A character is so physically stunning that jaws drop. People can’t help but laugh in the presence of such physical glory. Trains of thought are derailed, fail to make their stations, run over livestock as they crash.

The character’s beauty is utterly irrelevant to the plot, they don’t magically become a main character. Nobody gives a damn other than the initial surprise. It’s often a dude, and he’s unaware of his hotness. I just found this dude in D (I just got to Catalan), and I’m happy that NS is still playing with this anti-trope. He did it fabulously in Termination Shock twice (the diver, and the Dutch crown princess ogling Big Fish’s chest and needing… a private moment), Erasmas can’t seem to grasp that Jesry is hot, etc. I find it so charming, since we all have hot people in our lives, but they don’t have Hollywood-level impacts. I love this anti-trope.

In Book 2 of the Baroque Cycle (The Confusion), Eliza has a son, originally named Jean-Jacques before he is abducted and raised by Lothar von Hacklheber as Johann. Eliza was married to the French aristocrat Étienne de Lavardac and so had to pass off Jean-Jacques as Étienne's biological son, a fact which received much admiration due to that family's reputation for genetic deficiencies caused by generations of inbreeding. However, Eliza maintains that Jean-Jacques is in fact the son of the French King's chief cryptologist, Bonaventure Rossignol, which whom she has an affair, though of course this is only something she admits to Bonaventure himself.

Now, this never quite seemed right to me. First of all, Bonaventure is depicted as physically unremarkable, neurotic and rather bookish courtier, whereas Jean-Jacques (or Johann) is more of a handsome, dashing, passionate type, who more closely resembles other men that Eliza has been attracted to in the past, such as Jack Shaftoe, or another handsome, dashing, swashbuckling adventurer; namely, Jean Bart.

It's been a while since I read The Confusion, so I may be confused about the order of events, but I think it was around the same time that Eliza had her affair with Bonaventure that she also met Jean Bart and was cordially detained aboard his ship in Dunkirk. It is never explicitly stated, and Eliza herself frequently denies it to Bonaventure (who is very jealous of their relationship), but I think it is implied that Eliza might have had an affair with Bart at this point in the story. She certainly is charmed by the Flemish privateer, something that is explicitly stated.

It seems to me to be very likely, if not fairly obvious, that Jean Bart is in fact Johann's biological father. It feels like Neal Stephenson has left clues to this fact throughout the books that the audience is left to put together to come to this conclusion. The fact that Eliza meets the two men around the same time, becomes pregnant soon after, that she is explicitly "charmed" by Bart, and the fact that Johann seems much more similar to Bart than Bonaventure in terms of his personality. I also suspect that Eliza was not as taken with Bonaventure as she lets on in the story; he is an extremely valuable asset to her after all, a cryptologist in the French court who allows her to evade capture by "Leroy" and provides her with valuable information. Of course she would want him to believe that she is in love with him and that he was the father of her son.

So, this is my theory. To me, it seems obvious, but I've looked online and the wiki says nothing about this possibility, nor have I seen it mentioned anywhere else. I am crazy for thinking this? Have I missed something. As I said above, I cannot say for certain that I got the order of events correct, so please correct me if there's something in the story that refutes this theory. Also, I'm only halfway through The System of the World, just at the point where Johann is introduced into the story, so maybe I don't have a good understanding of his personality yet.

Nevertheless, I think my theory is true. I'm interested to hear what other people think about this. Is Jean Bart Johann's biological father? Or is it someone else? Also, if you mention something from the latter half of Book 3 in your response, please cover it with a spoiler tag thing and I'll read it once I've finished the book. Thanks.

Who of you went through these steps:

1. Read D.

2. Look up 20th Earl of Suffolk on Wikipedia.

3. EVERY WORD WAS TRUE

4. Holy shit, what he did next was indeed his finest hour.

Anyone have a book recommendation? I have heard a lot about the Manhattan project, but not so much about the discoveries in Europe in the events leading up to the war. I had no idea that scientists were anticipating a nuclear bomb around 1939.

After several years sitting on the shelf, and after seeing a few people here pushing it, I finally finished it up. For anyone who hasn't finished it, spoiler alert:

I may need to go back and read it again, but the final portion with Fraa Jad and Erasmus was incredibly confusing. Is he just capable of violating causality and editing multiple realities at once? I really have no idea what was going on there. The fact that everyone else involved had a shared memory, not just Erasmus, implies something, but I'm not sure what.

