Quicksilver

An endlessly rich and inventive historical fiction epic from the author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, set amid the political intrigue, scientific revolution and religious conflict of 17th-century Europe. As philosophers, adventurers and spies navigate a rapidly changing world, fortunes are made and empires reshaped.

‘Genius … You’ll wish it were longer.’ Time magazine

‘An astonishing achievement.’ Sunday Telegraph

WINNER OF THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD

Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, moves among the era's greatest minds, as new ideas challenge old certainties, and where the world can be changed overnight.

The adventurer ‘Half-Cocked Jack’ escapes the streets of London and pursues fortune and infamy while the pox slowly tightens its grip.

And Eliza, rescued from a Turkish harem, reinvents herself as a spy, financier and pawn of the powerful, as the age of finance is born.

'Neal Stephenson rewrites history – for the dark prince of hacker fiction, looking backward is another way of seeing the future.’ Wired

The first book in the Baroque Cycle.