re:mote voices

quicksilver - i ended up buying stephenson's quicksilver before we went to berlin the start of october (something else which i've been meaning to write more about!). so i finished original bliss monday, which i had been reading over the last few days. from there i was assessing what to choose from the pile next, having forked out for the hard back i thought i might as well get on with this one. the extract that has been posted variously from quicksilver didn't really inspire me, but some good feedback from other folk that picked it up as it came out made me decide to go for it anyway. so i am about 40 pages in, time allowing only that much so far, but it is going well enough - i've got past the lackluster start and am more into the reasons why the initial character enoch the red has arrived in colonial america. with the likes of snow crash and cryptonomicon they are more memorable because they had high impact starting points - a manic car chase, and a rush to the docks as evacuation. the wandering into to town and witnessing the hanging of a witch doesn't really have the same punch, the same hook. but quickly with references to the original cryptonomicon we are into the origins of math/cryptography that make this the prequel to stephenson's cryptonomicon.