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	Quicksilver (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson is the first volume of his series The Baroque Cycle.
		Quicksilver is set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, mostly in England, France, and the United Provinces, with sections that take place further east and in Massachusetts.
		Ancestors of the characters of Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon appear prominently; analogously, the 20th century Cryptonomicon handbook from that novel is foreshadowed by a 17th century version in Quicksilver.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Quicksilver_(novel) (985 words)

	Dj Quicksilver (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Operation Quicksilver (1990s) was a plan to reduce the size of the United States Army in the early 1990s as a result of the end of the Cold War.
		Quicksilver possesses the superhuman ability to run, think and react at great speed; he has often claimed that the rest of the world seems to move, and think, in slow motion, which is what has led to his impatient, arrogant temper.
		In this series Quicksilver was aware of his father from the beginning, and acted as his liaison to the Brotherhood when Mystique was in control.
	www.wwwtln.com /finance/63/dj-quicksilver.html (1696 words)

	Quicksilver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Quicksilver is another name for the chemical element mercury (element), literally meaning "living silver" based on its appearance and its unusual liquidity at room temperature.
		Quicksilver (aircraft), a type of ultralight aircraft that was very popular in the 1980s
		Quicksilver (movie), a movie directed by Tom Donnelly and starring Kevin Bacon, Jami Gertz, Paul Rodriguez, Rudy Ramos, and Laurence Fishburne
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Quicksilver (257 words)

	Review \| Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
		The novel, the first of a trilogy Stephenson is calling The Baroque Cycle, is set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and is stuffed with a museum's worth of miscellany.
		To those early Royal Society gearheads, quicksilver was "the pure living essence of God's power and presence in the world." Newton, Hooke and Leibniz are all hackers, trying to crack the code of knowledge.
		Quicksilver is actually three books bound in one volume: Book the First follows Daniel Waterhouse, Newton's college roommate, and his associations with the Royal Society.
	www.januarymagazine.com /fiction/quicksilver.html (1580 words)

	Excessive Candour
		Quicksilver is a small tale of astonishing, nightmarish, arousing acumen caught inside a gigantic tome whose badness is of such deliberated immensity that it beggars description.
		He may use the word "computer" a little too often for comfort—on page 661, for instance, he actually has one of his characters refer to a "digital computer," a phrase that could not have meant then anything remotely like what it means now, or what we are meant to assume it means here.
		This sense of the meaning of her long presence in the text gains credence from the last two chapters of Quicksilver, both of which raise the ante of the telling to a level reminiscent of the best conjunctions of Cryptonomicon.
	www.scifi.com /sfw/issue337/excess.html (2100 words)

	Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
		Quicksilver, while exploring the state of alchemical study during the years of the Royal Society, focuses on the contributions of the ancestors of the protagonists of Cryptonomicon.
		Quicksilver is a true volume, in that it is composed of three separate books, each with a different main character.
		The first book is also named Quicksilver, in which we are introduced to Daniel Waterhouse, through whose eyes we are also introduced to the members of the Royal Society very early on in its formation.
	www.greenmanreview.com /book/book_stephenson_quicksilver.html (549 words)

	Kevin S. Forsyth's book reports: Quicksilver
		Quicksilver is the first volume of the Cycle and contains three books within its hefty 927 pages.
		As an adjective, quicksilver means "mercurial, characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood," which describes this novel quite well.
		As is typical of his work, Stephenson does an excellent job of maintaining the perspectives of the main characters, as each chapter is told from the viewpoint and with the voice of whichever character it centers on, rather than some omniscient third person.
	kevinforsyth.net /books/quicksilver.htm (1015 words)

	CNN.com - Review: 'Quicksilver' a bid for literary alchemy - Sep. 25, 2003
		"Quicksilver" is, in fact, both an invention and a simultaneous examination of it.
		Neal Stephenson's new "Quicksilver" is the first novel in a trilogy, the second and third parts of which are to be released in April and October 2004.
		And "Quicksilver" is a worthy relative of Noah Gordon's too-frequently overlooked novels of historical fiction, most notably "The Last Jew" (2000) and his tales of the Rob Cole medical dynasty, starting with "The Physician" (1986).
	www.cnn.com /2003/SHOWBIZ/books/09/24/review.quicksilver (790 words)

	: : : The Baroque Cycle is coming... : : : (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Traveling from the infant American colonies to the Tower of London to the glittering courts of Louis XIV, and all manner of places in between, this magnificent historical epic brings to vivid life a time like no other, and establishes its author as one of the preeminent talents of our own age.
		Saddlebags (should they be searched) filled with instruments, asks of quicksilver and stranger matters — some, as they'd learn, quite dangerous — books in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin pocked with the occult symbols of Alchemists and Kabalists.
		The foregoing is excerpted from Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.
	www.baroquecycle.com /preview.htm (1775 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: Quicksilver: Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Quicksilver is yet another tour-de-force from a writer who is simply unique.
		Taking place from 1655 to 1713, Quicksilver is the story of individuals scattered across Europe and the Thirteen Colonies, all being hurled by science, progress and history into the brave new world is dawning, the information age.
		Quicksilver is an astonishing accomplishment, although perhaps a bit long-winded at times.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/0099410680 (569 words)

