Books: October 2005 Archives

In recent interviews promoting his latest book A Man Without A Country Kurt Vonnegut has stated, in his usual arch way:

I think we are terrible animals and I think our planet's immune system is trying to get rid of us, and it should.

Illustrating the validity of his position, from As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound, in today's New York Times:

CHURCHILL, Manitoba - It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark visions of global warming.

Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap - finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded - is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7.

(...)

"It's the positive side of global warming ..."

Consisting of three volumes, but not a trilogy, and spanning almost 3000 pages, Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle is an epic novel set in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. (This is similar to the Lord of the Rings, which is often referred to as a trilogy, but was too big for the the publishers to put out in one volume, much to Tolkien's objection.) It spans adventures around a world that is moving into the "Age of Enlightenment" and anticipates the industrial age. The novel has been described as historical science-fiction, with elements of court intrigue, cryptography, economics, wars, plagues, philosophy, pirates, and more.

Cryptonomicon was published prior to The Baroque Cycle but is essentially a sequel to the other books, weighing in with another 900 pages. This book shifts between WWII and the present, if not the near future, and includes characters who are descendants of families that appeared in The Baroque Cycle volumes as well as the apparently immortal alchemist/priest(?)/adventurer, Enoch Root. The plot revolves around the strenuous effort to hide the fact that the Allies have broken German and Japanese secret codes and intrigue related to buried golden treasure stolen by the original Axis of Evil which is desired by all parties in the modern parts of the story.

In these books, Stephenson exhibits a bottomless appetite for digression, discursion and embellishment as well as multi-layered and engaging plots. Not everybody's cup of tea I am sure, but immersing myself in these books was quite enjoyable. I was both relieved and sorry to get to the end.

Stephenson is also the author of, among other books, Snowcrash, a cyberpunk look into a dystopian urban future and The Diamond Age, set in a Hong Kong of the future controlled by nanotechnology where the ruling class emulates the manners and mores of Victorian England. Really.