The Quintessence of Why I Read Neal Stephenson.

Here is an excerpt from a book called "The System of the World" by Neal Stephenson. It captures just about everything that I like about him. "The System of the World" is the third volume in a series called "The Baroque Cycle" Highly Recommended.

From page 457: "In an apt demonstration of the principle of Relativity, as propounded by Galileo, the bawdy platter , and the steaming morsels thereon, remained in the same position vis-a-vis Daniel, and hence were, in principle, just as edible, as if he had been seated before, and the pies had been resting upon, a table that was stationary with respect to the fixed stars. This was true despite the fact that the carriage containing Daniel, Isaac Newton, and the pies was banging around London. Daniel guessed that they were swinging round the northern limb of St. Paul's Churchyard, but he had no real way of telling; he had closed the window-shutters, for the reason that their journey to Bedlam would take them directly across the maw of Grub Street, and he did not want to read about today's adventure in all tomorrow's papers.

Isaac, though better equipped than Daniel or any other man alive to understand Relativity, shewed no interest in his pie -- as if being in a state of movement with respect to the planet Earth rendered it Not a Pie. But as far as Daniel was concerened, a pie in a moving frame of reference was no less a pie than one that was sitting still: position and velocity, to him, might be perfectly interesting physical properties, but they had no bearing on, no relationship to those properties that were essential to pie-ness. All that mattered to Daniel were relationships between his, Daniel's, physical state and that of the pie. If Daniel and Pie were close together both in position and velocity, then pie-eating became a practical, and tempting, possibility. If Pie were far asunder from Daniel or moving at a large relative velocity -- e.g., being hurled at his face -- then its pieness was somehow impaired, at least from the Daniel frame of reference. For the time being, however, these were purely Scholastic hypotheticals. Pie was on his lap and very much a pie, no matter what Isaac might think of it."

excerpted from "The System of the World" - Neal Stephenson

Bonus points were scored here for:

1. Using the words vis-a-vis and asunder.
2. Being two complete paragraphs of digression.
3. Relativity was NEVER so funny. Ever.

Pick up one of his books and start reading. You won't be disappointed.

Ryan