media consumption

Quicksilver

By Neal Stephenson

At first, I was puzzled to find that our local big box bookstore files all of Neal Stephenson's books under "Science Fiction." After all, Quicksilver is set in the 17th century and is populated with historical figures ranging from Isaac Newton to King Louis XIV; there is no time travel, spacecraft, or fatanstical creatures such as can be found in 99% of the books sharing the shelf space adjacent to Stephenson's books.

So the bookstore's got it all wrong, right? Well, maybe not so much. Stephenson populates his book with historical figures acting amid actual historical events, but his book is not about the events or the people so much as it is about the ideas. Stephenson doesn't write fancy prose or waste a great deal of ink on character development. In fact, the fictional characters he creates are mainly devices for explaining and framing the story he really is interested in: how sudden breakthroughs in scientific, philosophic, political, and economic thought all combined to produce a time of dramatic turmoil and uncertainty with far reaching influence on the course of history. The Baroque Period, after which Stephenson has named his Baroque Cycle, of which Quicksilver is just Volume I (more on that later), featured such momentous events as the Siege of Vienna, The English Civil War, the development of Newtonian physics, the invention of calculus, the decline of alchemy, the expansion of global commerce, the rise of Louis XIV, and much more.

And that's where Stephenson's science fiction background with his straightforward, unambitious writing style does it job. Details are drawn out, connections made, and the intellectual curiosity of the reader is engaged much more than any artistic sensibility might be. If the previous paragraph sounds exciting to you, then you would likely enjoy Quicksilver immensely. If it strikes you as tedious and boring, then it would best function for you as a doorstop.

The length of Quicksilver bears a brief mention. It is over 900 pages long. It is Volume I of a three volume work. Volumes II and III come in at more than 800 pages. Stephenson, although generally praised for writing engaging and intelligent books, has been criticized for being unable to properly finish them. It is quite clear that this is really only Volume I of the series. There is very little plot resolution, too many threads are left dangling for one to be satisfied with Quicksilver as a standalone book. That's a mighty hefty investment to make if one plans on reading the entire series only to risk an untidy plot resolution by the time you get through 2500+ pages.

If that's your worry, then better to pass on the Baroque Cycle. As with all of Stephenson's books, the joy comes in the swirl of ideas and questions raised in the reading of the book. The trip itself is more fun than arriving at a destination.

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