Stephenson was inspired to write "The Baroque Cycle" when, while working on "Cryptonomicon", he encountered a statement by George Dyson in "Darwin among the Machines" that suggests Leibniz was "arguably the founder of symbolic logic and he worked with computing machines". He also had heard considerable discussion of the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy and Newton's work at the treasury during the last 30 years of his life, and in particular the case against Leibniz as summed up in the Commercium Epistolicum of 1712 was a huge inspiration which went on to inform the project. He found "this information striking when [he] was already working on a book about money and a book about computers". Further research into the period excited Stephenson and he embarked on writing the historical piece that became "The Baroque Cycle". Robert Wiersem of "The Toronto Star" called "The Baroque Cycle" a "sublime, immersive, brain-throttlingly complex marvel of a novel that will keep scholars and critics occupied for the next 100 years".