Quick Silver

Neal Stephenson

2003

This is the long awaited prequel to Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. The book is set around the Restoration and ensuing reigns in Britain, and various locations on the continent during this highly significant period.

Having flirted with Republicanism and not finding it to their liking, the English Middle Classes have accepted Charles Stuart as their King. In his turn, he has accepted that the absolutism of his father’s reign is no longer acceptable, and so spent much of his time becoming acquainted with the women of his Court. And founding a number of Societies, including one devoted to the examination of Natural Philosophy and debunking of Alchemy.

The story is told through three main characters, the most important of whom is Daniel Waterhouse, first met in the American Colonies. Throughout the narrative that follows we are basically following Daniel through his life as he interacts with all the Great Natural Philosophers of the age, and it was an age when Natural Philosophy was exploding in all directions.

The second point of view character is one Jack Shaftoe, effectively a Soldier of Fortune fighting his way over the various battlefields that were also a feature of this new European age, particularly the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Empire and its relief by the Polish King Don Juan. Under the walls of Vienna, Jack finds the third of our main characters, Eliza, a British citizen taken from her windswept shores by Barbary pirates and sold to the Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.

Also threading his way through the lives of the characters is one Enoch Root, apparently never ageing, but always on the move.

Through the eyes of Eliza and Daniel we get to see the Courts of England, Holland and France as these countries became the Powers that were to dominate the next two centuries.

Mr Stephenson has clearly spent quite a long time researching the background for this story, but there are a couple of minor niggles: the Royal Society was not actually as anti Alchemy as Stephenson makes out, nor was it the only such Society during the period under consideration. Mr Stephenson also has a genealogical chart of the British Monarchy that seems to imply that the Hanovers are the current dynasty, whereas Victoria was the last of these (she married Albert Sax-Coberg Gothe and Edward VII was the first of these. The S-C Gs became the Windsors during WWI and the marriage of the current queen to Prince Philip while still the heir presumptive changed her married name to Mountbatten if we’re being technical).

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