Anathem
by Neal Stephenson
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Book Reviews of Anathem
Book Review: Intellectual menagerie w/ evident passion
Summary: 4 Stars
On a reader-to-character level, Anathem is a novel which is easy to become enveloped in and at the same time the greater scheme of things is engrossing. Much like Snow Crash (the only other Stephenson book I've read to-date), the pages are frothy and thick with a menagerie of provocative ideas and technologies but is ultimately weighted down by its own sheer density and occasional reader unfriendly passages. Considering its place in the genre of science fiction, Anathem blows away much of what has been written since the genre has began, with the exception of some of the current British space opera sub-genre.
What I initially found so captivating about Anathem was its noble beginnings at a hermetic cloister resided by knowledge devolving monks... or sorts. Gradually, the reader is brought closer to understanding the true nature of the convalescence with its denizens of fraas (monks) and suurs (nuns). Their levels of commitment rank from 1, 10, 100 and even 1000 years and their focused studies are even more varied (wine making, astronomy, gardening, etc.). The reader is introduced to this hermetic retreat at a time when they open their gates at the turn of the decade, where the fraas and suurs can leave for ten days and the townspeople can visit the enclosure. This period starts as any other decadal unveiling would have started, but at the end of day ten it's obvious that some concerning matters have been abreast which will test the tenancy of the avout (devout).
What is really the focal point of Stephenson's work in Anathem is his amalgamation of different sciences and philosophies with persistent dalliances in religion and metaphysics. It's obvious that the book has been well researched and well thought out (just look at the list of acknowledgments on his website!). The menagerie of topics isn't one which is loosely woven together, like some other science fiction drivel but is rather neatly pieced together with an intimate care and warm passion. Stephenson's energetic zeal for the completion of this novel has been made abundantly clear.
However, this same vibrant enthusiasm tends to weigh down some passages as the reading becomes denser and more tedious. Throw in some idiomatic Anathem lexicon and the reading of these paragraphs and pages requires focused thought and sometimes even rereading. It's definitely not light reading for the beach! Anathem will require your undying attention for at least seven days as your absorb the nomenclature, plot directions and a sopping up of the material presented by Stephenson. Challenge yourself.
Book Review: Another intellectually amazing novel from Neal Stephenson
Summary: 5 Stars
Anathem is another in a line of unique novels from Neal Stephenson. His earlier books like Snow Crash and the Diamond Age are excellent glimpses of the concept-driven novels that he has been writing for the last ten years. One weakness of his earlier books is that he didn't end stories particularly strongly (Snow Crash being a notable exception) but he has gotten progressively better at that, particularly with the System of the World, the last of the Baroque Cycle trilogy. Starting with Cryptonoicon, he started writing "long" fiction. One typical thing about these novels is that they have a slow build while you get introduced to the characters and situations. I know several very bright people who couldn't stomach the long lead-up in Quicksilver and never got to the fantastic 2nd and 3rd novels in the series, The Confusion and System of the World. Like the beginning of a rollercoaster where you need to climb to the crest of the first hill, the first sections of his novels pay off as the rest of the story becomes compulsive reading.
No spoilers to follow: Anathem finds him back in top form with a new cast of characters, a new world, and a new language. Not surprisingly, this means that the first chapters of the book are challenging and somewhat difficult, but as another review stated, nowhere near as convoluted and involved as The Lord of the Rings or (in my opinion), Dune. The more you know about history and ancient Greek thought the more you will be blown away by Anathem; and that is before the correlations to more recent philosophy and an extended meditation on zero-gravity navigation. A re-imagining of intellectual history, only Neal Stephenson can make the fine points of esoteric philosophical and intellectual minutia so much fun to read.
For me, one of the high points of the Baroque Cycle was how he made European history, the history of science, alchemy, and the history of banking and commerce so unbelievably enjoyable to read about. Anathem moves into more speculative areas by showing how the differnet ways in which we frame our thoughts have real and powerful impact on the world at large, even if it takes a long time for those speculative thoughts to produce concrete effects. I get the feeling that his novels are the product of his own intellectual curiousity about history, science, mathmatics, and now philosophy. Thankfully, he has a knack for packaging these ruminations into adventurous exciting novels and I'm incredibly happy that he's kept it up for this long. Highly recommended.
Book Review: Swiftian satire masquerading as SF
Summary: 4 Stars
Having recently completed this book, I find myself in complete agreement with the reviewers who have compared this book to the satirical works of Butler and Swift. With the caveat that all of the best science fiction is ultimately a comment on our current conditions, I see Anathem as the latest entry in a tradition of social satire best embodied by Gulliver's Travels and Erewhon and more recently by the works of Kurt Vonnegut, a writer whose works were also nominally classified as "science fiction." In its scope and complexity, it also bears some similarity to the work of Pynchon and De Lillo. Ultimately, Anathem (obviously) is a book of ideas, but it explores them in a carefully crafted world that is a looking glass version of our own. To do so, he creates his own argot, where TV shows are "speelies" and PDAs are "jeejahs." Why do that? In my opinion, it is a device to help distance his world from our own, while maintaining the close parallels that underlie his commentary.
