Anathem by Neal Stephenson

GWC Community GWC Book Club
#1

Neal Stephenson, of Snow Crash fame, has produced his best work ever.

Like much great fiction, it starts with a character in a very insular, closed little world and gradually expands his horizons to reveal his place in the community, society, world and cosmos around him.

It’s set on another planet, Arbre, eerily like Earth, where 3700 years ago a near nuclear war caused all the scientists to be sent to monastery-like institutions, and periodically made not to pursue certain areas of study, like DNA sequencing.

Then comes a mystery that will change this world forever, and Fraa Erasmas, a novice avout (scientist/monk) is at the center of it all.

The adventure includes thought-provoking discussions on the nature of consciousness and parallel cosmoses (by definition, they can’t be universes in the plural!), along with some great suspense and page-turning action.

#2

Sounds really interesting, tks.

#3

Author Adam Roberts mentions Anathem in a recent blog posting where he lambastes the short list for this years Hugo Awards, calling all the books on the list mediocre at best. He describes Anathem as not “so much mediocre as enormous and deranged and so boring it goes through boring into some strange condition on the far side.” A comment, which at best, is a sort of backhanded compliment. Do you think there is some merit to this remark?
Of Stephenson’s work, I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Snow Crash. I also began but never finished Quicksilver as I found the story got unnecessarily bogged down in the middle.

Here is the link to the blog in case anyone is interested:
http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/2009/07/hugos-2009.html

#4

I can see why people who liked Snow Crash might not like Quicksilver (or the rest of the Baroque Cycle) or Anathem. They’re far more character-driven than plot-driven, and therefore in a way you get out of it what you’re willing to put into it. If you can’t invest in the characters (and I’ve read plenty of character-driven books I was unwilling to invest in), then yes, it can be boring.

#5

I finished this last night. Man, that was amazing. Definitely NS’s best work. It was pretty well crafted all the way through, and finally he created a fairly satisfying ending.

We definitely need to do a Book Club on this. It really deserves a lot of discussion.

#6

I agree that Anathem is a massive work but completely worth reading. I actually went through it twice with a short interlude between and found the second reading all the better because I could pay attention to the details.

I also gave it to a friend as a gift and got him totally hooked on Stephenson’s work.

#7

I really want to say yay this one. I have the book and got a hundred pages into it or so then got distracted with other books. I really love Stephenson he is one of my favirte writes but i have to really be in the right frame of mind to read his books because he packs so much into every page that it can be overwhelming. I often find myself rereading many pages just to make sure i got everything. But the worlds he creates, oy, they are so fantastic

#8

So I finished Anathem yesterday (I know, I’m behind! alas. But once I started it I devoured it). I really enjoyed the book, much in the same way that I enjoyed Cryptonomicon, but I was very disatisfied with the conclusion. I really liked thinking through the ideas and theories and playing “where did that come from” with the correlations between the text and what I know of our history of science and philosophy. I really liked the structure, and how in each section the novel developed into something even more interesting than what had come before. I liked thinking about the ideas and problems that are presented by the characters throughout the novel.

But! (and I’ll put this in spoiler tags since it’s about the end of the book)
[SPOILER]I felt like the jump between the Requiem and the Reconstitution sections was just… off. We’re in the midst of a peace conference, there’s the emotional impact of the exchange of remains, there’s the threat of the Everything Killers, there’s the competing Narratives… and then we’re back on Ecba building the not-Concent of Saunt Orolo and having a double wedding? That didn’t work for me, it felt like a cop-out and didn’t fit with the rest of the book. It wasn’t quite as bad as the Deathly Hallows epilogue, but it was that kind of jarring to me.[/SPOILER]

#9

I agree about the end, a few more pages of explanation would have been nice. Although his editor might have taken hostages if it got any longer.

#10

Yeah, Stephenson has a knack for writing books that come to a crashing halt of an ending (I’m looking at YOU, Cryptonomicon!) They’re not bad endings, just sudden.

#11

The frak? That’s the only book he actually ended, instead of just getting bored and wrapping things up.