Fanciful yesteryear

I love historical fiction. I love Patrick O'Brian's addictive maritime adventures. I love Dorothy Dunnett's rich and dense Lymond Chronicles. These series both do one thing very well: they immerse the reader in accurate and detailed depictions of life in a different time. It's that immersion that I love.

There's another set of historical novels that I also love - The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. I adore these three big novels, but wouldn't put them in the same category with O'Brien and Dunnett. There's plenty of very accurate, closely-researched historical detail, but Stephenson is far more playful in the way he presents historical people and events. You can't get lost in a different time if the author keeps throwing madcap historical absurdities at you.

I won't even try to give more than a brief overview of this action-packed series. It is set approximately between 1660 and 1720. There are four main characters. Daniel Waterhouse is Isaac Newton's college roommate, who becomes obsessed with the invention of a computing machine that will operate with golden punch-cards. Jack Shaftoe is an illiterate adventurer whose eventual career as a couterfeiter makes him Isaac Newton's nemesis. Eliza de la Zeur, a native of Qwglm (a land whose language has sixteen consonants and no vowels), is a financial genius, spy, and kingmaker. And Enoch Root is a mysterious, apparently-eternal and possibly backwards-living wizard/alchemist.

The series explores a dazzling array of issues, especially the history of science and mathematics, currency and finance, cryptanalysis and espionage. But there's nothing dry about Stephenson's fascination with math, codes, and economics. For instance, when Jack goes to India, he learns of a job so disgusting that I will not describe it, traditionally reserved for one particular caste. Jack promptly offers to do it for less, introducing capitalist competition and upsetting millennia of unwritten law. Or when Root, unleashing a terrifying weapon that resembles a circular saw blade on a cord, blithely misquotes Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo." In the eighteenth century.

Stehpenson's boundlessly playful imagination never lets you get lost in the past, but the romp he takes you on through the centuries is so much fun you won't really mind. The books in the series are Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. I enjoyed them so much I want to read them again someday - after I rest. Each one is about a thousand pages long, so don't put all three on hold at once.