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Anathem
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Anathem
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Anathem
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Anathem

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable—yet strangely inverted—world.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet … and beyond.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateOct 6, 2009
ISBN9780061982484
Unavailable
Anathem
Author

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is the author of Termination Shock, Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Zodiac and the iconic Snow Crash, named one of Time magazine's top one hundred all-time best English-language novels. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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Reviews for Anathem

Rating: 4.157539691477053 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A bit slow to get started since you've got to get plugged into the world he's created, but once you're are plugged in it is a delight.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    All I'll say is that it's mostly brilliant, save and except for the chunks of pedantic dialogue about the polycosmii. Stephenson has this problem with creating scenes of 'let's all sit down and listen to somebody lecturing about these ideas'. But really, I recommend this book to you if you're into cerebral sci-fi, 'cause it's pretty awesome.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The adventures of a young monk on an alternate world were perfect for my audiobook lullaby - there were lots of philosophical discussions. This being a Stephenson novel, the ninja monks did eventually make an appearance and things heated up for cross country treks and an interesting take on aliens.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a science fiction work by probably my favorite author or close anyway. This book is long. It is full of math and so much information. It really is "science" fiction. The story takes place in another world. The characters are interesting and is quite common, this is a quest. The group goes looking for Fraa Orolo. This is a very creative universe and the themes "Major themes include the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism". But you can enjoy the story without worrying about understanding all of that. I will definitely need to reread this one. audio was well doneRating 3.6
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely loved this. I was skeptical of how far Stephenson distanced himself from his usual historical fiction / cyberpunk trappings, but it really pays off. I was over my head in some points, but I guess that's more reason to read it again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Oh wow. This was cool.
    Basically what you have here is a sort of alternate universe where they have these monasteries that are scientific instead of religious. And with lady and gentleman scientists both. And they sort of cloister themselves off for different periods of time, like 1 or 10 or 100 or 1000 years, so the outside society is constantly changing while the monasteries more or less stay the same.

    It also is about different philosophical/mathematical/scientific ideas that people in our world have thought of already, and explains them to you in an understandable way. I know this sounds annoying, but it isn't.

    What I love about Neal Stephenson's writing:
    --it makes you feel smart and teaches you things at the same time
    --even though the story is very involved, you always know exactly where you are and what is happening to whom
    --he is willing to spend a whole paragraph describing a vast collection of folding chairs and tables, just for the hell of it
    --he's kind of a goof
    --he can write a book that is 935 pages, and on page 500 or so you are already sad because it will eventually have to end.

    What I don't love:
    --he has this idea that only women can possibly understand interpersonal relationships, and men are clueless oafs. I don't believe this is true.
    --a 935-page book is freaking HEAVY.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There is a style of book that drops you in in the middle and expects you to sink or swim. This is not that book no matter how lost you feel at the beginning with the invented vocabulary (there is a glossary at the end though I think you will find that, other than proper nouns, learning the vocabulary from context clues and the in-text definitions is rewarding). It is also rewarding to pick up the book with as little information as possible, but knowing that you may want some information to decide if this is your type of book, consider the following:

    -It is told from the perspective of a monk (avout in book-vocabulary) and is very heavily infused with philosophy, thought experiments, dialogs (think Plato), and slow-living. There is physical action, but it is between hundred page stretches of slower-paced maneuvering.

    -If it happens to you like it happened to me, there will come a point 850 pages in where you will realize something that seems like a plot hole so large you could throw this book through it and you will want to. Keep reading. Not only is it not a plot hole, but it is neatly tied up into the story. I can't tell you anything more.

