
	Where results make sense

Topic: The Baroque Cycle novel

Related Topics

Quicksilver (novel)

The System of the World (novel)

Daniel Waterhouse

Eliza (Stephenson character)

Enoch Root

Roger Comstock

Neal Stephenson

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

John Churchill

John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale

John Wilkins

Gottfried Leibniz

Allusion

Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington

Caroline of Ansbach

In the News (Tue 17 Nov 09)

Northern Trust

Marvin Harrison

Peter Chernin

Gary Locke

Match Play

Penelope Cruz

Mickey Rourke

AR Rahman

Danny Boyle

Hugh Jackman

	Cycle
		Cycle path A cycle path is a track or road designated for use by cyclists and generally segregated from roads used by mo...
		Rabi cycle The Rabi cycle is a term from the field of quantum optics.
		Urea cycle The Urea Cycle is a cycle of ammonia.
	www.brainyencyclopedia.com /topics/cycle.html (1333 words)

	The Baroque Cycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The Baroque Cycle, a series of books written by Neal Stephenson, appeared in print in 2003 and 2004.
		Because it is set in the Baroque, and it IS baroque.
		Nicotine appears in pure form in the series, although it was first isolated in 1828.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle_(novel) (756 words)

	Reason: Neal Stephenson’s Past, Present, and Future: The author of the widely praised Baroque Cycle on science, ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		It wasn’t his debut—he’d published two earlier novels in the 1980s—but the book was such a hit that it put his name on the science fiction map in a way the earlier efforts had not.
		The three parts of The Baroque Cycle were published at six-month intervals in 2003 and 2004; they feature historical figures ranging from Newton and Leibniz to Louis XIV and a very young Benjamin Franklin, bound up in a narrative with the fictional ancestors of the characters in Stephenson’s similarly huge, cryptology-centered 1999 novel Cryptonomicon.
		In The Baroque Cycle, the biggest romantic relationship in Daniel Waterhouse’s life occurs mostly offstage, unless you count his difficult friendship with Isaac Newton.
	www.reason.com /0502/fe.mg.neal.shtml (4245 words)

	Stendhal: Red and Black (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Early in the novel Jane establishes that she is giving us the facts, and there is no sense that she is not an honest and perceptive teller of her own story.
		And yet, the novel suggests that in the process of doing this, the hero becomes infected with the very disease he is trying to keep at bay, and thus ends up hopelessly compromised.
		Romantic irony of this sort is a favourite device for communicating to the reader the radical instability of value in the consciousness of the modern individual (including the reader), who through endless self-reflection, moral uncertainty, and constant social hypocrisy never quite knows where he or she stands in relation to firm moral or emotional territory.
	www.mala.bc.ca /~johnstoi/introser/stendhal2.htm (8778 words)

	Pricenoia.com - Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) - Neal Stephenson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		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.
		Stephenson is especially impressive in his ability to represent dialogue over the evolving worldview of seventeenth-century scientists and enliven the most abstruse explanation of theory.
		Though replete with science, the novel is as much about the complex struggles for political ascendancy and the workings of financial markets.
	www.pricenoia.com /comp/0380977427/0 (403 words)

	Inlibris Bookstore - The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2) by Neal Stephenson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		“In The Baroque Cycle we have got confusion of a few different sorts: Not only alchemists melting things together, but also pandemonium in the markets, a re-coinage in England (which means gathering together and melting all the old coins) and the confusion of a war between France and her enemies.”
		The arc of my peticular path through Stephenson's novels has lead on a upward trajectory away from straight-forward plot-driven, character-focused (with interesting "ideas" explored) towards intertwining plots with ancillary notes on historical psuedo-truths arriving in a vaguely unsatisfying conclusive heap.
		The result is before I mindlessly grab another Stephenson novel off the rack I'll wait for a review or two to ensure I'll spend the next few weeks reading the former rather than the latter.
	www.inlibris.com /str.pl?B0060523867 (737 words)