	:: Neal Stephenson ::
		Quicksilver is a funny, smart, and engaging historical novel, part of the larger story of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
		Quicksilver includes some of the most important events and people during a crucial nexus between historical eras.
		Quicksilver is divided internally into three separate books, and each of those books is short-to-medium novel length.
	www.nealstephenson.com /content/books_bc1_interview.htm (3222 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: Quicksilver: Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Quicksilver is a massive, exuberant and wildly ambitious historical novel that's also Neal Stephenson's eagerly awaited prequel to Cryptonomicon--his pyrotechnic reworking of the 20th century, from World War II codebreaking and disinformation to the latest issues of Internet data privacy.
		Quicksilver, "Volume One of the Baroque Cycle", backtracks to another time of high intellectual ferment: the late 17th century, with the natural philosophers of England's newly formed Royal Society questioning the universe and dissecting everything that moves.
		Quicksilver is crammed with unexpected incidents, fascinating digressions and deep-laid plots.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/0434008176 (1106 words)

	The World Outside the Web By Paul Boutin
		Stephenson's new book, Quicksilver, is a massive work of historical fiction strong enough to slam the lid shut on the coffin of Internet triumphalism, and hefty enough (at nearly 1,000 pages in hardcover) to hold it down for good.
		Quicksilver is but the first of a three-book series dubbed the Baroque Cycle due to be published at 6-month intervals over the coming year.
		Quicksilver leaves the present altogether and returns to the time of alchemists and microscope-makers—the forerunners of the biotech and nanotech researchers who are today's IT Geeks.
	www.slate.com /id/2088510 (885 words)

	Polytropos: Quicksilver: A Review (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Daniel saw in a way he’d never seen anything before: his mind was a homonculus squatting in the middle of his skull, peering out through good but imperfect telescopes and listening-horns, gathering observations that had been distorted along the way, as a lens put chromatic aberrations into all the light that passed through it.
		Stephenson has no interest whatsoever in the modernist aesthetic of the short ‘n’ sweet — he revels in the Dickensian sprawl, and his story seems more likely to take us not to the end of some geometrically arranged plot, but to the ends of the lives of his heroes, or perhaps their children.
		My criticisms of the novel thus far concern the plot, and thus have to be deferred — they all depend on what’s still to come, on what he does with those loose ends and the characters (one in particular) whose fates are left ambiguous.
	www.polytropos.org /archives/2003/10/quicksilver_a_r.html (1694 words)

	Borders - Feature - Scientists and Swashbucklers: A Conversation with Neal Stephenson
		More recently, his novel of cryptology and war, Cryptonomicon, was a huge bestseller.
		As Quicksilver opens, readers meet a cast of characters that includes Daniel Waterhouse; his Cambridge roommate, Isaac Newton; a former slave-girl named Eliza; and Jack Shaftoe, a half-crazy vagabond and part-time hero.
		He originated the term "cell" and also had observations on the nature of heat and light that were ahead of their time, as well as on too many other topics to list here.
	www.bordersstores.com /features/feature.jsp?file=stephenson (1007 words)

	UPR HPCf - Neal Stephenson - The Confusion
		The novels are set in the late 17th century and early 18th.
		It's the same mix of narration, dialog, and epistles as the first novel, but the pacing is superb.
		And before you ask, yes, read the first novel, it will help you keep the characters straight in the second.
	plone.hpcf.upr.edu /Members/humberto/reviews/confusion/view (275 words)

	Messages from the Ether: Review: Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson (4/5)
		The early Snow Crash is labeled cyberpunk; Cryptonomicon is historical novel; Quicksilver is more of the same, and has links to the universe laid out in Cryptonomicon, but with even greater breadth: it is the first book of three being published under the moniker The Baroque Cycle.
		Throughout Quicksilver, these characters meet most every significant individual who lived in Europe, usually at the point in time when they accomplish their most significant acts.
		As one of three novels, this is more difficult to explain than, say, The Lord of the Rings or Dune.
	www.scottdstrader.com /blog/ether_archives/000003.html (571 words)

	Quicksilver — Ergo Sum (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		One issue that seems to emerge frequently is that the novel covers so much material -- the emergence of science, debates between the day's "natural philosophers" and alchemists, economics, history, and politics -- that no reader could keep up with the material.
		Compounded by the novel's length (volume one over 900 pages), some have charged that simply too many topics and too much detail are covered.
		As Stephenson progresses from novel to novel, his work has become more consequential, leaving the realm of the obvious cyberpunky themes, and delving into a variety of topics that are actually related, though in ways that not many would be quick to recognize.
	ergo-sum.us /Members/cmcurtin/quicksilver/view (760 words)

