The article title refers to the third volume in Neal Stephenson’s trilogy “The Baroque Cycle”. As previously reported, I have been meaning to get around to buying and reading this for ages. It has taken me almost an entire year to get through the three books, each of which runs to around 900 pages. I’ve read other books in between volumes, but even so, it seems like a long time!
(There are some spoilers to the story and plot below: anything that can be read on the back cover of any of the books precedes the spoiler marker; plot that is only revealed as a result of reading the books is after that.)
The trilogy is comprised of three large volumes: “Quicksilver”, “Confusion” and “The System Of The World” (and in fact, each volume is itself broken into sub-books, but I bought the three main volumes). The story is set between the mid-1600s and early 1700s, and relates the tale of a small handful of fictitious characters set amongst the ‘real’ historical figures and events of the time. For example, the royal families of England, Scotland, France, Spain and the Netherlands, plus various German provinces all make an appearance. And so-called ‘Natural philosophers’ (what we’d now call scientists) play leading roles: particularly Newton and Leibniz.
As with Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”, the historical backdrop to the story is – as far as I can tell – very accurately and carefully written. The events are real events and many of the characters are real people who, on the whole, take part in these events in the way that really happened: the fictitious characters play their parts alongside this, influencing what happens both overtly and covertly. The major events which take place during the period covered by the book include the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and all the various wars and royal successions of the time between England, France and the Netherlands.
Around the main storylines, there are a huge host of tangents and distractions, which is actually what Neil Stephenson’s writing is all about: this approach shows that the journey is at least as interesting as the destination. That’s what makes his books enjoyable.
(Here be spoilers: don’t read past here if you haven’t read the books, but intend to do so!)
The first thing you notice when starting the trilogy is that there are many links between characters which appear in “Crytononomicon” and those appearing here. For example, we meet ancestors of the Waterhouse family, the Shaftoes, Hackelbeckers and more. The family resemblences in behaviour between those of the 1600s and 1700s mimic very closely those of the 1940s and present day found in “Cryptonomicon”: the Shaftoes still behave as the “gung-ho” soldiers, the Waterhouses seem to be involved with every major event, whilst seemingly oblivious or bemused as a result.
The conflict between Newton and Leibniz (broadly-speaking over “who invented calculus first” and whose description of How The World Works is more correct) is interesting: in order to describe this fully, Neal Stephenson includes a large amount of detail of a very technical nature, which is nice to find in a novel. No Perl scripts, though, unlike in “Cryptonomicon”.
We also meet Enoch Root again. Here is my favourite character: very strange and mysterious. In “Cryptonomicon”, his nature was only hinted at very briefly and whilst Neil Stephenson’s books are often thought of as “science fiction”, Enoch Root is probably the only character in this story who behaves in a manner suggesting that something supernatural is going on. The fact that the same character “of undetermined age, but clearly of wide experience” appears in storylines ranging from 1650 to the present day is enough to raise an eyebrow or two. His nature is described in some detail but, infuriatingly, with a few missing details: references to him “dwelling with humankind” suggest he is of alien origin, for example. His ability to resurrect is evident in “Cryptonomicon”, although you have to read carefully to spot it: however, this is made rather more explicit as “The System Of The World” draws to a close, when it is revealed that Daniel Waterhouse was in fact resurrected during surgery that he thought he’d survived naturally.
It’s still not clear who Enoch Root actually is: is he an alien? Or has he just figured out how to make use of alchemical regeneration in some way? I really rather hope that Neal Stephenson writes a sequel to either “Cryptonomicon” or The Baroque Cycle so that we can find out!