	village voice > books > Quicksilver: Volume One of the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson by John Giuffo
		And everywhere, and seemingly nowhere, is the mysterious Enoch the Red, the elusive key to Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" and its opener, Quicksilver.
		Concepts that we take for granted—gravity, calculus—were, during the Baroque period explored in the book, radical ideas that could lead to disrepute (a grievous wound to anyone living in the rigid social strata of post-Cromwellian England) or any number of grotesque punishments.
		This is a novel of Ideas, and while there's more than enough swordplay to buckle the most jaded of swashes, there's a sense that Quicksilver only swabs the plot deck for Stephenson's planned sequels (The Confusion, April 2004, and The System of the World, October 2004).
	www.villagevoice.com /issues/0341/giuffo.php (620 words)

	Science Fiction Book Reviews
		Truly, then this is a Baroque work, accepting the definition of "baroque" as recomplicated and overwhelmingly ornamented, contrapuntal and elaborate.
		It is manifestly impossible, in this small space, to summarize either the combined 1,800 pages of the Baroque Cycle issued to date, or even the plot of the second volume alone, for the events of the second book are manifold and hinge utterly on its predecessor.
		The Baroque Cycle is a prequel to Stephenson's
	www.scifi.com /sfw/issue363/books.html (1089 words)

	User:Nealstephenson - Metaweb (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Although he wrote earlier novels such as the eco-thriller Zodiac, he came to fame in the early 1990s with the novel Snow Crash (1992) which fuses memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology.
		Stephenson, at least in his earlier novels, deals heavily in pop-culture-laden metaphors and imagery and in quick, hip dialogue, as well as in extended narrative monologues.
		His novels are also notable in that they are usually written in the present tense.
	www.metaweb.com /wiki/wiki.phtml?title=User:Nealstephenson (553 words)

	The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)
		The Baroque Cycle is an epic work, which highlights Mr.
		The first two novels of this series swing back and forth between the pragmatic and fantastical elements of the book, and the tension between alchemy and empirical science is a central theme throughout.
		System of the World brings the Baroque Cycle in line with the high-octane, dense-yet-readable style that Mr.
	www.onlinemerchantaccountnow.com /BookStore/isbn0060523875.html (620 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The System of the World: Volume Three of the Baroque Cycle (Baroque Cycle): Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Neal Stephenson follows his highly-praised historical novels, Quicksilver and The Confusion, with the extraordinary third and final volume of the Baroque Cycle.
		Neal Stephenson is the author of the novels Quicksilver, The Confusion, Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Zodiac.
		The entire cycle (the author apparently doesn't like the term "trilogy") is set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and views its characters though a number of themes - Natural Philosophy, war, money, commerce, alchemy, slavery, religion and many more.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/0060523875 (963 words)

	Powell's Books - Quicksilver: Volume One of the Baroque Cycle (Baroque Cycle #01) by Neal Stephenson
		Quicksilver is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
		A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life, Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.
		Neal Stephenson is the author of the bestselling Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac.
	www.powells.com /cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=8-0060593083-0 (769 words)

	Weekly Standard, The: Back to the Baroque: Neal Stephenson's science fiction of the past (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Stephenson's most famous novel, the 1999 blockbuster Cryptonomicon, stayed true to this point, too, though geeky readers often missed that message amid episodes of hacking, code-breaking, and van Eck phreaking.
		Cryptonomicon was still a book for science-fiction readers; the Baroque Cycle, and in particular its final volume, The System of the World, is not so much for geeks as about geeks.
		The Baroque Cycle has its exciting parts--such as Isaac Newton trying to defuse a ticking time bomb while adrift in the North Sea, and warfare in Europe and Ireland--but it doesn't offer the fast-paced action of other recent books set in the same general period, such as Eric Flint's 1632.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m0RMQ/is_12_10/ai_n9505447 (1205 words)

