The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (135 page)
Read The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World Online
Authors: Neal Stephenson
Tags: #Fiction
W
ILLESDEN
, E
ARL OF
: see
Waterhouse, Sterling.
W
ILLIAM
II
OF
O
RANGE
: 1626–1650. Father of the better-known William III of Orange. Died young (of smallpox).
WILLIAM
III
OF
O
RANGE
: 1650–1702. With Mary, daugher of James II, co-sovereign of England from 1689.
W
INTER
K
ING
: see Frederick V.
W
INTER
Q
UEEN
: see Stuart, Elizabeth.
W
REN
, C
HRISTOPHER
: 1632–1723. Prodigy, Natural Philosopher, and Architect, a member of the Experimental Philosophical Club and later Fellow of the Royal Society.
Y
ORK
, D
UKE OF
: The traditional title of whomever is next in line to the English throne. During much of this book, James, brother to Charles II.
D
E LA
Z
EUR
:
Eliza was created Countess de la Zeur by Louis XIV.
A
WORK LIKE THIS ONE
hangs in an immense web of dependencies that cannot be done justice by a brief acknowledgments page. Such a project would be inconceivable were it not for the efforts of scholars and scientists dating back to the era of Wilkins and Comenius, and extending into the present day. Not to say as much would be unjust. But in a work of fiction, which necessarily strays from historical and scientific truth, acknowledgments can backfire. Serious scholars mentioned below should be applauded for their good work, never blamed for my tawdry divagations.
The project would not have happened it all were it not for serendipitous conversations several years ago with George Dyson and Steven Horst.
The following scholars (again in alphabetical order) have published work that was essential to the completion of this project. While eager to give them due credit, I am aware that they may be chagrined by my work’s many excursions from historical truth. Readers who want to know what really happened should buy and read their books, while blaming the errors herein on me: Julian Barbour, Gale E. Christianson, A. Rupert Hall, David Kahn, Hans Georg Schulte-Albert, Lee Smolin, Richard Westfall, D. T. Whiteside.
Particular mention must go to Fernand Braudel, to whose work this book may be considered a discursive footnote. Many other scholarly works were consulted during this project, and space does not permit mentioning them here. Of particular note is Sir Winston Spencer Churchill’s six-volume biography of Marlborough, which people who are
really
interested in this period of history should
read,
and people who think that
I
am too long-winded should
weigh
.
Special thanks to Béla and Gabriella Bollobás, Doug Carlston, and Tomi Pierce for providing me with access to places I could not
have seen (Bollobás) or worked in (Carlston/Pierce) otherwise. George Jewsbury and Catherine Durandin and Hugo Durandin DeSousa provided timely assistance. Greg Bear lent me two books; I promise to return them! And for talking to me about gunpowder, and listening equably to the occasional rant about Alchemy, thanks to Marco Kaltofen, P. E., of the Natick Indian Plantation and Needham West Militia Companies.
Helping in many ways to make this possible on the publishing end, and exhibiting superhuman patience, were Jennifer Hershey, Liz Darhansoff, Jennifer Brehl, and Ravi Mirchandani.
Jeremy Bornstein, Alvy Ray Smith, and Lisa Gold read the penultimate draft and supplied useful commentary. The latter two, along with the cartographer Nick Springer, participated in creation of maps, diagrams, and family trees. More detail is to be found on the website BaroqueCycle.com.
Refracting sphere illustration from the facsimile edition of Robert Hooke’s
Philosophical Experiments and Observations,
edited by W. Derham.
Published by Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., London, 1967.
Flea illustration from Robert Hooke’s 1665
Micrographia
reproduced by permission of Octavo, www.octavo.com.
Illustrations from Isaac Newton’s 1729
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
courtesy of Primary Source Microfilm.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
QUICKSILVER
. Copyright © 2003 by Neal Stephenson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780061792779
Version 12132013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
FIRST EDITION
Stephenson, Neal.
Quicksilver / Neal Stephenson.—
p. cm.—(The Baroque cycle; v. 1)
ISBN
978-0-380-97742-0
1. Adventures and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Seventeenth century—Fiction.
3. Eighteenth century—Fiction. 4. Scientists—Fiction. 5. Alchemists—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3569.T3868 Q53 2003
813’.54—dc21 2002035752
To MaurineT
HERE ARE MANY PEOPLE TO BE THANKED
for their help in the creation of the Baroque Cycle of which this book,
The Confusion,
is the second volume. Accordingly, please see the acknowledgments in
Quicksilver,
Volume One of the Baroque Cycle.
T
HIS VOLUME CONTAINS
two novels,
Bonanza
and
Juncto,
that take place concurrently during the span 1689–1702. Rather than present one, then the other (which would force the reader to jump back to 1689 in mid-volume), I have interleaved sections of one with sections of the other so that the two stories move forward in synchrony. It is hoped that being thus
con-fused
shall render them the less
confusing
to the Reader.