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The Confusion 156

Posted by timothy from the audiobook-please dept.
jmweeks writes "Neal Stephenson's The Confusion is an exhausting read--not simply in keeping track of the dozens of major characters, many with two or three names or titles or hyphenated titles; not due to its quite literal circumnavigation of the globe; not even, or at least not only, because of its interminable cycle of fortune and misfortune: Its 800-plus pages are much more taxing for what Stephenson leaves out than what he includes." Read on for the rest of jmweeks' review.
The Confusion
author Neal Stephenson
pages 813
publisher William Morrow
rating 8
reviewer Jose M. Weeks
ISBN 0060523867
summary An exhausting and extraordinary read from the author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon.

The Confusion is the second volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (preceded by last year's Quicksilver , to be concluded later this year with The System of the World). Quicksilver tells two stories: the political and scientific development of Europe at the beginning of the Enlightenment, through the person of Daniel Waterhouse, and the adventures of "Half-cocked" Jack Shaftoe, a vagabond tramping around France and Germany, as he rescues a young woman named Eliza and does his best to win her. As the story develops, Eliza leaves the life of adventure and enters the world of politics, acquiring for herself along the way the title of Countess in France and Duchess in England; Jack falls so deeply to adventure that he disappears completely from the final third of the novel. We leave him to a certain death, an oar-slave aboard a pirate ship, half-insane with syphilis.

As The Confusion begins, Jack, in the first of dozens of reversals of fortune, wakes cleansed of syphilis by a boiling fever, rowing for a much less brutal master than expected, and somehow a member of a cabal with (I suppose by definition) a Plan. Eliza finds herself relieved of a staggering fortune and held, for practical purposes, under house arrest.

This volume follows the largely-separate stories of these two characters over the course of fourteen years, interweaving them chapter-by-chapter, as they move toward some ultimate climax that, of course, we will not have reached by this volume's conclusion. Stephenson labels each of these, though they are non-contiguous, as a book of The Baroque Cycle. Jack's story is book four, "Bonanza"; Eliza's, "Juncto", is book five.

Lazy critics will certainly remark that The Confusion has an appropriate title. Those who read at least two-thirds of it may notice that Stephenson presents a definition of "con-fused" (solids melted and then allowed to run together and mix) that bears a certain resemblance to the structure of this novel. But I read the title more as a reference to a period of time, at the cusp of the Enlightenment, in which all of Europe seems taken aback (another term for which Stephenson provides the origin, which he positively revels in doing). The world is in the midst of a deep depression, and the great confusion then is, what exactly is money?

Indeed, one gets the impression that The Baroque Cycle could just as well have been titled "How Money Got To Be That Way." Late in this novel, when Stephenson compares foundries to heartbeats, it becomes very clear that what we've been witnessing throughout The Confusion is the path through the gushing arteries and trickling capillaries driven by that heart. I recall now that in Cryptonomicon Stephenson spent an uncomfortable amount of dialog on the financial inner-workings of corporations. At the time I dismissed it as the ramblings of a particularly pedantic character; now I'm beginning to wonder if, inside Stephenson's hacker/geek-novelist facade, there isn't an accountant just screaming to get out.

Yet I make it sound dry, and Stephenson is anything but: in The Diamond Age he made Turing machines seem exciting, in Cryptonomicon it was cryptography and computer programming and mathematics in general--and he did so without the cheating we've been forced to accept these days, especially in film. And here, in the ebb and flow of silver, Stevenson constructs revenge plays, alchemical conspiracies, and an engrossing picture of the Way Things Work. There is a slow and deep pleasure in learning, in understanding; his talent is to impart this with all the visceral immediacy of swordplay.

That is not to say that he is above actual swordplay. Or conspiracies of piracy and murder and torture. In the world of Jack Shaftoe we have adventure packed so thickly that Stephenson finds he can't quite fit it all in: We follow Jack through each daring escape, each execution of an intricate plot that doesn't quite go according to plan--then we cut to the next chapter, months or years later, in which Jack has somehow found himself again destitute and in great peril. We spend half the chapter trying to figure out exactly what he's gotten himself into, and how, and what precisely happened to all of his co-conspirators, and the other half (once they've coincidentally reunited) watching them plot once more.

