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The Baroque Cycle is a historical fiction trilogy by Neal Stephenson. Quicksilver was published in 2003 and is followed by The Confusion and The System of the World, both published in 2004. It began as a prequel to his earlier novel Cryptonomicon. Stephenson has said the idea came from conversations about Leibniz\'s role in the roots of computing and Newton\'s time at the Royal Mint and his alchemy obsession. Since Cryptonomicon was about computing, codes and gold, the Leibniz-Newton rivalry looked like fertile plot material.
The story follows Daniel Waterhouse, Jack Shaftoe (\"King of the Vagabonds\"), and Eliza across the late 1600s and early 1700s. It covers the birth of modern science, finance and banking, and the Royal Society. Descendants of the Shaftoe and Waterhouse characters appear prominently in Cryptonomicon, so the books share a fictional universe. Awards: Wikipedia
- Quicksilver won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
- The Confusion won the 2005 Locus Award, together with The System of the World.
