Books: Isaac Newton, Action Hero

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Cult-classic science-fiction novel--check. Comic novel about environmentalists--check. Best-selling thriller--also check. What is there left for Neal Stephenson--author of Snow Crash, Zodiac and Cryptonomicon, among other novels--to write? The answer is The Baroque Cycle, a stunning 3,000-page trilogy about 17th century scientists that will defy any category, genre, precedent or label--except for genius. (That's right, I'm using the g-word.)

The Baroque Cycle is so huge that it's being released in six-month intervals, Matrix-style: Quicksilver drops in September, The Confusion in April 2004 and The System of the World in October 2004. But you'll wish it were longer. Its scope is galactically vast and encompasses the lives of noblemen, vagabonds and, above all, thinkers. Amid the still smoking aftermath of the Fire of London, the likes of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Liebniz (both major characters) are laying the foundations of modern science by hand, equation by equation. Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking and thrilling. In The Baroque Cycle, he proves on an epic scale that the key to knowing what's next is understanding what has come before. --L.G.