The worst of these is about half-way through The Confusion: After Jack and his cabal leave us successful in carrying out a particular plan, we return to Jack to find he's been working in an animal hospital in Hindoostan, hung in mid-air so that all the blood-sucking patients, from mosquitoes to ticks to giant centipedes, can feed. As he is displacing native workers I can only assume this is an elaborate pun on the word "scab." (His jokes, when they misfire, are horrendous. Example: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.") We find his companions have been scattered by a pirate ship (filled exclusively with female pirates) and Jack has been waiting patiently three years for the narrative to return to him. This was the point I nearly put the book away.

I can accept the cyclic reversals of fortune; I can accept the method of storytelling that begins in the middle and fills in back-story as it moves forward; I can accept a very long middle volume of a trilogy, which by nature has no real beginning or end. Together though, these do exhaust my patience and at times my attention. The Confusion would be a much better novel written completely at 1000 pages than it is part-summarized at 800.

Now I fear I'm being too negative. The novel dips at the center, but it shines in every chapter concerning Eliza, and toward the end it even shines for Jack. Eliza's talent lies mainly in manipulation, and so much of her story involves cryptic political moves, hints being dropped, and relationships being exploited. As the novel begins she is still young, and her motivation is mainly revenge. She is a the Stephenson heroine: Sharply intelligent, beautiful in a fierce sort of way, sexually uninhibited, and though morally centered, vicious when wronged. (He understands his audience--geeks, male, young--and he has a pretty good idea of what they want.) As she grows older, she softens, or at the very least she becomes to some degree satisfied.

There is maturity here, for Stephenson's characters and for Stephenson himself. Moreso than anything he's so far written. He allows his characters the room, the experience, the years it takes to fundamentally grow. There is more to it than that, though: there is the classical resonance, Jack's journey with The Odyssey, the reluctant Esphahnian revenge play with Hamlet, the general Shakespearean method of History, melding the reality of Kings and Dukes with the artistic truth of fiction. Stephenson has in The Baroque Cycle given himself a canvas broad enough that he can truly develop.

About the ending: though Stephenson need not really bother to end this book, as it is incomplete until the third volume is published, he does make an effort. What it suggests about the further story is intriguing, but it suffers from the same deficiencies, as an ending, as plagues his other novels: It is tied together clumsily and it doesn't really make all that much sense. It is painfully abrupt. I think, though, that I have come to understand why Stephenson ends his books this way: his characters are so vivid, so capricious, that they drive his stories anywhere but the ending he had in mind. He closes a book not in completion so much as surrender.

Disregarding Snow Crash, which is of another class completely, this is the best book Stephenson has so far written. I score it an eight, but I do so on a scale broader than the nine Slashdot previously gave Quicksilver: The Confusion is the superior novel.

You can purchase the The Confusion from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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  • It's cool how with the Shaftoe family he shows successful geeks through history. It's nice a nice change to see geeks portrayed in a positive light.

  • Reading this post was taxing in itself (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jackal82277 ( 767582 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:03PM (#9120561)
    Hey buddy, dumb it down a little for the guys that just read manuals and code all day long.

  • Wheel of Time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:06PM (#9120586)
    This reminds of "Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan, a seemingly endless series of 700+ page books with many characters who do sometimes have "two or three names or titles".

    The earlier books in the series were full of events, but that is a thing of the past: an inordinant amount of pages in the recent books are devoted finding a magic cereal bowl that stops global warming.

    • Oh, please. The Bowl of Plot Device was found and used several books ago...

      The latest books are all about baths. Baths, baths, baths! Woo-hoo!

    • Re:Wheel of Time (Score:3, Informative)

      by br0ck ( 237309 )
      First for a quick comment on the review, it was quite good, but I would have been mad at all the spoilers if I hadn't already read the book.

      I just finished the Confusion today and I had far less problems keeping track of the characters than I did in Quicksilver. As soon as I started forgetting who a given character was, there would be a subtle reminder. There wasn't even a 'dramatis personae' in the Confusion if that indicates anything. For me, the first book seemed to keep getting bogged down in names and
    • Ha! Stephenson may not be very good at endings... but at least his books HAVE endings. Jordan's Wheel, on the other hand, seems destined to be the Energizer Bunny(tm) of book series... I might consider buying the rest when I hear that he's done, or dead, whereas I'm going to subject myself to "The System Of The World" because I know that when I'm through reading it, I'm through with these books.
      • "Jordan's Wheel, on the other hand, seems destined to be the Energizer Bunny(tm) of book series."