	The Boulder Anti-Apathy Cluster: Lightning Rods 'Midst the Snow-fields
		but in general I've found the Baroque cycle to be a massive disappointment.
		Doctorow is quickly becoming a leading light of post-cyberpunk, and his social commentary is as much fun as Stephenson or Varley at their best...
		though a bit of the Baroque cycle does take place in the 1700's (the encounter with the young Ben Franklin was especially cute)...
	www.paulsalamone.com /blog/2005/09/lightning-rods-midst-snow-fields.html (927 words)

	Amazon.com: The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2): Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Though neither entry in the Baroque Cycle has impressed the critics as much as some of Stephenson’s previous work, The Confusion proves his narrative skills are still in fine shape.
		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.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060523867?v=glance (2297 words)

	Amazon.ca: Books: The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Book 2) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Quicksilver (2003), the first volume of his Baroque Cycle, was well over 900 pages, and this second installment is in the same ballpark.
		Neal Stephenson's second volume in The Baroque Cycle, "The Confusion", is the best work of fiction I've seen from him in years.
		Until I read "The Confusion", I thought Stephenson's best novel was "The Diamond Age", but this is not a "confusion" but instead, a splendid celebration of Stephenson at his best, crafting lengthy, but exciting tales of adventure.
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0060523867 (1473 words)

	Amazon.ca: Books: Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Book 1) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Waterhouse, an experimenter in early computational systems and an old pal of Isaac Newton, is needed to mediate the fight for precedence between Newton and scientist and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, both of whom independently invented the calculus....
		But if you can get past the first 70 pages, the novel slowly starts to develop a story line that by the time the book is finished has left you eagerly looking forward to the next book.
		Don't be discouraged by the size of the novel (900+ pages).
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0380977427 (2065 words)

	Waiting for the end of their worlds
		On the other hand, there's no sense of improvisation in "The Baroque Cycle." Any instances of authorial serendipity have been pretty well obscured.
		But if you first encounter one of his better novels -- "The Shining," "Misery" or "Black House," say -- in your late teens or early 20s, you are likely to be a fan forever.
		Longtime fans are likely to feel a pang of genuine sadness in its final pages, not only for the characters and their diverse fates, but for the closing of a chapter in their own lives as readers.
	www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/26/RVGR98QA141.DTL&type=printable (1054 words)

	mrbarrett.com: The Baroque Cycle (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		I'm reading Neal Stephenson's excellent Baroque Cycle series and he's used the word "ninehammer" several times.
		Stephenson is also well-known in the computer geek arena for writing and publishing on the web in 1999, an interesting tract called "In the Beginning was the Command Line", a history of the personal computer.
		The Baroque Cycle is a love story, a historical novel, an adventure novel, a scientific tract of the 17th century.
	www.mrbarrett.com /archives/2005/01/the_baroque_cyc.html (421 words)

	Excessive Candour
		Because they are writers of historical romances, and a daft deft historical romance hides within the petrified corpus of The Baroque Cycle.
		As we read, we do begin to understand that something profound is happening to the Western world during the years of the Cycle, and we begin to understand the significance of the use of the word "currency" to describe money: because money may be dumb, but currency is information.
		In the end, the problem with the entire Baroque Cycle is that it is not currency.
	www.scifi.com /sfw/issue389/excess.html (1130 words)

	Powell's Books - The Confusion: Volume Two of the Baroque Cycle (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2) by Neal Stephenson
		Of course, one can't call anything about the Baroque Cycle 'brisk,' but the richness of detail and language lending verisimilitude to the setting and depth to the characters should be reward enough for most readers.
		It is a time of breathtaking genius and discovery for men and women whose exploits define an age known as Baroque.
		Neal Stephenson is the author of the bestselling Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac.He lives in Seattle, Washington.
	www.powells.com /cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=8-0060523867-0 (1235 words)

