System of the World
'Tis done.The world is a most confused and unsteady place -- especially London, center of finance, innovation, and conspiracy -- in the year 1714, when Daniel Waterhouse makes his less-than-triumphant return to England's shores. Aging Puritan and Natural Philosopher, confidant of the high and mighty and contemporary of the most brilliant minds of the age, he has braved the merciless sea and an assault by the infamous pirate Blackbeard to help mend the rift between two adversarial geniuses at a princess's behest. But while much has changed outwardly, the duplicity and danger that once drove Daniel to the American Colonies is still coin of the British realm.No sooner has Daniel set foot on his homeland when he is embroiled in a dark conflict that has been raging in the shadows for decades. It is a secret war between the brilliant, enigmatic Master of the Mint and closet alchemist Isaac Newton and his archnemesis, the insidious counterfeiter Jack the Coiner, a.k.a. Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds. Hostilities are suddenly moving to a new and more volatile level, as Half-Cocked Jack plots a daring assault on the Tower itself, aiming for nothing less than the total corruption of Britain's newborn monetary system.Unbeknownst to all, it is love that set the Coiner on his traitorous course; the desperate need to protect the woman of his heart -- the remarkable Eliza, Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm -- from those who would destroy her should he fail.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
24mentions
23people
2008–2026years
50% recommend46% neutral4% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Which books did you read at least twice? Please give author, title, and how often you have read it.
For me the (probably incomplete list) is:
Connie Willis: Doomsday Book (three times)
Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World (twice or three times)
Frank Herbert: Dune (three times)
Tolkien: Lord of the Rings (three times)
Stephen King: Salem's Lot, The Shining, It (three times each)
Stephen King & Peter Straub: The Talisman (twice)
Vernor Vinge: A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon The Deep, Rainbow's End (each twice)
Tracy Kidder: The Soul of a New Machine (twice)
Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove (twice)
Ross Thomas: Chinaman's Chance (twice)
William Gibson: Neuromancer, The Peripheral, Agency (each twice)
- Great story. Wilkins and his language also feature in Stephenson’s “System of the World” books. The excellent book “In the land of invented languages” by Arika Okrent dedicates chapter 2 to Wilkins. I should point out, I didn’t go seeking information about Wilkins, but his language just seems to come up randomly for me.
Okrent’s book also has excellent introductions to Esperanto and Lojban. Lojban is a modern attempt to create a language without ambiguity. That turns out to be hard…speaking takes on some of the characteristics of writing a mathematical proof.
- > Stephenson’s “System of the World” books
Minor nit: “System of the World” is the third novel in the Baroque Cycle, after Quicksilver and The Confusion.
I really enjoyed these books for the SF world-building perspective on the emergence in the 17th Century of modern science and finance, global trade, communications, etc. Many of the normal comments on Stephenson’s writing style apply, YMMV.
- They're very verbose and dense, and it strikes me that Neal Stephenson more or less wrote the three books just for himself, but it's worth checking out his "The Baroque Cycle" trilogy, culminating with "The System of the World."
It's fiction, but it's very eye-opening and mind-teasing fiction that puts a lot of contemporary moving parts in motion at the same time. And the books basically revolve around the Newton-Leibniz feud over inventing calculus.
- Or for a fictional account, Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_the_World_(novel... .
- - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
- Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts
- The Tao Te Ching
- The Gateless Gate (Koun Yamada translation/editing)
- The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) by Neal Stephenson
- The Invisibles by Grant Morrison
- Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Iron John by Robert Bly
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
- The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman
- Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Pharmakon by Dale Pendell
- The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss
- Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton
- The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual by Gary Gygax et al
- Introduction to Algorithms by Charles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald Rivest, and Thomas H. Cormen
