Quicksilver
Quicksilver
paperback
Published:
7 October, 2004
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Description
An endlessly rich and inventive historical fiction epic from the author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, set amid the political intrigue, scientific revolution and religious conflict of 17th-century Europe. As philosophers, adventurers and spies navigate a rapidly changing world, fortunes are made and empires reshaped.
‘Genius … You’ll wish it were longer.’ Time magazine
‘An astonishing achievement.’ Sunday Telegraph
WINNER OF THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD
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Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, moves among the era's greatest minds, as new ideas challenge old certainties, and where the world can be changed overnight.
The adventurer ‘Half-Cocked Jack’ escapes the streets of London and pursues fortune and infamy while the pox slowly tightens its grip.
And Eliza, rescued from a Turkish harem, reinvents herself as a spy, financier and pawn of the powerful, as the age of finance is born.
'Neal Stephenson rewrites history – for the dark prince of hacker fiction, looking backward is another way of seeing the future.’ Wired
The first book in the Baroque Cycle.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780099410683 |
| ISBN10 | 0099410680 |
| Number Of Pages | 944 |
| Item Weight | 670 g |
| Product Dimensions | 131 x 199 x 51 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Cornerstone |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
[A] massive tour-de-force- Dense, witty, erudite, packed with fascinating characters, and gripping despite a distended length, Quicksilver is both a worthy prequel to Cryptonomicon, and an indication that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is shaping up to be a far more impressive literary endeavour than most so-called "serious" fiction - No scholarly, and intellectually provocative, historical novel has been this much fun since The Name of the Rose. -- Charles Shaar Murray * Independent *
Staggering diversity and detail ... An astonishing achievement. * Sunday Telegraph *
A great, heaving countryside of a book...consistently funny...fluent and elusive, while retaining just the right hint of poison * Telegraph *
Stephenson mixes a library’s worth of ideas with compulsive derring-do … its scope and inventiveness become addictive. * Time Out *
A breathless ride…the writing gives an immersive sense of time and place * Face *
A brilliant, bulging historical novel ... Thrillingly accomplished ... Magnificent ... one finishes it already eager to begin the sequel * Guardian *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Neal Stephenson is the bestselling author of Reamde, Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon; The Diamond Age; Snow Crash, which was named one of Time magazine's top one hundred all-time best English-language novels; and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.