        There seemed to be some sort of countdown process earlier in the series. Earlier, he seemed to be killing off one or two of the Forsaken (= nazgul-copies) per book. There were about a dozen of them, and it looked like that once the forsaken were killed off, it would be time to battle the Dark Lord Saur.. er Shaitan.

        However, a couple of books ago, he started to add in new Forsaken to replace the ones who have

    • I saw "keeping track of the dozens of major characters, many with two or three names or titles or hyphenated titles" and thought of War and Peace.

  • Enoch Root (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bytal ( 594494 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:09PM (#9120609) Homepage
    One of the, if not major, then most enigmatic characters in both the books of the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon is Enoch Root. A person(?) with an unnaturally(?) long lifetime. The tiny bits of information that Stephenson dishes out throughout Cryptonomicon and now in both Quicksilver and The Confusion are enough to drive anyone mad :). The Confusion has at least one, uncharacteristically lucid explanation that is worth reading. There has grown up a sizeable following, online, of other readers who are trying to piece together the puzzle of Enoch Root. Here are some links for those who are interested. LINKS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

    What's up with Enoch Root [cafeaulait.org]
    Neal Stephenson Wiki [metaweb.com]

  • Less Newton, more Leibniz (Score:5, Interesting)

    by apsmith ( 17989 ) * on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:09PM (#9120610) Homepage
    I liked Confusion too - at least better than Quicksilver. But I missed the Waterhouse/Newton business - very little of that in the new book. Stephenson seems to be trying for a pretty tightly woven trilogy - a bit like LOTR - hard to know how to judge it before we've really seen the whole thing. Both Quicksilver and Confusion ended somewhat strangely...
    • Yeah, but at the same time, the small amount of Newton we get in this book is so much more satisfying. We get a good insight into his real character and he gets set up for his role in the next book. The first book, written so much from Waterhouse's point of view, painted Newton somewhat poorly and mysteriously.

  • Taken Aback (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:11PM (#9120630) Journal
    Meaning : Surprised.

    Origin : When the wind changes direction the sails of a sailing ship sometimes blow back against the mast, i.e. they are taken aback.

    • Interestingly, that isn't the "origin" posited by Stephenson: however (and Quicksilver and The Confusion are both rife with these little fictional-etymological anecdotes) I don't think Stephenson intended them as literal word origins, but entertaining fictionalized imaginings about the nature of terms and words.

  • The Confusion is a better read, if you can... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jea6 ( 117959 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:12PM (#9120637)
    The Confusion is a better read, if you can get through Quicksilver. And the complaint I've heard most often is that people couldn't get through Quicksilver. If you do make it through, you are in for a real treat. The Confusion was a page-turner in the way that Stephenson's best writing has been.

    My fear is that, if this is Empire, we end up getting Ewoks in Book 3.

  • Boiled clean of syphilis (Score:4, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06@@@email...com> on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:12PM (#9120640)
    I've been using this particular method of ensuring cleanliness amongst new employees for the past few years. As long as you are willing to put up with about 7% "breakage" and a few months of beet red survivors, it's quite effective and much less invasive then injecting them with ...wait, now that I think about it, injections would probably be much more humane/effective. Boy, I wish I'd thought this through years ago. Oh, well. Live and learn (for those that survived).
    • You know, you'd probably cut that "breakage" factor down to about 2% if you would just turn the heat down to medium and let simmer for about 30 minutes...

    • Re:Boiled clean of syphilis (Score:4, Informative)

      by wintermute42 ( 710554 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @07:09PM (#9121894) Homepage

      I have not read The Confusion, so I can't comment on the context of boiled clean of syphilis. But I seem to recall that along with mercury, one of the treatments for syphilis was to infect the person who had syhpilis with a non-human targeted malaria parasite (something like horse malaria). The body would eventually wipe out the malaria infection since it could not properly reproduce in human red blood cells. The malaria infection would cause high fever (104 F.) which would harm (kill?) the syphilis bacillus. Of course racking fever was no picnic. But neither was heavy metal poisoning caused by mercury (mercury just got rid of the symptoms, not the syphilis infection).

