Anathem

Stephenson's is a fascinating mind. He latches on to so many differing ideas and swirls them into a world both familiar and unique. In Anathem we are introduced to a world drenched in history from the viewpoint of a scholar class that is set apart from the popular culture. The hallmark of Stephenson's writing is an effortless ability to explain and illuminate the big questions. Anathem tackles the biggest of questions and to elucidate further risks draining the reader's motivation to tackle a 1,000 page story. Suffice it to say that the journey is entirely worthwhile. The author invites his readers to examine their beliefs--not only what they think they believe but to engage in the dialogue familiar to the students of philosophy. Stephenson is adept at weaving exposition into the narrative without seeming overly preachy; although, as he did in the Baroque cycle, his disdain for shoddy thinking is always present: witness the many references to BS, which echo Dr. Frankfurt's illuminating work. Frankly, I don't quite know how a Stephenson novice would approach Anathem. Like anything artfully and skillfully complex, Anathem requires one to reach for the "upsight," it requires one to think--and I don't believe that I could pay this work a higher compliment than that. In a world that is increasingly defined by torrents of BS, Mr. Stephenson invites us to rejoin the great thinkers of the past and to try and make some sense of the situation in which we find ourselves.

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.

If I could, I'd give it a four and a half, but since I can't, I'll round up. Anathem is... actually, I don't know exactly what Anathem is. If you like Dune, you'll fall in love. If you liked the Da Vinci Code, well, look elsewhere. The story, when it gets going, is exciting and relatively fast-paced and all that. But it takes some 600-700 pages to get there, during which time you are immersed in the world of Arbre and its native culture. The first few pages are chock-full of in-world jargon à la A Clockwork Orange, and it will be difficult to read. (Not to worry-- there is a glossary, and selections from the Arbran dictionary appear throughout the text) Once you break through the wall of comprehension, though, you'll see that this book is even more ambitious than The Baroque Cycle-- where the Baroque Cycle took about one hundred years of real history and made it alive, Anathem takes eight thousand years of fictional history and makes it as relevant and meaningful as anything from the Cycle. Alas, there's really not that much I can say about the plot of the book itself that wouldn't give things away too quickly. But trust me-- slog through the initial phase and you won't be disappointed (I know I wasn't, and I'm a pretty harsh book critic.) The book is not without its flaws (and perhaps someday when I am feeling less charitable, I will update this to reflect them). But they are minor flaws on a near-perfect diamond and don't diminish the beauty or power of the book.

First off, I'll let slip that I am a big Neal Stephenson fan, although I did not enjoy the Baroque Cycle. Anathem is, in some respects, "difficult" to read. Yes, there is language here that Stephenson made up, although he didn't take it to the same level that Tolkein did in his Middle Earth works. (There is an glossary of terms at the back, and entries from a dictionary are spreckled throughout the book.) And Anathem may be "slow" in that it takes approximately 200 pages to get to the core of the plot. However, I never found myself bored with the writing. It is a difficult book to describe to others. In some ways, I felt like I was reading a novelization of "Goedel, Escher, Bach". There are some complex ideas here, some of which are expanded upon in appendices, which contain dialogues (ie in the Socratic sense of a philosophical or mathematical discussion between two people of differing views). I find such discussions intriguing, so I never found the book dry or boring, though strictly speaking, much of the material could have been removed to focus strictly on the plot. (This would, however, have weakened the reader's understanding of the plot.) Such digressions are quite characteristic of Stephenson's work (ie the discussions of language theory present in Snow Crash), and for a certain audience, it is quite enjoyable. If you have a tolerance for (or perhaps even enjoy) side-discussions of interesting material, and enjoy speculative fiction, then none of this should put you off. If you read xkcd, or liked Snow Crash, or the Foundation series by Asimov, then Anathem is likely a good bet for you. If mathematical or philosophical concepts make you cringe in fear, then you would probably not enjoy Anathem (or anything else by Neal Stephenson for that matter). This review is based on an advance copy.