Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, ‘prequel’ to The Cryptonomicon and vol. 1 of the projected ‘Baroque Cycle’, arrives on September 23. The first chapter is online for you to preview.

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This blow-by-blow account was created for all the Neal Stephenson readers who, in anticipation of his upcoming book, Quicksilver, took it upon themselves to try to solve the cryptographic puzzle they encountered at the Baroque Cycle Web site. If you had difficulty making heads or tails of it or are simply curious as to what it all means, what follows is an explanation of how one person arrived at the solution. Bear in mind that this narrative will reveal the translation of the code written in Wilkins’s script, so if you are still interested in solving it for yourself, you may want to reconsider reading further. — Stephenson fan Todd Garrison

As Stephenson explains, the cryptographic “… inscription on the splash page is written in Real Character, a system of writing invented in the 1660’s by John Wilkins—an English bishop, natural philosopher, and SF writer who appears as a character in The Baroque Cycle.” What is perhaps most remarkable about Garrison’s cracking the code is that he was totally unfamiliar with the existence of Real Character.