So, what are the targets of his satire? Academic learning would certainly be one, with the mathic world as a reductio ad absurdum of the image of the ivory tower. Religiosity is another obvious target, as are the abstruse topics of academic discourse. The superficiality of popular culture would be another.
And how does Anathem work as Sci-Fi? So-so, I would say. Stephenson takes on weighty issues such as polycosmic travel, perception and cognition, all of which have been treated before in fiction. His exposition of Platonism (couched as Hylean theorics) is brilliant, but his notion of the differences in elements is a weak aspect of the story. If, as he would have it, fundamental constants in other cosmoi are different than those in our own, how do the atoms of visitors from those cosmoi remain stable in a cosmos with different physical laws? The idea that the chemistry is incompatible, but not the physics, strikes me as untenable. And the millenial praxis looks too much like a deus ex machina for my taste.
Finally, Stephenson has been criticized for not ending his stories particularly well. Personally, I don't care that much, as the enjoyment of his storytelling is in the ride, not in the resolution. Nevertheless, this story too ends in a rather neat, if not abrupt way, but with a wink toward those criticisms.
I enjoyed this book immensely, and if I didn't learn as much from it as from some of his earlier books, it still stimulated the brain more than most works of fiction do.
Book Review: A different kind of novel from Stephenson
Summary: 5 Stars
"Anathem" is a giant doorstop of a novel that manages to remain interesting, even compelling, throughout its entire length. It is difficult to review it without giving spoilers. As the novel begins, we meet Fraa Erasmus, the equivalent of a monk, in monastic seclusion. However, on Arbre, unlike Earth, the cloistered orders are scientific and philosophical, and the "secular" world outside is the religious world. We see Arbre through his eyes, and one of the interesting aspects of "Anathem" is how one would perceive a society based on only seeing bits of it on short occasions, as opposed to being immersed it in as a participant. I'll stop there in describing the plot; other reviews have done a better job than I have, and you will enjoy it more the less you read about the details of the plot.
Stephenson has often been criticized for the endings, or perceived lack thereof, of his novels. I used to agree with that criticism, until I returned to some of his works and "got it" the second time around. Nonetheless, "Anathem" includes a more conventional ending that most readers will find satisfactory.
The idea of "more conventional" may explain why some readers did not like "Anathem" as well as some of Stephenson's past works. Most notably, "Anathem" lacks the digressions and diversions that have characterized his previous novels - from the chapter in "Cryptonomicon" about eating a bowl of Captain Crunch, to virtually all of the Baroque Cycle. Indeed, the Baroque Cycle didn't have a plot so much as thousands of pages of stuff happening - the journey itself was the destination. In contrast, "Anathem" is much more tightly plotted and rarely gets off-track in the course of 900 pages.
After I finished "Anathem," I was reflecting on how different it was from Stephenson's past novels, and how it is not connected to any of them. However, I realized (without giving away any spoilers!) that the special gold in the "Baroque Cycle" and "Cryptonomicon" may have its origin explained in "Anathem." Perhaps I'm reading too much into certain events in "Anathem," but that's my interpretation and I'm sticking to it.
"Anathem" is SF as literature, or literature with SF elements. Although hard science is part of the story, this is not a hardware-dominated novel - in contrast to "The Diamond Age" or "Snow Crash." As such, people who do not read much SF may find this to be accessible and interesting. I recommend it highly to anyone who likes interesting, thoughtful writing.
Book Review: Whoa! What just happened?!?!?!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book operates at so many levels, it's kind of hard to characterize.
In this book, "monks" and "nuns" are all sequestered, atheist, and academic, while actual religious types are ignorant, luddite blowhards. Society's leaders have set things up this way, in part as a rejection of the headlong pursuit of modernity. This all changes after space aliens show up and act as a catalyst for huge changes in the scheme of things.
At one level, it's boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-meets-other-girl, boy-loses-other-girl, boy-regains-other-girl.
At another, it's a clueless newbie venturing out into the world and getting an education he'd never imagined.
At still another, it's space-aliens threaten plant, council of war is convened, aliens are subdued, all live happily ever after.
Next there's the cautionary tail about the unexpected consequences of herding geeks together for long periods of time, especially for parking garages.
Then there's the threat by space-aliens as a chance to expound on the nature of reality.
Etc., etc. This is a monster of a book. At the end it even has a glossary and a collection of primers so the reader can fully grok what's just happened.
What I love about this book is that it works at so many levels, has so many great messages, and still manages to keep the readers attention.
Well, mostly.
The "messal" bit - about a quarter of the book towards the very end - sort of drags a little. OK, it requires the reader to stay engaged quite closely, being as it is a condensed history of the philosophical take on reality from about Plato to the present day. Since mostly geeks will be reading this book, that's fine, but the average "sline" is going to have trouble, I'm guessing.
A great book. I'm still gobsmacked. I'll be reading it again and again.
Updates after further reflection:
1. I like the notion that humans will eventually be "smart" enough to solve NP problems by collapsing reality onto a solution state. Nice.
2. It's good to know that the Y4K (or thereabouts) other cosmos still has a BOFH. Simon Travaglia would be proud.
3. Raz worries about "allswell" but never really reflects on the chemicals that keep concents neutered. Funny.