Money Makes The World Go Around

Wired News catches up with Neal Stephenson as The Confusion starts appearing in bookstores (and, fingers crossed, in my mailbox). After declaring cyberpunk dead, Stephenson talks at length about the role of money and markets in late 17th- and early 18th-century Europe, and how to work all that into a ripping yarn. I myself eagerly await the continued adventures of Jack Shaftoe... Paul de Filippo proposes that Stephenson's pretty much cast science fiction by the wayside, and grouses, "If we wanted this kind of pure historical romance, we'd be reading Patrick O'Brian." On the one hand, I'd suggest that Dorothy Dunnett is probably a more apt comparison; on the other, I'd suggest that maybe it's not Stephenson who has to conform to genre expectations, but genre expectations that need to expand to include Stephenson's new directions.