Outside Context

** WARNING SOME BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD – AS MARKED**

I have just fin­ished the new Neil Steph­en­son book “The Sys­tem of the World”, it being the third part of his “Baroque Cycle”.

It is fair enough to say that I am migh­tily impressed. The three books taken together form a minor mas­ter­piece of lit­er­at­ure and, as Steph­en­son him­self admits, owe much to such former mas­ters as Dumas. Make no mis­take these are excel­lent reads, the length not weigh­ing on them at all.

In review­ing the Cycle first, I am put in mind of the Flash­man books and the Sho­gun novel, mainly because they are painstak­ingly researched and accur­ate (as much as the story’s antics will allow) and it is quite pos­sible to actu­ally learn his­tory from them (admit­tedly, in Sho­guns case a few names have been changed). This is the mark of all good his­tor­ic­ally set nov­els. The Cycle sets out the story of a small group of char­ac­ters and the effects their lives have upon the world. Of these the two main are Daniel Water­house and Jack Shaf­toe. Daniel is a sav­ant mem­ber of the Royal Soci­ety and a Nat­ural Philo­sopher (read sci­ent­ist) whereas Jack is a Vag­a­bond and very much the action hero. It can­not be coin­cid­ence that a pre­vi­ous and equally bril­liant (and equally thick!) Steph­en­son book; Crypto­nomi­con, which is set in the second world war and late nineties, also fea­tures two main char­ac­ters who’s sur­names are Water­house and Shaf­toe. Steph­en­son seams to be allud­ing to the cos­mic import­ance of these fam­il­ies (à la Arthur Dent, Douglas Adams cos­mic­ally import­ant everyman).

Daniel’s under­ly­ing wish in the Sys­tem of the world is to invent the “Logic mill” based upon the Cal­cu­lus, which was inven­ted by his friends Leib­niz and Isaac New­ton (another theme being their argu­ment over who actu­ally inven­ted it first, or indeed has got it right). This logic mill is quite clearly the com­puter (as we know it), which is another inter­est­ing par­al­lel as it is Daniels rel­at­ive in Crypto­nomi­con that even­tu­ally does invent the blessed thing half way through the Second World War. As you can see these are all books for the lov­ers of detail and Steph­en­son know well how to get you thinking.

Jacks under­ly­ing wish in the Sys­tem of the World is to win back the heart of the women he lost by fol­low­ing the orders of the king of France. These orders spe­cify that Jack is to travel to Eng­land and ruin the eco­nomy of that coun­try for the glory of the French. Jacks tale revolves around his attempts to do this and out­smart the smartest man alive; New­ton, who is try­ing to catch him and send him to be hung drawn and quartered. Some of the best writ­ing in the book is the totally believ­able way in which New­ton (being a sci­ent­ist uncon­cerned with polit­ics) totally fails to appre­ci­ate that his foe is very smart him­self and cap­able of manip­u­lat­ing Newton’s sci­entific mind. This is bril­liantly real­ized by Jack when he man­ages through many adven­tures to affect the cur­rency of Eng­land and force a trial to assess the value of Eng­lish coin. Much paper is taken up with descrip­tions of such tri­als, their loc­a­tions and the strange way that we Eng­lish tend to run our older insti­tu­tions. This leads me to the con­clu­sion that in this third book, the real main char­ac­ter becomes Lon­don itself and the amaz­ing, flum­mox­ing, diverse, con­tra­dict­ory and even down right crazy way it worked. This, in other books, would be simply col­our for the back­ground, but here in Stephenson’s works it is majestic­ally used up and we are plunged into the smells of the streets and the natures of the man­i­fold and diverse peoples found therein.

Cri­tiquing Steph­en­son is harder. His only fault as an author has been his some­times peter­ing end­ings. Char­ac­ters and stor­ies just stop or go over the pages of the book (into our head space I guess). This has led to the most bril­liant books end­ing what can only be described as badly. I have been read­ing this series in a hope that there would be a “con­clu­sion” this time, and I am pleased to say that there is. Steph­en­son mas­ter­fully avoids draw­ing light upon the slightly obvious/I-saw-it-coming nature of the con­clu­sion by play­ing a trump card just before that had me grasp­ing. It was like watch­ing a chess mas­ter place the final telling piece on the board that his oppon­ent has not seen com­ing at all but has arrived via the most impress­ive and smooth build up. A bril­liant job. The final scenes take place in two loc­a­tions sim­ul­tan­eously and we weave amongst them in and out of the emo­tional depth of each and the magical occa­sions they rep­res­ent. I have not been so emo­tion­ally involves in a multi-dimensional end­ing like this since I first saw “Return of the Jedi”. If you have seen that films final moments you will know the sort of weav­ing I am talk­ing about.