      I also have a vague recollection that the malaria treatment may have continued after antibiotics were discovered as a treatment for third stage syphilis (which infects the brain). The early antibiotics did not cross the blood/brain barrier and I'm not sure they could be injected into the spine. (Obviously I'm not a medical doctor, nor do I play one on television).

      The problem with boiling is that it would raise the temperature on the outside more than the inside unless it were done very slowly. But the malaria "treatment" was not known until the 1800s, after the time in which the book is set.

  • Something about endings... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by whig ( 6869 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:13PM (#9120652) Homepage Journal
    About the ending: though Stephenson need not really bother to end this book, as it is incomplete until the third volume is published, he does make an effort.

    Knowing Neil Stephenson, I don't expect anything different by the end of the third volume.

  • New Moderation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:15PM (#9120672)
    GAHHHHHHH MY EYES! Why is there no:

    -1 Spoiler mod?
  • Thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful review. Can't say whether I agree with you or not, as The Confusion is waiting for me to finish Broken Angels. However, I liked Quicksilver and had some of the same feelings about it that you use to describe this work. I agree with your statement that Stephenson is maturing as a writer. His writing is getting more complex, and that can result in it being less easily read by many. Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon had the obvious geek hooks that suck in the /
    • Broken angels rocked! I'm waiting to see more from Richard Morgan, as I've been very impressed by his first two outings.

      Tell me what you thought of the book once you finish the last page :)
    • I don't think that the geek factor has lessoned at all, I just think that it has shifted focus. his past books were definitely aimed at the typical modern geek. Computers/Sci-Fi/Nanotech/etc. Whereas this is more for the type of geek who wants to just "know stuff", especially historical.

      I have read both books now with my laptop sitting nect to me, so I can research some concept he has mentioned in passing, or to fact check something he mentiones in detail for truth.

      The conclusion I have come to, he gets t

    • I would highly reccomend The Confusion. I thought it was a page turner and easy to follow. The whole book was written from a geek perspective. I found it fun and informative. Plus it had pirates, how wrong can you go with pirates?
  • review The Confusion [amazon.com] and I see that it looks pretty good.

    I'm sorry, but I didn't get that from the review. What's the opinion again?
    It would be great for a geeks - thumbs up or thumbs down - in the beginning. Yes?

    I have to read extremely long and boring papers all day. It would be nice to see in the first sentence of a review - it sucks for geeks! or It's great for geeks!

    Sorry, I'm in a crunch, and I don't have patience for long ... writings.

  • write, then proceed to share his meandering thoughts in a somewhat effective manner. Apart from the fact that I think the review is at least mildly opposed to placing etymology in an understandable and vivid context, he tells me nothing of value, nothing that I couldn't get from a few moments chatting with anyone who's read the book. How about using reviews that read at least as well (or as poorly) as the text they're reviewing? It may mean fewer posts, but it could certainly add to the content. In the pres
  • To review sci-fi without making it sound utterly stupid?

    I'm sure the book is fabulous, but is there any way to summarize the plot of a sci-fi novel without making it sound like a 6 year olds daydream?

    "Ok so theres this guy and he can fly an go through space but then these bugs go in his ears and eat his brain! The make him quit his job and become a tabledancer on a space ship to pluto! And then this giant talking half-bear thing comes and wants to beat him up but he has a ray gun so thats the end of tha
    • Similarly, I'm not entirely sure that it is possible to create a non-silly looking book cover for a sci-fi novel.. (I have not seen the cover for this book, BTW)
    • was it in Harry Potter?
    • The book isn't sci-fi, more of a historical fiction.
    • Well, considering that this is by no means "Sci-Fi" as it typically is used, apparently not. This is a novel about people making their way in the world as it was. Not necessarily as it was imagined to be. Their situations are made up, but it would be much better described as historical fiction, than anything else. As all of the main characters are consistently caught up in the world affairs of the late 1600's.

      In many cases an author being labled sci-fi is nothing more than marketing to his past audience. T

      • In many cases an author being labled sci-fi is nothing more than marketing to his past audience. This book would fit much better on the normal fiction shelves than sandwiched in between the latest Space Opera or Swords and Sorceror's epic.

        At my store, Stephenson--including the Baroque Cycle--is shelved in Science Fiction for one reason: because that's where people expect to find him. I agree that these would be better off in the straight Fiction section, but that's how the book business works. Once an

    • is there any way to summarize the plot of a sci-fi ovel without making it sound like a 6 year olds daydream?

