In general there is not room to mention specific titles here, but I’ll make exceptions for Fernand Braudel’s Civilization and Capitalism series; Sir Winston Spencer Churchill’s six-volume biography of Marlborough; Giovanni Franceso Gemelli Careri’s incredible Voyage Round the World; and every ribald, scabrous, mordant, teeming libel Ned Ward ever wrote. I am thankful Ned was around to describe Baroque England, and even more thankful that he died before he could get around to describing me.
Period writers were indispensable: John Bunyan, Richard F. Burton (who was not really of this period but who wrote much that was useful), Daniel Defoe, John Evelyn, George Farquhar, Henry Fielding, (the Right Villainous) John Hall, Liselotte, John Milton, Samuel Pepys, the Duc de Saint-Simon, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Jean de Thevenot, Joseph de la Vega, John Wilkins, Lt.-Gen. Adam Williamson of the Tower of London, and the translators of the Geneva Bible. And of course, Hooke, Newton, and Leibniz. But an author of my limitations would be unable to make heads or tails of Leibniz’s body of work without the help of scholars, translators, and editors such as Robert Merrihew Adams, H. G. Alexander, Roger Ariew, Richard Francks, Daniel Garber, and R. S. Woolhouse. Likewise Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for his Newton’s Principia for the Common Reader.
A certain kind of debt, which might make sense only to novelists, ought to be acknowledged to the late Dorothy Dunnett and to Alexandre Dumas.
People who fund and staff museums-especially wee, peculiar museums-ought to be acknowledged. I don’t have any of those people’s names, but here are some interesting museums: Newton’s Room at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts; Newton’s house at Woolsthorpe; Musee Carnavalet in Paris; the Bank of England Museum; the Hague Historical Museum; the Upper Harz Mining Museum and the Bergapothek in Clausthal-Zellerfeld; and the Berg-baumuseum Rohrigschacht in Wettelrode.
Thanks to Bela and Gabriella Bollobas; Doug Carlston and Tomi Pierce; and Barry Kemp of Connell Cars for providing me with access to places I could not have seen (Bollobas), worked in (Carlston/ Pierce), or found (Kemp) otherwise. George Jewsbury and Catherine and Hugo Durandin provided timely assistance. Charles McAleese had a thing or two to say about Irish history. Likewise the balance of the HBC on all other topics under the sun. Greg Bear lent me two books and did not object when the loan stretched out to a length that a lesser man might have denominated theft (the books have now been returned in front of many witnesses).
Many others have, knowingly or not, contributed to a milieu in which it was possible for me to consider writing something like this without seeming completely mad. And here I am tempted to list the names of a lot of mathematicians and physicists. But out of a concern for their privacy and a desire not to seem like I’m clinging to their ankles, I’ll draw a veil over those conversations. Suffice it to say that the Royal Society crowd written about in these books has many descendants and heirs today, who are capable of talking learnedly about monads, cellular automata, the calculus dispute, absolute time and space, amp;c. at the drop of a hat, and that it’s been my privilege to know a few of them. They seem pleasantly surprised to learn that someone actually wants to write a novel about such topics, and I in turn have been pleasantly surprised to find that they are actually willing to spend time talking to me, and out of this, quite a few good conversations have arisen over the years.
Helping in many ways to make this possible on the publishing end, and exhibiting superhuman patience over its seven-year span, were Jennifer Hershey, Liz Darhansoff, Jennifer Brehl, and Ravi Mirchandani.
Jeremy Bornstein, Alvy Ray Smith, and Lisa Gold read the penultimate drafts and supplied useful commentary. The latter two, along with the cartographer Nick Springer, participated in creation of maps, diagrams, and family trees.
The dialect spoken by Lord Gy in the third volume is a good faith effort by the author to approach eighteenth-century Scottish with all due respect and to get it as right as possible. If I’ve botched it; and if you know enough Scottish to know that I have; and if you’re thinking of giving me a piece of your mind, know that I am one-quarter MacPhail. The uncanny vibrations you have been feeling in the soles of your feet the last couple of years are seismic disturbances created by my ancestors turning over in their graves at Preston Pans and other locations. Worse, the clan’s last chieftain-no admirer of the Hanovers, apparently-was transported to Virginia in 1715 but died en route. He probably haunts the sea-lanes even now, and, for all I know, may have a bone to pick with me. Which is a roundabout way of saying that even before the ink has dried on the manuscript page, novelists’ families-nuclear and extended-have had to put up with a lot from us. The greatest share of my gratitude, always, goes to them.
Neal Stephenson
May 2004
NEAL STEPHENSON is the author of the novels Quicksilver, The Confusion, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Don’t miss the next book by your favorite author. Sign up now for AuthorTracker by visiting www.AuthorTracker.com.
The Confusion
Quicksilver
Cryptonomicon
The Diamond Age
Snow Crash
Zodiac
Jacket design by Richard L. Aquan
Jacket illustration of world map by Frederick de Wit from De Zee Atlas Amsterdam, 1662, Birmingham Library, UK
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD. Copyright © 2004 by Neal Stephenson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.
PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Microsoft Reader September 2004 eISBN 0-06-078885-2
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.perfectbound.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.perfectbound.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.uk.perfectbound.com
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.perfectbound.com