My ref­er­ence to sci­ence fic­tion is not without cause. It draws me to com­ment on the phant­asmagor­ical that has been skil­fully hid­den amongst this book’s, this whole series’ and Crypto­nomi­con pages. I speak of Enoch Root. Although not in this book in per­son, again there are tan­tal­ising hints about this mans past. If you are one of the unaware read on know­ing that this should bait you…

**Minor Spoil­ers ahead**

Enoch Root is in the first book of the Baroque Cycle at about 45/50 years old (?), when Daniel is a uni­ver­sity stu­dent. As Daniel grows to an old man, Enoch remains as is. This is not all. In Crypto­nomi­con, which as I said is set dur­ing World War II, Enoch also appears. After a while it is clear that this is the same man. Moreover, the second time line of Crypto­nomi­con, set in the 90’s, also has Enoch in it and also at the same age. This makes him at least 300 years old. I say at least as there are small hints that he is even older, but always the same age. Who is he? How does he live so long? Steph­en­son is a fant­astic sci­ence fic­tion author, is Enoch part of that? Is he an alien? Steph­en­son does a bril­liant job of bait­ing us all through the Cycle with small ref­er­ences, hints, subtle mach­in­a­tions, so that, like the chess mas­ter, the final card is fant­ast­ic­ally played right at the end. So well are thee worked into, not only the themes of the books, but also the places that he turns up, that one is driven to intense interest. I fair swal­lowed the Crypto­nomi­con on my second read­ing look­ing for clue as to Roots iden­tity. I say that if Steph­en­son were to set up an Inter­net Altern­ate Real­ity Game to do with Root, thou­sands would play it.

**Major spoil­ers ahead regard­ing the end­ing and Enoch Root**

In the final scenes the secrets become a little less clouded. It is made clear that Root brought back Daniel from the dead (or as close as dead was back then) Daniel then uses the writ­ten notes on this to bring New­ton back from the dead. The notes per­tain to a con­coc­tion that requires the Magical Solomon Gold that New­ton has been try­ing to recover through the whole Cycle. Using some of this gold makes the potion work and affects a recov­ery on New­ton that brings him back to life. This, one thinks, should draw us the con­clu­sion that Root has a sup­ply of the gold and the means to make the con­coc­tion and has there­fore been liv­ing off it for God knows how long. How­ever, in the pre­vi­ous book of the series, The Con­fu­sion, it is made clear that Root is not him­self pre­served by the use of alchemy. It is clear then that this final scene is a ruse and red her­ring to the secret of Root and only illu­min­ates his pos­i­tion re his fant­ast­ical know­ledge. The mys­tery is left for now as such.

I per­son­ally think Root is an alien, but this is wild spec­u­la­tion. Know­ing Steph­en­son and his char­ac­ters use of ancient powers (such as the Nam Shub. See his novel Snow Crash) Root could quite eas­ily be a God, or any other nature of mys­tical being. One inter­est­ing idea that occurs to me is that Steph­en­son never actu­ally writes con­tra­dict­ory books. That is to say that all his works exist in the same uni­verse, past or future and do not over­lap each other at all, nor con­tra­dict the nature of the uni­verse present in each one. This means that Root could merely be an immor­tal man who came across his powers acci­dent­ally. In this respect he reminds me of Wow­bag­ger, the Infin­itely Pro­longed
(From Hitch Hiker Guide to the Galaxy) or the char­ac­ters from high­lander. As usual Steph­en­son draws us into and plays with myriad mod­ern cul­tural ref­er­ences way out­side his works.

** End of spoilers **

The Cycle is there­fore com­pleted and roun­ded off very very well. I loved this book and in fact have found Stephenson’s works to be the best I have read in a long long time. His skill with the pen equals that of such people as Douglas Adams (pbuh) and Tolkien.
I urge you all to read the books (if your wrists can stand their weight) as soon as possible!

Basho

btw: many people around the web have been look­ing for a source for the inscrip­tion around Enoch’s Medal­lion. It is to be found here http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09750b.htm in the Soci­ety of Mary.

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