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The Baroque Cycle
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The Baroque Cycle is a series of novels written by American writer Neal Stephenson.

Appearing in print in 2003 and 2004, the cycle contains eight novels originally published in three volumes:

* Quicksilver, Vol. I of the Baroque Cycle - Clarke Award winner, Locus Award nominee, 2004[1]
o Book 1 - Quicksilver
o Book 2 - The King of the Vagabonds
o Book 3 - Odalisque
* The Confusion, Vol. II of the Baroque Cycle
o Book 4 - Bonanza
o Book 5 - The Juncto
* The System of the World, Vol. III of the Baroque Cycle - Locus Award winner, Clarke Award nominee, 2005[2]
o Book 6 - Solomon's Gold
o Book 7 - Currency
o Book 8 - The System of the World

The story follows the adventures of a sizeable cast of characters living amidst some of the central events of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Europe. Despite featuring a literary treatment consistent with historical fiction, Stephenson has characterized the work as science fiction, due to the presence of some anomalous occurrences and the work's particular emphasis on themes relating to science and technology.[3] The sciences of cryptology and numismatics feature heavily in the series.

Quicksilver takes place mainly in the years between the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England (1660) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The Confusion follows Quicksilver without temporal interruption, but ranges geographically from Europe and the Mediterranean through India to Manila, Japan, and Mexico.

The System of the World takes place principally in London in 1714, about ten years after the events of The Confusion.

The books feature considerable sections concerning alchemy, with characters including Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier and sundry other Europeans of note during late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The principal alchemist of the tale is the mysterious Enoch Root, who, along with the descendants of several characters in this series, is also featured in the Stephenson novel Cryptonomicon.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle