I've decided to read Neal Stephenson's latest science fiction novel, Anathem. I read a big article about it in this month's Wired magazine, and the appeal of the novel to me was inescapable.

These are the things that appealed to me right off:

1. I no longer like science fiction, per se. I don't care for any book that's part of some ongoing series, or some "universe" that spawned multiple books. I like good, literary stories, and not enough sf writers produce that. They use the sf elements as a crutch, instead of an opportunity.

2. Neal Stephenson has quietly crept on me as perhaps this generations "serious" sf writer, a legitimate deep threat in his own right. So reading a book of his is something that interests me. Apparently, each of his books is a different reality, instead of some Johnny One Note series.

3. This particular book raises some themes that hit very close to home for me -- the passage of time as differently perceived by each of us. My fluke mutant power is to sense the passage of time differently from my mates. I see everything in broad strokes of time, long term. Time seems to fly by for me in life -- I can feel it going by in chunks. And I look around me and see people that aren't like that -- they seem to live as things will always be the same.

I gathered from other threads that stanleylieber and Brotoro have read this book recently, but I didn't feel like compiling whatever comments they made here. Let's just have a thread about it -- an Anathem book club thread, if you will.

I just ordered it of AmazWAN last night, so it should be about 5 days before I get it. But the tension can build as it comes.

How about some non-spoiler discussion? And non-spoiler, to me, does not mean "don't say anything about it." Non-spoiler is about like a book review in the newspaper would be. Characters, themes, conventions, settings, etc.



http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061474096/?tag=imwan-20

Blog entry about Anathem and its confusing title in the NY Times Blog:

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008 ... hem&st=cse

It says there they will be reviewing it in the near future.

Visit this page after reading the first chapter:

http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/music.htm

I really dig the book. I've been reading Stephenson since around 1992 and I feel each of his books has been an order of magnitude better than the last. The Baroque Cycle and Anathem in particular reach the level alluded to by Jay in his initial post. That is to say, transcending genre (while still embracing its tropes) and achieving the status of literature.

It's hard to talk about this book without spoiling it. It would probably be safe to confine ourselves to discussion of the information revealed in the book flap until everyone has a chance to catch up.

The book has probably my favorite opening of any book, ever:

Stephenson has taken a lot of flack from online reviewers for his mucking about with vocabulary (the book contains a glossary). He has invented parallel words for terms that already exist in conversational English, and has the characters using them without explanation. Having read the entire book, I have to wonder what these reviewers must be thinking. The reasons are explained in the text.



http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_rss/118676.html

I found the beginning of the book to be very hard going because of all the unusual terminology (or strange words used in place of normal terminology), but there is a reason for this. It is somewhat odd that Stephenson chooses to use normal words for some things (such as "cat" for the local analog of the feline species), but not for other things (computers are not called "computers," and trucks are not called "trucks"). It's part of the fun, I guess, doing the one-to-one mapping of story terms to Earth terms. But I was pleased to find the glossary on page 891 (it defines things in ways that do not spoil the story).

There are some parts of the story that I felt came dangerously close to jumping the carcharodon, but we can discuss those later.

I agree wholeheartedly with that graph. But the Wired article convinced me there was a payoff in the case of this book.

This kind of cutesy stuff is one of Stephenson's hallmarks as an author. The protagonist of Snow Crash, for example, is named Hiro Protragonist.

Some people really hate that kind of thing.

See, for me, all that stuff is the best part. I'm one of those who found the intramurous segments of the story to be more enjoyable than the extramurous.




This is another one of those quirks present in most all of Stephenson's writing. It's like he tries too see how outrageous he can make the plot points while still keeping the narrative coherent. I loved Cryptonomicon when I first read it, but I think in retrospect the tendency to induce eye-rolling hurts that particular book much more than Stephenson's subsequent novels. The later books have the outlandish stuff much more smoothly integrated into the whole.

I dunno.

I want to read his stuff now. Where should I start?

You should start with this one (Anathem). I've never read anything of his, and I'm starting on this. It doesn't build on anything that came before.

Well, I haven't read Anathem, or for that matter most of his other works, but I would certainly endorse Snow Crash as a good starting point. The Diamond Age too - it may "build on" Snow Crash in some ways, and may (or may not) be set in the same universe - but that doesn't really matter. It works quite well as a standalone. Can't comment on his later (or earlier) works.

There are connections between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age for sure -- and possibly between Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. I speculate on a connection between Cryptonomicon, Baroque Cycle and Anathem as well. But it's subtle. Not something that the plot of any of the books relies upon.

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I nearly bought Anathem today, but balked at paying $30. Cryptonomicon was the only other Stephenson novel they had, and that one didn't jump out at me. I may order either Anathem (which did look pretty interesting) or Snow Crash from AmazWAN, or put them on my XMas list.

Interesting map, Stanley. Where did it come from?

October 14, 2008 04:42:00 PM GREENSBORO NC Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit

It's killing me waiting for your book to arrive.

Yes. How rude of him not to have chosen express shipping.