	Amazon.com: The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2): Books: Neal Stephenson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		The novels also benefits from having a somewhat more coherent (ie straightforward) plot, in the first book everyone manipulated and schemed but it wasn't clear if it was going anywhere and the apparent lack of direction really hurt the story, making it seem flat and somewhat bland.
		And I do give credit to Stephenson for scope and ambition, this is big novel that spans over a decent amount of time, with a huge cast of characters and a wide area of geography, touching on a variety of moods and situations.
		I expressed misgivings about "Quicksilver", but confess most were quieted by "Confusion." A lot of the hanging threads are brought together, many questions answered, many mysteries resolved.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060523867?v=glance (2305 words)

	Amazon.com: Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1): Books: Neal Stephenson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		The novel, divided into three books, opens in 1713 with the ageless Enoch Root seeking Daniel Waterhouse on the campus of what passes for MIT in eighteenth-century Massachusetts.
		Quicksilver : The Baroque Cycle #1 (The Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson
		In Quicksilver, Stephenson provides an extremely well-researched and compelling account of the development of the modern world, as a biproduct of the philosophical, religious, and social changes which took place in the post-Rennaissance world.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380977427?v=glance (2936 words)

	Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson
		In the spirit of such an enterprise, Quicksilver has its own website, and on it (as well as in the acknowledgments for the novel) Stephenson announces his reading about the seventeenth century in bookstores and libraries.
		Quicksilver is fairly consistently entertaining and engaging -- though it's a novel that ranges widely (and wildly).
		Quicksilver is full of ahead-of-their-times ideas, but occasionally -- as, most obviously, here -- Stephenson lays it on too thick.
	www.complete-review.com /reviews/stephenn/qsilver.htm (3242 words)

	Blogcritics.org: Quicksilver—Pilgrims Progessive
		Quicksilver is shot through with references to mercury—I counted twenty-three overt occurrences in the first few chapters.
		The quicksilver theme brings together messages (Mercury was the messenger of the gods), natural philosophy, alchemy and chemistry (mercury is an important element to all three), medicine (Mercury's symbol was used by physicians, and elemental mercury was often prescribed), and war (Hg was an essential ingredient in explosives of the day).
		Here is where Quicksilver swings into adventure-mode, as Jack gallivants across the Holy Roman Empire, liberating damsels in distress and rescuing the odd coin or two—or vice versa.
	blogcritics.org /archives/2004/12/18/030113.php (869 words)

	:: Neal Stephenson :: (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		The great trick of Quicksilver is that it makes you ponder concepts and theories you initially think you’ll never understand, and it’s greatest pleasure is that Stephenson is such an enthralling explainer.
		Quicksilver’s panoramic view encompasses the bitter religious and political struggles which gave rise to the scientific way of thought.
		“Quicksilver infuses old-school science and engineering with a badly needed dose of swashbuckling adventure, complete with a professor-versus-the-pirates battle at sea.
	www.nealstephenson.com /content/books_bc1_praise.htm (389 words)

	Barnes & Noble.com - Quicksilver: Volume One of The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson - Hardcover
		Quicksilver is the first in Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, with two more books to follow: The Confusion and The System of the World.
		Stephenson clearly never intended Quicksilver to be one of those meticulously accurate historical novels that capture ways of thought of times gone by.
		Each of it’s close to 1,000 pages is rich in humor, most of which is so subtle that failing to notice defeats the author’s purpose: to present a single yet interesting period in history in the most entertaining and enjoyable fashion.
	search.barnesandnoble.com /booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0380977427 (2063 words)

	Night Shade Books Discussion Area: 2003: The Year in Review
		On first novel: I thought there were three really good first novels this year: Down and Out..., The Etched City, and Veniss Underground.
		Quicksilver made my Hugo shortlist and Ilium didn't, because Quicksilver had some sense of closure whereas Ilium is clearly just half a book.
		I've seen claims that bookstores are pressuring publishers for shorter novels (more revenue per foot of shelf) and people have speculated that this may lead to shorter novels.
	www.nightshadebooks.com /discus/messages/270/1737.html?1071625063 (1305 words)

	This Just In...News from The Agony Column
		You'd be well advised to buy the novel now and read it before the inevitable US remake of the Japanese horror movie made from the novel.
		I've been hearing about Stewart O'Nan for years, since his novel 'A Prayer for the Dying' was touted to me as one of the best horror novels money could buy.
		At least with these two novels, it turns out to be a very good thing, and in general it might if it brings new choices to readers, well, that's a good thing as well.
	trashotron.com /agony/news/2003/09-22-03.htm (1232 words)

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