Baroque Cycle
The story follows the adventures of a sizeable cast of characters living amidst some of the central events of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Europe, with characters including Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier and sundry other Europeans of note.
"Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it is baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word ("trilogy"). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word "trilogy" on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone''s going to call it a trilogy anyway."
Neal Stephenson
Vol. I of the Baroque Cycle
Book 1 - Quicksilver
Book 2 - The King of the Vagabonds
Book 3 - Odalisque
Quicksilver takes place mainly in the years between the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England (1660) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The Confusion, Vol. II of the Baroque Cycle
Book 4 - Bonanza
Book 5 - The Juncto
The Confusion follows Quicksilver without temporal interruption, but ranges geographically from Europe and the Mediterranean through India to Manila, Japan, and Mexico.
Vol. III of the Baroque Cycle
Book 6 - Solomon''s Gold
Book 7 - Currency
Book 8 - The System of the World
The System of the World takes place principally in London in 1714, about ten years after the events of The Confusion.