      Well, i thought we were discussing about The Confusion, which is _not_ scifi.
  • I loved Stephenson's earlier work, but hated Cryptonomicon. After his prior successes, it appears that his editors could no longer offer helpful suggestions (or demands) and his craft went out the window. Way too many characters doing unlikely or inexplicable things, long, wandering storylines and a plethora of other troubles left me shaking my head.

    From the start of this review, it looks like nothing's changed. You'd think he was getting paid by the word!

    If his new stuff turns YOUR crank, that's great, but

    • After his prior successes, it appears that his editors could no longer offer helpful suggestions (or demands) and his craft went out the window.

      In actual fact, Stephenson grew up as a writer since his "prior success". This latter books are targeted at a different audience, one who expects things more complex and refined than cyberpunk.
  • Am I the only person who read Quicksilver and was yelling at the book "GET TO THE POINT!"

    Personally I loved Cryptonomicon, but Quicksilver dragged so much that I doubt I'll bother to continue reading the series.
    • When Cryptonomicon came out, a lot of people asked "is this science fiction?". My question was more fundamental: "Is this a novel?". So since I thought Crypto was pretty flaccid in the plot department, I'm not going to bother with Quicksilver et. al.

      One might also keep in mind that Neil Stephenson has never written a satisfactory ending. He really seems to have a good time writing novels, but seems to put little thought into driving things to a logical conclusion. It is therefore unlikely that this new s

    • Re:Bah. (Score:1)

      by Coz ( 178857 )
      Actually, I read "Quicksilver" and asked myself, "Was there a point?" Then I got through "The Confusion" and asked, "Did I miss a point?" and answered myself "No, it's not there yet."

      Now, if "System" doesn't have at least one, preferably two, possibly up to three points... I'm gonna be blunt....

  • What is money? - two takes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lopati ( 74873 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:53PM (#9121034) Homepage
    Kieth Hart [thememorybank.co.uk]:
    The idea of money as a source of social memory was also crucial for John Locke who figures prominently in our story as the philosopher who inaugurated the modern age of democratic revolutions. Locke was obsessed with money's role both in establishing a progressive social order and in subverting it as its criminal antithesis. Indeed he believed that money launched humanity from the state of nature onto the road to civil government. As long as men's possessions were limited to perishable products, the scope for property was restricted. Money, by offering
    a durable store of value convertible against all useful things, unleashed the potential for property accumulation and for the intergenerational transmission of inequality. For Locke then, money was indispensable to that development of cultural memory on which civilisation depends.
    Bernard Lietaer [nexuspub.com]:
    First, let's define what a currency is, because most textbooks don't teach what money is. They only explain its functions, that is, what money does. I define money, or currency, as
    an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange. It's therefore not a thing, it's only an agreement--like a marriage, like a political party, like a business deal. And most of the time, it's done unconsciously. Nobody's polled about whether you want to use dollars. We're living in this money world like fish in water, taking it completely for granted.
    Typically, it's both those things; a store of value and a medium of exchange. While economists often include 'a unit of account'.

  • Lazy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @05:55PM (#9121070) Homepage
    Lazy critics will certainly remark that The Confusion has an appropriate title.

    And critics who want to say the same thing but are too pompous to do so will criticize the `lazy' critics.


    -Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
  • Anyone able to produce such excellent works as Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon definitely has my respect...I'll keep buying Stephenson's books until...wait, I still gotta run out and get Quicksilver....
  • The reviewer says "Snow Crash" is of "another class completely", implying that it's really good or something. I thought "Snow Crash" sucked. It was just silly, and the writing wasn't very good. That book sees so much undeserved hype, and I can't figure out why. "Cryptonomicon" was much better, although let's face it, that's pretty faint praise.

    So if the reviewer is a fan of "Snow Crash" and enjoyed this novel too, then maybe I'll give it a pass. And first I have to finish William Golding's "Pincher Martin"
    • Well, that's your opinion. I really liked it. A lot of geeks like me like it too. I like the baroque saga because I am a sucker for historical fiction, a sucker for the history of computing, a sucker for the history of science and a sucker for sword fighting.

