Comments on: Books: Anathem by Neal Stephenson

By: Paul Tomblin

Paul Tomblin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:18:10 +0000

Actually, I like the strange vocabulary. Most of it is cleverly done, especially if you know your Latin. For instance, they’re called “avout” rather than “devout” because “devout” comes from “deos”, meaning God, and they don’t believe in God, and I think “concent” is probably a play on “concentric”.

By: MattK

MattK — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:19:45 +0000

I think I was a little better prepared for that ending because I had just read Greg Egan's "Quarantine" that year. Eigenstate fiction is complex to read!

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:25:16 +0000

Dude, am I just thick? I didn’t really get that ending – I mean, I kinda got it, but the way that the whole thing just sorta rapidly changes from storming the ship, to popping into existence with Fraa Jad about to blow the whole thing up, to Fraa Jad having been dead the whole time? WTF? I mean, I know that there was that whole discussion on quantum narrative divergence and all that but why did Fraa Erasmus suddenly seem to be jumping between them? Did he die and then pop up in another one, or what? I mean, that book too WAY too long to get through just to be confused.
Except for that, I really dug it.

By: Recent Links Tagged With "anathem" - JabberTags

Recent Links Tagged With "anathem" - JabberTags — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:49:24 +0000

[...] The canon: From the Bible to Plato to …. Star Wars? Saved by Frenzyshark on Mon 01-12-2008 Books: Anathem by Neal Stephenson Saved by smileycyrusluver999 on Sat 22-11-2008 Musical scores used in the Anathem music project [...]

By: niall

niall — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:02:41 +0000

Given that there’s an explicit comment up front (can’t remember whether it’s in the acknowledgements or the reader’s note, offhand) to the effect that Anathem is best viewed as a fictional framework for ideas, rather than as a story, I tend to err on the side of art on this one. :)

By: MattK

MattK — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:48:36 +0000

Niall, I had similar thoughts. There is the translation between concepts, the translations between cultures, all sorts of mappings going on. I’m a little torn between a review of the book as a story and a review of the book as art.

Art-wise, the mappings and length are great. Story wise, they detract a bit.

By: niall

niall — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:42:40 +0000

“But why? In the end, there’s no real need for this story to take place on a different planet: if set here on Earth you’d have a history for free, you could reference the work ideas of folks like Plato or Pythagoras directly and you’d only need to invent new words for concepts that are actually new.”

My take on this (I’m working on my review at the moment) is that translation is a central theme of the book, and the alternate-ness of Arbre intensifies that theme. Every time you start reading a book, you’re engaging in a form of first contact — you have to learn how to read it — and in sf that problem is more acute than in any other genre. And Stephenson gets to have some fun playing with our preconceptions of how social structures would translate — the ways in which concents are *not* convents, for instance, or the etymology of “saunt”.

Moreover, it strengthens the argument about the platonic/hylean theoric world that runs through the novel — if Arbre’s philosophers came up with the same ideas as Earth’s philosophers, it lends some support to the notion that those ideas are being transmitted to both worlds from somewhere else. Placing the ideas in a new context also allows him to examine them from fresh angles; this is the sense in which “theorics” is a combined discipline, in which while the underlying knowledge is the same, the subject areas into which it is divided aren’t quite the same as they are in our world. And, for me at least, abstracting the ideas makes his erudition a bit less intimidating.

But then, I enjoyed the first 300 pages very much, thought it dipped in the middle, and then picked up again around “Messal”.

By: MattK

MattK — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:45:07 +0000

Good point – I was referring to the ideas, not written texts. I corrected the sentence to reflect that, but perhaps I should have even written it as referring to the ideas of the Pythagoreans, since we don’t really know what he came up with vs what his colleagues originated.

They certainly were a secretive bunch of numerologists.

I appreciate your quibble in the spirit in which it was given.

By: curious

curious — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:24:33 +0000

I’m curious to know how one would go about referencing the works of pythagoras directly, since he has no extant writings and legend has it that he never wrote anything.

By: More Light! More Light! :: Books: Anathem by Neal Stephenson

More Light! More Light! :: Books: Anathem by Neal Stephenson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:41:40 +0000

[...] finished the book and put up a longer review of Anathem When I got home from going San Francisco and the Caymans this Sunday I had a pleasant surprise. I [...]