Anathem by Neal Stephenson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Anathem
Book Review: Another Great Ride from Neal Stephenson
Summary: 4 Stars
I figured out why I don't like the endings of Stephenson's novels. Like Tolkien, the main work here isn't the story, but the Universe. I have to say that this universe is certainly as compelling as Middle Earth, if not more. If he wanted, there are certainly a few more novels that could be written around the Mathic World.
This book was slow to get rolling, but once I started reading, I couldn't put it down.
If you're about to embark on this behemoth (890 pages), don't forget about the glossary in the back. I didn't realize it was there until I finished. I had to keep going back and look at terms as they were defined. The Calcas at the end are also a lot of fun.
I was sad as this book came to an end. I'll miss the characters and I'll miss the world and Stephenson built around them. I'll definitely read this one more than once.
Book Review: Another Stephenson Natural Philosophy Masterpiece.
Summary: 5 Stars
Neal Stephenson's works illicit complaints that they are very esoteric and difficult to understand. I find that they have multiple layers like an onion that the reader must peel away to discover the tasty meat that lies within. `Anathem' is no different. As `Snowcrash' gave us a peak at Virtual Worlds, and `The Baroque Cycle' rendered a glimpse into the birth of the Scientific Era, this newest work like `Cryptomonicon' before it introduces us to the world of Mathematics albeit from the point of view of the aliens of the Earth like planet Arbre.
Arbre is several hundred years post a nuclear war that nearly destroyed the world. Much like in `A Canticle for Leibowicz' science has become a religion that has been shut in within the walls of monasteries and cloisters. Once every ten years the doors of the monasteries open and the general public is allowed in and the monks are allowed out to mingle and reassure one another that all is well.
Though now Arbre has returned to a 21st Century technological state science is generally frowned upon by the Secular authorities except when someone is needed to solve a problem then they summon someone or a group of people from the mathic Monasteries.
The Mathic Communities themselves try to shade themselves from secular things. Atheism and aesthetics are much esteemed. If someone breaks the rules they can be given an Anathem and kicked out of the Math becoming `dead' to its members hence the title of the book.
In the story a group of young novices under the tutelage of Fraa Orolo an Astronomer set about to find what kind of interplanetary phenomenon he had been investigating when he was suddenly the victim of an Anathem and is kicked out of the monastery. What they discover puts both their order and the entire world of Arbre at risk.
Like his previous works, `Anathem' in addition to being a satisfying adventure is a book that teaches the reader something. In this case it's Geometry, Physics, Philosophy, and Anthropology. Much like Plato's dialogs this book has characters debating the nature of things such as quantum physics or deism. It is not a book that can be read quickly and be enjoyed but if you take your time and savor what has been written you will enjoy yourself and may actually learn something new.
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: Another spoiler-free review
Summary: 5 Stars
Anathem was a darned-good read. I wasn't a big fan of the Baroque Cycle (it may be better a second time around .... someday) and was afraid that Stephenson had jumped the shark, but with Anathem he's back to the quality of Cryptonomicon. One thing I realized as I was reading this was that Stephenson has never written the same book twice (counting Baroque as one book); many other authors will write books which are very similar in style, but Stephenson seems to feel the need to start from square-one with each new book. Anathem is his first novel to deal with aliens and spaceflight, and naturally he does it on his own terms.Book Review: Another world
Summary: 4 Stars
The story in Anathem takes place on a kind of alternative earth ("Arbre") where sholars ("Avouts") have sealed themselves off in closterlike milieus ("Concent") from the outside society ("The Saecular"). We soon learn that this has gone on for thousands of years, and that civilisation has developed, flourished and degenerated several times. Only on very rare occasions ("Apert") do the doors to the Concents for ten days and it's maths open for the saeculars. We follow fraa Erasmas, a young avout in the Concent of Saunt Edhard in year 3689, after the so called Reconstitution, awaiting the new Apert when he will meet his family for the first time in ten years. The scope widens as several avouts are called on by the Saecular to help solve a problem or crisis. And a strange object has been spotted on the sky... The word "Anathem" refers to when an avout is cast out from the Concent.
Some reviewers have been irritated by the use of alternative words in Anathem and even refused to read the book to its end. I would say that the frustration diminishes after about 100+ pages, but before that the reader has to go to the glossary. But if you read the whole book you will find that these alternative words have a clever function in the story, besides giving it a certain flavor. Also, many of them could almost be real alternatives: "speely" for movie, "theorics" for theoretical work, "syndev" (synthetic device) for computer and so on.
The book is too long though, at 890 pages. I found the first 200-300 pages very good. Here Stephenson introduces the scenario with the Concents and the Saecular, and gives hints of the history of Arbre. The part when Erasmas goes out in the saecular world to visit his family, and is confronted with it's vulgarity, is good. Then a couple of hundred pages follow that are more action-based, and I think that part could have been shortened a lot. The last 300 pages are a little uneven. Dialogues between the scholars are quite interesting (but sometimes longwinded), and here we are introduced to a theory of alternative realities with pieces of the philosophy of Plato.
The characters seems a little flat, but this is usual in idea-driven SF and Fantasy and did not bother me too much. I had only read Snow Crash before this, and Anathem is written in a more slow paced style and not so crammed with cool high-tech gadgets (but they appear here too a few hundred pages in). Also, as an alternative Earth scenario Anathem opens to reflections and questions about our own world and society. For example: should we let the scientists and scholars rule the world instead of the incompetent politicians (the "panjandrums" as they are called in the book), or is it better to have the best minds sealed inside their own cities without access to high technology?
All in all, a fascinating and well written scenario, a good plot that weaves all parts together nicely, but too long. 4 stars.