Quicksilver: a partial review

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) Neal Stephenson jumped the shark on page 277. Over the moon and into some stable orbit, where a group of hasty sketches in an imitation Baroque tin can go round and round with the Bludgeon of Science History Hindsight. One wonders how many revolutions they can handle before the main character (whose thoughts and feelings are told at a slowly-increasing remove) is completely squished, leaving only a Foil for Progress.

Stilted dialogue on the philosophical standing of computing-machines has its place, in the opening scenes of historical-crossover Alan Turing / Captain Kirk homoerotic fan fiction. If Isaac Newton and Mary Sue Daniel Waterhouse aren’t having sex in 50 pages, though, I will attempt to hollow out the rest of the book for use as a very nerdy drug’n'gun cache.

Comments

  1. Kat wrote:

    Gack! I didn’t want to know that; my copy is still in the mail… though I don’t expect it to be as good as Cryptonomicon, it’d be nice if it didn’t bite.

  2. yami wrote:

    Well, on the bright side, your homework shouldn’t be threatened…

  3. Kat wrote:

    But now that I dropped Real Analysis and postponed senior research I just don’t have that much homework… damn. Going to have to find more books.

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