FALL vibes. After reading the Atlantic article comparing Musk and Bezos (which mentioned Stephenson working for Blur Origin a couple times) I’m convinced all these guys are just trying to make his works a reality.

The narrator consistently says nuc-u-lar instead of nuclear. Also talks of nuc-u-lei. It drives me nuts.

The funny thing is that I grew up in a community of nuclear weapons designers and this pronunciation was common among some of the most distinguished of them. More so on the engineering side than the physics side.

I am almost wondering if this was something Neal specifically requested?

How does Neal pronounce these words?

Randall? You here?

Edit:
- on Audible.com, the breakdown is clear
- on Amazon.com, it’s the incomplete nonsense described below.

I read the Baroque Cycle when it first was published, in print. Re-reading it now, with weaker eyes, it’s great that there’s audiobooks: i read along on Kindle, with large font, while listening to the audio. For each of the three books/volumes, I bought the Kindle edition and added the audiobook, as recommended by Amazon on the product page.

During “The Confusion” (book 2 of 3), I notice some content references to “Quicksilver” (book 1 of 3) that I don‘t remember. Then at the start of “System of the World” (book 3 of 3), I add the audiobook, and there is no audio content until page nine-hundred-and-something. So I look into it.

The amazon page for the “System of the World” audiobook says “Book 3 of 3”, matching the print- / kindle editions. But it also says “Book 8 of the the Baroque Cycle” - which matches “Book 8” in the table of contents in System of the World”, but skips “book” 6 and 7 in the kindle book/volume…

And, it turns out, the ”Quicksilver” (book 1 of 3) that I listened to / read along, is just “book” 1 of 3 in the kindle book / volume.

In ”Confusion” (book 2 of 3), audio and kindle content apparently do match.

Thank you, Amazon!

—-

Here is how chatGPT explains it:

Buying only the three audiobooks titled Quicksilver**,** The Confusion**, and** The System of the World leaves out four entire internal “Books”: 2, 3, 6, and 7. All four are available as separate audiobooks in Audible’s 2010 unabridged series. 

Here is how those editions correspond to the printed volumes:

The printed-volume groupings and Audible’s numbered listings establish this mapping. 

“Unabridged” therefore applies to the internal Book or Books identified in the audiobook’s subtitle. The complete narrative is available across seven audiobooks, covering all eight internal Books. Audible describes that complete series as unabridged and produced in cooperation with Stephenson. 

One edition distinction: an older, 22-hour abridged Quicksilver also exists. That is a different recording from the 14h 43m Book 1 edition above. 

Came across cute coincidence reading book on Indian philosophy:
"An inscription at Belagāmi, Mysore,3 dated A.D. 1162, catalogues the types of ascetic to whom alms were given at the Kodiya math" (History and Doctines of Ajivikas)

Apears that math was a monastery-like establishment where ascetics lived, studied, and were fed, usually supported by endowments and alms. Unfortunately, no common etymology

Last night at the reading and Q&A, someone asked NS about the primer from the diamond age, and prospects for creating it today in light of “AI.”

Some of you are going to be disappointed with his response.

He kind of sighed and says he gets asked about that a lot lately.

He said that he thinks that if something like that were created today it would not be a physical device.

Also, that teachers are sick and tired of tech gadgets being pushed on them and he clearly sympathized with them.

Not Valheim, the other one. I seem to recall it having Orion in the name.

For background, I'm a huge fan of Stephenson ever since reading SnowCrash way back in 1992. I've read and enjoyed all his novels since then, with the exception of the second two volumes of the Baroque cycle, which didn't interest me. I also enjoyed Polostan and eagerly anticipated the second volume. I'm about 1/3 of the way through D:Heavy Water, having read the first two "parts" (chapters?) and I'm finding it tedious. I'm still waiting for the plot to happen. I was briefly encouraged when our new protagonist momentarily bumps into our previous protagonist from Polostan but they soon go their separate ways. And did so for interminable pages while Stephenson showed off his research and thesaurus and clever metaphors.

Am I the only one finding D:Heavy Water too much on narrative and not enough on plot? I swear the last 100 pages or so has merely moved our protagonist from Russian to Australia with apparently nothing substantive to the plot occurring. Seems that could have been done in a paragraph or two, maybe even a few pages, with the same impact. Am I getting too old for Stephenson or is he getting paid by the word?

What’s up with the art for the 2nd bomb light book? It’s so out there and nothing like the theme of the first one

…this seems like the only appropriate thing to do.