Well Begun and All Done: Quicksilver

The book: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

Opening line: Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head.

Ending: Hooke took up his blade and reached for Daniel.



Quicksilver is about. . . well, pretty much everything. Volume one of a trilogy ("The Baroque Cycle"), Quicksilver is a historical novel set primarily in the late 17th century. The action begins shortly after the overthrow of Oliver Cromwell and ends shortly after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. While prior knowledge of British history is helpful to following the plot, it's not necessary; indeed, the novel is a far more palatable medium for learning the history than anything you're likely to have read in high school.

The world of Quicksilver is the world of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, of King James II of England and Louis XIV of France, and of Daniel Waterhouse and Eliza, the Countess de la Zeur. You've never heard of those last two, the main fictional protagonists, around whom the worlds of science and politics swirl. Daniel is a Natural Philosopher--what we would today call a scientist. The son of a prominent Puritan who came to a bad end upon the Reformation, Daniel is a follower of both Newton and Leibniz and ultimately a member of the Court of James II (despite the latter's crypto-Catholicism). Eliza is a seductive escapee from a Turkish harem, who eventually ensconces herself in Versailles as a spy for William III of the Netherlands. Somewhat unique among women, she can carry on conversations with royal courtiers, proto-capitalists, and erudite mathematicians. She's also not bad in a fight.

A lot goes on in this novel. Stephenson vividly recreates a world on the brink of major changes (indeed, this was the period in which the word "revolution" first came to have a political meaning). In the world of science, Newton and Leibniz are separately developing the system of calculus, the mathematics of change. Disputes rage, also, between alchemists and natural philosophers. In politics, of course, rivalries and alliances are constantly in flux, as England aligns itself with the Dutch against the French, with the French against the Dutch, and ultimately stands largely alone against its Dutch conqueror. It is to the author's credit that he manages to keep all these balls in the air without losing his readers in a maelstrom of names, dates, and places.

As to the opening and closing: While the novel is not overly violent, this was a chaotic time in European history. Armies clashed, rulers were overthrown, and even in the stately realms of science, blood flowed freely (vivisection was a favorite technique of the natural philosophers). In a book concerning deep philosophical issues and monumental moments of change, Stephenson reminds us that some things--like death--are constants.