The Confusion - Neal Stephenson

[handslive]

Just for my own notes, I finished The Confusion this week.  I think I liked it better than Quicksilver.  And it's made me want to get and read the next book.

Comments

[handslive.livejournal.com]

My anal retentive streak still wants to complete the set. But thanks for the offer. :-)

[buhrger]

it'd be hypocritical of me to condemn someone for anal-retention :-) heck, why do you think i bought the whole set. in hardback.

meanwhile, any further thoughts on the books? following up on our recent conversation, do you consider them to be science fiction, and if so, why?

[handslive.livejournal.com]

As I said at boubabe's today, I certainly consider it speculative fiction. Since a lot of such fiction falls into the sf category, it's not a big leap for me to think of this as sf. But classifying it that way makes it possible to look at George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman) books as also being speculative fiction. And that's probably one of many many reasons why I like those, too.

As we've also discussed before, speculative fiction seems to lend itself to cross-genre story telling. Gritty, dark, anti-hero, detective fiction set in near or far future settings, for example. Some of this is amazingly well done, so I certainly don't have any problem with it. :-)

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'd agree that th Baroque Cycle is speculative fiction, as its concerned with what might have been possible in those times (I'm trying to avoid spoilers). Flashman is less like this as its essentially a re-telling of the history of the time through the eyes of a particular character who doesn't really have the chance to change anything. I'd say Flashman was historical, not speculative, fiction.

[handslive.livejournal.com]

But are major historical events changed in any way in the Baroque Cycle? If the introduction of new "historical" figures along with the retelling of real events doesn't quite cut it, then Stephenson's books are no different in this regard. Arguably, they're not as well researched as Fraser's, but that's a difference in quality, not method.

[(Anonymous)]

I think one of Stephenson's goals was not to change events (as will be obvious from one specific example in TSOTW). But he does show how things might have been different in some regard, and does have some very interesting and informative things to say about the origins of the system of the world.

Also, TBS clearly takes place in an alternate world where places like Qwglmia exist :-)

It also seems to be a prequel to Cryptonomicon, which throws interesting light on the nature of the gold in the jungle, so I'm not sure it can be judged separately.

Oooops!

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

That was me

Re: Oooops!

[handslive.livejournal.com]

Point taken, though. For some reason I always forget about Qwglm, which appears in this series and also in Cryptonomicon.

Being informative is, actually, one of the big draws of Fraser's books. I'll never be able to read Kipling the same way again. Fraser's view of historical events really breathes life into them.

Stephenson's view of world finance is similarly interesting. And, after The Confusion, I find myself wondering about his description of monads. Is this really how they were viewed by Leibniz? If so, that's one of the most interesting things I've read about historical scientific views.

Re: Oooops!

[buhrger]

Qwghlm and Kinakuta both appear in both Cryptonomicon and TBC.