Mysterious Symbols, etc.

Some people get funny ideas when they see unfamiliar symbols or alphabets reproduced in a book or on a web page. For their benefit, here are some symbols associated with my work and what they mean.

The glyph on the cover of Cryptonomicon is one of several symbols used by Alchemists as a shorthand for gold (Alchemists were more or less devout, mainline Christians, Jews, and Muslims. One of them was Sir Isaac Newton. This particular symbol is copied from one of Newton’s notebooks).

The symbol on the title page of Quicksilver is one used by Alchemists and chemists to represent mercury. Astronomers also use it to denote the planet Mercury.

Inscriptions in Real Character appear on the Baroque Cycle website, on an available Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technological Arts t-shirt, and in other places connected with the Baroque Cycle. The Real Character was invented in the 1660s by John Wilkins, an Anglican divine and later the Bishop of Chester, in an attempt to devise a truly scientific language and alphabet.