Neal Stephenson's publisher has split the author's "Baroque Cycle" doorstops into nine paperbacks. Started reading the first one, Quicksilver (comprised of the first three chaps. of Doorstop 1); probably won't finish it. Stephenson is a good teacher, in the sense of getting complex math and science ideas across to a mass audience, but he's been spending too much time off by himself writing with his crow quill pen. (Apparently he abandoned computer-writing for this series.) The novel has a giddy, "I'm so smart I could pinch myself" tone a la Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, and it's hard to swallow Stephenson's revisionist effort to push computer science as far back in history as the alchemists. The anachronisms are annoying--having 17th Century characters using phrases like "run the numbers," or joking about "addiction" to tea--ah, yes, the therapy culture of the Baroque era. A book like John Barth's The Sot Weed Factor does a much better job of injecting tricky postmodern concepts into an "archaic" novel, in that it actually reads like an artifact from an earlier era.
I thought Quicksilver was a rollicking good tale. Stephenson is cheeky but not quite as self-congratulatory as, say John Irving, who just grosses me out. I didn't mind the anachronisms. It just made the characters seem like time travellers. I stopped reading the series after Quicksilver though.
I haven't read Quicksilver, but I have read Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, which I thought were great, and Cryptonomicon, which was ok. I enjoyed the satire and social commentary of Snow Crash & The Diamond Age, but Cryptonomicon wandered around in Turing-machine math explanations too much to be really entertaining to me, although the basic plot was interesting.
He wrote under the name Steven Bury (sp) before he was stevenson and I like that stuff a lot too. Check out the Big U it's a riot.
I has the same reaction to Quicksilver - to take it for what it's worth, but couldn't get more than 50 pages into the next one.
I enjoyed Quicksilver as much as it irritated me. Truthfully, the discourses on the development of economies fascinated me. But the anachronistic examples above, as well as references to things like road rage, pissed the heck out of me. why couldn't he just throw in footnote saying "Shouts to all my geek peeps! W00t!"
I got about halfway through Godel, Escher, Bach before one tangent too many caused me to step off. I still have it somewhere.
Yeah, I never got through GEB either. And I read Tao of Physics *and* Dancing Wu Li Masters front to back.
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Neal Stephenson's publisher has split the author's "Baroque Cycle" doorstops into nine paperbacks. Started reading the first one, Quicksilver (comprised of the first three chaps. of Doorstop 1); probably won't finish it. Stephenson is a good teacher, in the sense of getting complex math and science ideas across to a mass audience, but he's been spending too much time off by himself writing with his crow quill pen. (Apparently he abandoned computer-writing for this series.) The novel has a giddy, "I'm so smart I could pinch myself" tone a la Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, and it's hard to swallow Stephenson's revisionist effort to push computer science as far back in history as the alchemists. The anachronisms are annoying--having 17th Century characters using phrases like "run the numbers," or joking about "addiction" to tea--ah, yes, the therapy culture of the Baroque era. A book like John Barth's The Sot Weed Factor does a much better job of injecting tricky postmodern concepts into an "archaic" novel, in that it actually reads like an artifact from an earlier era.
- tom moody 4-04-2006 3:17 am
I thought Quicksilver was a rollicking good tale. Stephenson is cheeky but not quite as self-congratulatory as, say John Irving, who just grosses me out. I didn't mind the anachronisms. It just made the characters seem like time travellers. I stopped reading the series after Quicksilver though.
- sally mckay 4-04-2006 4:46 pm
I haven't read Quicksilver, but I have read Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, which I thought were great, and Cryptonomicon, which was ok. I enjoyed the satire and social commentary of Snow Crash & The Diamond Age, but Cryptonomicon wandered around in Turing-machine math explanations too much to be really entertaining to me, although the basic plot was interesting.
- Thor Johnson (guest) 4-04-2006 5:49 pm
He wrote under the name Steven Bury (sp) before he was stevenson and I like that stuff a lot too. Check out the Big U it's a riot.
I has the same reaction to Quicksilver - to take it for what it's worth, but couldn't get more than 50 pages into the next one.
- joester 4-04-2006 9:55 pm
I enjoyed Quicksilver as much as it irritated me. Truthfully, the discourses on the development of economies fascinated me. But the anachronistic examples above, as well as references to things like road rage, pissed the heck out of me. why couldn't he just throw in footnote saying "Shouts to all my geek peeps! W00t!"
- the Other michael 4-05-2006 1:14 am
I got about halfway through Godel, Escher, Bach before one tangent too many caused me to step off. I still have it somewhere.
- mark 4-06-2006 3:50 am
Yeah, I never got through GEB either. And I read Tao of Physics *and* Dancing Wu Li Masters front to back.
- jim 4-06-2006 5:03 am