I started Quicksilver yesterday. Already much more fun than the other historical novel I just finished. (Sorry, Dan.) I just hope Stephenson doesn't fall into the Shanghai Knights trap of "Look, our protagonists are encountering every historical figure of the era!" This gimmick very quickly gets old.
Anyway, I wanted to comment on this paragraph:
He'd stayed a week or two in Wilkins' chambers, and attended meetings of the Experimental Philosophical Clubb. This had been a revelation to him, for during the Civil War, practically nothing had been heard out of England. The savants of Leipzig, Paris, and Amsterdam had begun to think of it as a rock in the high Atlantic, overrun by heavily armed preachers.
Being a non-Texan, I won't come to that state's defense. However, that doesn't mean I won't shamelessly plug something you might find very interesting from my pet author.
"I'll have a story in a book called ReVisions, scheduled for August 2004. It's a book of alternate histories (specifically, what if various scientific discoveries were made in different places or times). My piece is called "Axial Axioms". It's a weird one—based on the idea that classical religious figures or philosophers (Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Aesop, Daniel, and others) developed higher mathematics around 500 B.C. I laughed a lot while writing it, but it is not for the math-o-phobic."
The exerpt Jim read at the Con was awesome.
Posted by: Siren | April 7, 2004 8:10 PMI will come to the defense of my beautiful state! I'll have you know that the only people we heavily arm are the criminals, mister! Uh, wait a minute...
Having said that, my great-great-great uncle Erasmus was a Universalist circuit-rider, and I imagine that he carried a big ole gun, so...yeah, I guess he could have been classified as a "heavily armed preacher"...well, what do you know? Huh.
Posted by: Tracy | April 8, 2004 6:52 AMoo... as soon as mcats are over (six days from now) i am reading that. the copy at the library at home was checked out last time but that was probably for the best. ...i need to reread cryptonomicon, too... i want to be amy shaftoe.
Posted by: phi | April 12, 2004 10:05 AM