      I think people read for different reasons. I know that people that enjoy science fiction don't read for the same reasons that "lit geeks" do. If you are reading Golding, you're probably a lit geek. My girlfriend is one as well and she can't und

      • I agree with all that you've said, except I'm not exclusively a "lit geek". I liked "Cryptonomicon" quite a bit, like I said. I read "Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion" probably once every year or two. I've read other classic SF like "Dune" probably a half-dozen times. I also like Philip K. Dick a lot (although he is pretty uneven). And so on.

        I too like the whole "carried away" feeling one gets from reading, but neat ideas by themselves aren't enough. In other words, that feeling comes from well-wri

    • I liked Snow Crash too, like many other people, and I'm not a native English reader/speaker/writer. With his down to earth style of writing, Stephen is able to skip right onwards to the more interesting bits of a story where heroic characters are in all sorts of precarious situations and problems. On the other hand, he is able to fill loads of sections with total and utter rambles that you wonder if you should really read on. But you usually do read on. And it usually is worth it, too.

      I remember SnowCr

    • Re:Snow Crash (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jmweeks ( 49705 )
      I'm not saying Snow Crash is "really good or something," though I do think it is a decent novel. I'm saying that it's hard to compare it to any of Stephenson's others, the same way it is hard to compare Vonnegut's other novels to Slaughterhouse Five: there's something about it--its place in sci. fi., its place in regard to the explosion of the internet--that makes it the one book that's always going to be mentioned in Stepehenson's "From the author of..." intros.
      • Thanks for the clarification. I didn't want to come across as insulting...I'm mostly just bewildered by the exalted status of "Snow Crash", I guess.

        The analogy with "Slaughterhouse Five" is a good one. Thanks again.
  • ...the reluctant Esphahnian revenge play with Hamlet...

    Erm. Anyone care to tell me what "Esphahnian" means? Google won't.
    • "Esphahnian" is the name of a character in the book.

    • Re:Eswhatian? (Score:2, Informative)

      by attercoppe ( 250946 )
      It's the name of a family in the book. This is a non-spoiler bit of info that, as you have experienced, doesn't really make any sense if you haven't read the book (although the E. family is in Quicksilver). Although, it doesn't make much sense to me, either; I don't really see a parallel between Hamlet and Vrej Esphanian et. al. versus Jack Shaftoe. Anyone?
  • To everyone who always says "His endings lack any sort of conclucion."

    I have seen the endings of his books as much more ambiguous. There is apparently no "happily ever after" or "the butler did it" in Stephenson's story's. Instead I always get the feeling he is trying to say that this part of the story is over and now life goes on.

    i know it is entertainment, and everyone expects a beginning, middle and end. But, until you die, is your life like that?

  • Currently reading Quicksilver... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @06:42PM (#9121627) Homepage
    ...and getting to the point of its "end" - maybe 100 pages left to go or so.

    Anyhow - since reading Cryptonomicon, and now Quicksilver - and what I am hearing about Confusion - I steadfastly believe that Neal is trying to tell us (geeks? maybe) something, that he is trying to impart on us some form of wisdom that most men have lost.

    Now, I know that is a grand bit of hubris to suppose this - who knows what Neal is really thinking or trying to do, and to surmise that this is what he is doing seems to be rather arrogant (and I am someone thinking this!)...

    I think he is showing us not only what and how "money" came into being - but how it can be done again - but this time in a fashion that is free from government meddling (ie, taxes, tariffs, fees, etc), among other ills which affects current monetary systems. He started delving into this with Cryptonomicon - but it dealt more with the "bank", less with money - how to store your "money", in other words, so that governments have no say about it. The Baroque Cycle is showing how to "make" money - that is, create a currency of exchange, because that is all that money is - a substitution for barter, because it is hard to carry around pigs and chickens for trade with you everwhere. It is showing it in a quasi-historical account. We, as geeks, should be following up the leads, where they are "true", and finding out the historical truth behind them - to learn how money works, where it came from, and most importantly, how governments function with (and without) it. I think that is the direction Neal is attempting to lead us, if only we would look and follow.

    We need to wake up - fully - and recognize that we live in a corrupt world society, and that we have the power to change it, because we control the means of communication of this planet. We can either sit back, and wait for the chains of enslavement to be shackled upon us (if we don't get killed or worse by our fellow "civilized" men), or stand up and make the difference to free the world from this corruption.

