verilen ismi ya da elza'yı okurken dolar kelimesinin kökenini öğrenebilirsiniz. bu tip trivial meselelere meraklı insanlar için kitabın daha eğlenceli olacağı aşikar.

almaya niyetlenirseniz tereddüt etmemenizi öneririm,

sevgiler.

I consider myself a Stephenson aficionado, but perhaps I am not intelligent enough for the Baroque Cycle after all.

While I consider Cryptonomicon at least my third-favorite of his tomes, this prequel to the saga does not work for me. Yes, one can learn quite a bit by reading about Daniel Waterhouse's conversations with Newton and Leibniz and even a young Benjamin Franklin, covering the Enlightenment period well. And the 'vagabond' sections with Jack Shaftoe's adventures, along with the impressive Eliza, are the more fun parts.

But overall, it can't be avoided how hard to follow this is. Generally, I find Neal Stephenson to be excellent at being a readable author who makes the most complex concepts interesting for a lay reader like myself. Yet, with this it does not work. This is not necessarily because of the thousand-plus page length. His science fiction world of scholars in Anathem is a far more successful attempt.

It was surely worth a try, and hopefully I do now have more of a sense of historical Europe and the natural sciences. What an effort it was, however.

So I suppose I shall not continue the trilogy, nor reread by way of audiobook any time soon...

What a difference the right character makes! I was on page 384 when I suddenly realized that Eliza was finally someone in the narrative that I could care about. Because of her, Jack Shaftoe became more interesting too. (If I was a stickler for Nancy Pearl's rule, I would have abandoned the novel long before this point [Take 100, subtract your age and the result is the number of pages you should read before giving up on a book. When you're 100, you're free to judge a book by its cover.]) But I did end up liking the book, although not as much as I had hoped.

It shouldn't have been that way. I was so optimistic when I started this huge book. After all, Isaac Newton was a prominent character. How could he fail to be fascinating? Well, by appearing for a while, then dropping out of sight, that's how. He reappears fleetingly at the end, at least. Daniel Waterhouse was mildly interesting, but so clueless about politics (and women) that he was next to useless as a narrator. It was the sections about his older self, trying to return from Massachusetts to England on a ship and escaping from pirates that kept me reading until I found Eliza. I'm usually an enthusiastic reader of historical fantasy, but I found my attention drifting frequently. I'd have to back up a couple of paragraphs to make sure I hadn't glossed over a significant point.

I've read a few Stephenson novels at this point in my reading project: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, and Cryptonomicon, varying from 2 to 3 stars for me. I am coming to the conclusion that Neal is just not the lid to fit my pot. What’s interesting to me is that I have hit the 2003 to 2004 part of my reading list and many of the titles are huge brick-like tomes! What was it about this time period that encouraged these huge doorstoppers of books? Now comes the question, will I continue this series? Well, I'm going to give the second volume a try for sure. My library has it so it will be effortless to acquire. And I still have some time to wait before the Ruler of my Historical Fantasy Heart, Guy Gavriel Kay, publishes his newest title.

Book Number 445 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project