	Salon.com Books \| The Salon Interview: Neal Stephenson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The author of "Cryptonomicon" and the "Baroque Cycle" talks about the brighter side of Puritanism, the feud between Newton and Leibniz, and the literary world's grudge against science fiction.
		Last year, with the publication of the first of the three-volume "Baroque Cycle," "Quicksilver," Stephenson revealed that he'd turned the dial on his time machine in the other direction.
		The second volume in the "Cycle," "The Confusion," published on April 19, continues the saga, with an even more lavish serving of the feats of Jack and Eliza.
	www.salon.com /books/int/2004/04/21/stephenson/index_np.html (454 words)

	The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2) -- book review
		Neal Stephenson has, from his first novel, displayed a couple of highly sought-after writerly talents: a yarn-spinning ability that is almost divinely Irish, as if his mother had given birth to him atop the Blarney Stone; and a knack for language that makes his books tower above those of other science fiction and adventure-thriller writers.
		Already comprising 1,700-some pages, the Cycle is a history of seventeenth-century science, in the broadest sense of that term, wrapped in a picaresque adventure story so far-flung that by the end of the second volume,
		And this is where the history of science that underpins The Baroque Cycle widens out: Eliza is the mother of modern commercial economics, and we get many a funny lesson in the transition of European economies from land-based to market-based capitalism.
	www.curledup.com /confusio.htm (1455 words)

	Stephenson's Baroque Cycle \| Ask MetaFilter (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		I think he does have some novel thoughts on the relation between finance and science, but like any good writer he doesn't come right out and tell you what they are, but makes them the basis for what's going on in the narrative.
		The Baroque Cycle--and especially book one--took me a long, long time to read, with many stops and starts and other books in between, and I really, really liked it.
		The thing about the "synthesis" in the Baroque Cycle is that it takes the whole 2700-odd pages to lay out all the things ot be synthesized and then bring them together.
	ask.metafilter.com /mefi/15780 (2782 words)

	Kevin S. Forsyth's book recommendations
		In the opening chapter of his 1999 work Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson wrote, "Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume...." At the time one could easily have dismissed that comment as a typically Stephensonian, offhand "but that's another story" narrative device.
		One could consider Cryptonomicon to be, perhaps, a 20th Century "prequel" to the Baroque Cycle.
		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)

	Read the "Baroque Cycle" in its entirety on 43 Things
		Cryptonomicon was quite a read, and the Baroque Cycle is one better.
		It is popular history, vivid imagination, sharp language skills, and a keen sense of details, all wrappep together in a lot of pages.
		Neal Stephanson’s epic Baroque Cycle is either a trilogy that concludes with this book, or a nonology for which The System of the World provides three volumes—one in which the “final” volume, Crytonomicon, was the first published.
	www.43things.com /things/view/169 (1412 words)

	The System of the World: Volume Three of the Baroque Cycle -- book review
		Indeed, the history of the novel is so tweaked and rerouted that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction; indeed, there is an entire website devoted to precisely the endeavor of doing so (http://www.metaweb.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page).
		As Stephenson himself has pointed out, “novel” is a synonym for “romance,” a story, in his view, entirely premised on hypothesis.
		Since I’ve summarized the plot of The Baroque Cycle elsewhere on curledup.com (with the above inserted disclaimer about the fictionality of certain beloved characters...
	www.curledup.com /sysoworl.htm (623 words)

	Salon.com Technology \| Going for baroque (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		A little more than a third of the way into "Quicksilver," the new novel from Neal Stephenson, Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds, gallops on a stolen Turkish war horse to chase an ostrich through a tunnel under the city of Vienna.
		He ends up in a large underground room where Turkish soldiers are systematically murdering the harem women of their own (just defeated) sultan.
		Never mind why Jack is chasing the ostrich, how he came to be in possession of a charger, or what impels him, once in the subterranean chamber, to suddenly act like a hero and rescue a damsel in distress.
	www.salon.com /tech/books/2003/09/24/quicksilver/index_np.html (284 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)