Forgive an ignorant Vagabond, but I am used to men of action—so when the Doctor spends all day, every day, talking to people, it seems to me as if he's doing nothing.
He's accomplishing nothing—that's very different from doing nothing.Enoch said gravely.
Continuing my programme of rereading books I last enjoyed ten years ago, this
is the first volume in Neal Stephenson's 3000-odd-page Baroque Cycle series.
The series is a prequel to Cryptonomicon
,
and explores some of the same themes: cryptography, the history of computing,
and most importantly the nature of money.
As the founders of the Royal Society are key characters, it also sort of works
as a sequel to An Instance of the Fingerpost
— although Stephenson's characterisation of John
Wilkins is rather different!
While this is an impressive and wide-ranging piece of work, with a number of
Good Bits (my favourites generally being the Eliza-and-Jack sections), it's not
as tightly-written as Cryptonomicon
.
Recommended if meticulously-researched, extremely long novels are your kind of
thing.
ISBN 0434008176.