On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:58:57 -0700 (PDT), hamilton
<kwandongbrian@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Well, the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, anyway.
>There are some very minor spoilers here but anything I mention is
>given away in the first 100 pages - hardly the first chapter in a
>3000+ page story.
>The Baroque Cycle seems to be about the end of Alchemy and the
>beginning of the scientific method and we meet some of the most famous
>scientists of the time. Then, along comes Enoch Root, who has a magic
>potion or something that extends his lifespan tremendously.
>I never was able to understand if this was an example of technology so
>advanced it resembled magic or what.
Of magic so limited its best use was to expend itself in sup****ting the
birth of science and technology.
The Solomonic Gold, seems to have only two tricks up its sleve, and one
of them is mostly useless. The other, the nigh-immortality bit, that
could be genuinely useful, except that there's no mention of a way to
make *more* Solomonic Gold, so you've basically got a way to sustain a
small, immortal elite.
I don't think any SF reader needs a detailed explanation of all the ways
*that* can go wrong. Stephenson, shows us a way it can go right. A small
immortal elite that works to sup****t people working to build a genuinely
better world around something that isn't so fundametally limited.
And w/re the lead-into-gold trick, smoothing over the difficulties in
transitioning to an economy that isn't limited to bartering weights of
gold, rather than just making themselves rich.
In the Baroque Cycle, magic is real. It's just that science is better.
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