  • My Thoughts on Baroque (Score:3, Insightful)

    by loftis ( 750863 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @06:55PM (#9121731) Homepage
    Thanks for the review. It was well written, and mostly how I thought about the two books. I cannot but expect my impression to change, though, when System comes out this fall. This is not 3 separate books, it's one really big one, and I expect that we are going to see some major ties to Cryptonomicon in 3.

    Since the major theme of Crypto was the development of a secure form of electronic currency, and the machinations that went into it, I expect to have some more great ties to the idea of credit and soft currency and trade drawn in System.

    Is is only me or did some of the themes in the book, a la the Royal Society's rise and fall based on political support, patronage, etc., ring alarm bells to those of us in the F/OSS community? Is there a parallel to the beginnings of modern science and commerse to be found in the study of the Scientific Revolution? If so, technology is going to get cool in 50 years.
  • Those readers who are still paying close attention towards the end of the book, and enjoyed Cryptonomicon, may catch the "foreshadowing" for some people and place names in Cryptonomicon. (The Cabal's Mr. Foot, Queen Kottakkal, etc.) If you need more help, check out the section in Cryptonomicon where Randy flies to the island the crypt will be on, and note names of the island, the hotel, the sultan, the grand wazir, etc. Allow for spelling changes over the years.

  • Oh my fucking god: longer? (Score:3, Funny)

    by cmason ( 53054 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @06:57PM (#9121750) Homepage
    The Confusion would be a much better novel written completely at 1000 pages than it is part-summarized at 800.

    Wait, you want it longer? Please, Jesus, don't encourage him to write even longer.

    -c

  • The novel dips at the center, but it shines in every chapter concerning Eliza, and toward the end it even shines for Jack.

    Well, it dips only if you don't enjoy "things baroque" only for the sake of themselves. I have to confess i'm a sucker for this kind of super-intricate plot that sprouts gratuitous detail at every step and branches off endlessly in subplots.

    The Baroque Cycle has a great second book in The Confusion. Highly recommended.
  • One of the things that I've always found curious about this current cycle of books, is that it seems to be a series of books written with a purpose -- to give people a firm understanding of the fundamental principles underlying economics, value, and money

    Cryptonomicon covers in excruciating detail, but with a story interested enough to keep you reading, the principles behind cryptography, which would be needed for a cryptographically sound currency, but it also covers modern ideas of value in corporations

  • Somebody help me out here. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Wednesday May 12, 2004 @03:19AM (#9124518)
    I read Snowcrash because somebody told me I had to. I did. "The World of the Future as Envisioned by Somebody Who Uses a Mac."

    Snowcrash was unbelievably immature and completely implausible on an endless number of counts. The Ultra-Cool central idea, (a programming virus for Humans transmissible simply by looking), was half-baked and under-developed. What a shame. The only thing which kept that book floating was Neal's fun and punchy style of prose. (Sounds like the charismatic wise-ass in the class who knows more raw facts than the teacher, knows how to deliver them, but who still flounders like a dying fish when asked about the Meaning of Life.) Still, when read with the understanding that the whole book was (meant?) to be a pulp joke on the same level as, Kill Bill, I found it to be almost entertaining. Until the ending. Neal needs a good smacking for that ending. And his editors need to be fired.

    Whatever.

    More interesting was his internet-distributed essay he wrote after discovering Linux and ditching his Mac. Though the ending was also ill-focused and confusing. Pattern?

    So the long and short is this. . .

    NO WAY am I going to torture myself with 1200 pages of his latest series just to know what the buzz is. And since the review doesn't cover what I want to know, I'll ask it here. . .

    Does Stephenson's expose of economic 'reality' take into account forces like the Masons, Knights-Templar, Rothschildes, the Jews and all that good stuff, or is it just another attempt to fill people with a self-satisfied belief that they know more than they really do?

    Is Neal Serving or Harming?

    Thank you.


    -FL

    • Does Stephenson's expose of economic 'reality' take into account forces like the Masons, Knights-Templar, Rothschildes, the Jews and all that good stuff

      Yes. And Quakers. And non-conformists. And alchmists. And Dutch nationalists. And MIT. And much, much more.

      This is rich, deep and seriously hard work to read. It's a book for when you have a lot of time to read and aren't going to be distracted. I'm about halfway through Quicksilver and struggling a bit because it isn't an easy book to read in ten minu

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