    -The last 50 pages are slower than anything you have read so far, but the last page makes it worth it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For a retired mathematics and computer science professor this book was a perfect fit. I seek out references to mathematics in sci-fi, but this time I was immersed in a tale whose heroes and heroines were the experts on directed acyclic graphs, the Pythagorean Theorem, a pictorial proof of which actually appears in the book, symmetry groups and all things mathematical. As the story progresses, the references to computer science and quantum theory made it even better. Although these facts are woven into the story, it is apparent that Stephenson is not just fudging it, he knows his science well. The world he creates is an extremely interesting place to be during the telling of this tale. The only problem is that the details of monastic life, of cosmology, of mathematics, of logic, of philosophy, of physics, of space mechanics, all seemed somehow to have their own separate rooms in his world.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another reviewer used the word intimidating to describe this book; another the word rewarding; I found both of these to be true, but it takes a lot of effort to read 973 pages, a fifty page glossary of terms and a couple of supplements. Is that amount of effort worthwhile? My answer is obviously yes, because I have given it a four star rating. The only book I couldn't finish in the last thirty years was written by Stephenson, so I approached this one with great trepidation. But it soon sucked me in, I cannot pretend to have understood it all but the story and the incredibly worked out background kept me interested during the philosophical dialogs. The language is amazing, unlike another reviewer, I did not find the "made-up" words a turn-off, but part of the novel's fascination. I hesitate to recommend it generally because of its length and complexity but would assure anyone who tries it that patience and persistence will bring rewards.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Nine hundred some pages of mansplaining.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Breathtaking even 8 years later. Evident that it holds the seeds of Seveneves.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There's not much to say about this doorstopping monster that hasn't been said already, so I'll just call it the smartest and most entertaining brainjerk I had the pleasure to indulge in for a long, long time.It's rare that I get into a world so deeply as I got into this one - not only because Stephenson is meticulous in his worldbuilding (that's something we're used to, and everyone should know by now how much time and many words he spends on this aspect), but because for once he took extraordinary diligence with his characters. To follow Raz, Orolo and all the others on their journey was a delectable treat of character development.Anathem morphs from a coming-of-age-novel through the literary equivalent of a road movie into a space opera light, and during this tour de force he takes several detours into the depths of philosophical, linguistic and mathematical sciences - detours that take a lot of speed out of the plot, but are actually the foundation of premise, theme and world.That he made up a lot of jargon was only a problem insofar that as a non-native speaker I more than once had difficulties to distinguish between invented words and missing vocabulary. But that's simply a sign how clever he construed his language, and that's exactly what a glossary is for.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book and couldn't understand why none of my friends were talking about it. Most Stephenson novels can use some editing, but I was sorry t see this one end.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Great idea, terrible execution.This book starts with a great premise...a society where educated “avout” are cloistered away for varying lengths of time. However, Stephenson never figures out how to make that a key part of the story. How does their sequestration change them? After having read the book and contemplating on the plot and outcome, I have yet to figure out why he chose to set the story in this particular made-up world. It almost feels as though he intended to write a story about the world and a separate story about the multiple cosmos theory…then decided to merge them, with a disappointing result. Likewise, the plot is interesting, but Stephenson takes a straightforward story and stretches it out into an almost unreadable mash-up of action interspersed with Socratic dialogues. I actually loved the theoretical discussions. However, the attempt at “action” is terrible. There are several scenes (race across the arctic and voyage into space) that are bogged down by so much unnecessary detail that the pace of the book slows to the point of unreadability. Furthermore, there are many scenes that do little (if anything) to advance the plot, yet are described in methodical, arcane detail. Lastly, most of the pivotal plot points, where some actual detail would have been nice, are skipped and described after the fact, leaving one to guess exactly how they happened.In summary, this book lacks any semblance of editing, but brings out some interesting theories in a unique world setting. Read at your own risk and be prepared to be variously bored, intrigued and confused. Don’t get me wrong, the ideas presented are interesting. However, the method in which they are presented is confusing and less than satisfying.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fantastically realized blending of neo-Platonism, metaphysics, and quantum mechanics/physics. Along the way we get the standard alien-invasion story with so many twists that it's almost a new plot line. This is my first Stephenson book, and I will definitely be seeking more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Anathem defies all explanation. It is a masterpiece that enthralls you while you are reading and keeps you up at night as you ponder the philosophies discussed. The melding of science, fiction, and human nature is seamless and unrivaled. Definitely one of the best books I have ever read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's very good. It was hard to dive into, because of all the nomenclature. But once I got past the initial vocabulary hump, I enjoyed it immensely. It's thought-provoking, and in-depth, and just highly satisfying overall.

    I liked the breadth of the story -- it feels somewhat epic. A wonderful read, all in all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It would be grossly inaccurate to call this simply a 'scifi novel'. If anything, it's a mathematics-philosophy-science-speculative-adventure fiction, but that doesn't abbreviate very well.

    This is a nice big chunky piece of brain candy, with a wonderfully rendered setting, a large glossary of invented jargon (refer to the back if you're having trouble), and other neat tricks.

    Lots of intellectual fun, recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I could have tagged this book with almost every one in the list. It's just shy of 1000 pages and densely packed with ideas, most of them at least moderately interesting. I'm not sure it's a book I could recommend to everyone - it's not exactly fast-moving, and some days I realize that my reading speed makes some books engaging that would be plain boring at a more sane pace, but it's overall a fascinating work and I'll be chewing over bits of it for a long, long time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Stephenson has done it again, only better. The narrative here is less convoluted, with fewer characters to keep track of than The Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon. Instead his enormous gift for meticulously detailed invention is focused on the creation, not just of a world, but of an entire cosmology. One of the many, many things to love about this book is its unashamed and accessible celebration of intellect, knowledge and enquiry - everything from quantum physics to molecular biology to advanced geometry forms part of the warp and weft of the tale. It's more than a story set in an alternate reality - it's a novel of ideas about the meaning of reality itself and about how understanding transfers and transmutes between peoples and times. A feast for the enquiring mind.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a beast. It is not a simple read. One should plan to commit to this book and expect to expend effort to complete it. There is so much going on. The story reflects the genius of Stephenson to create rich worlds in detail and his ability to express this detail.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I couldn't finish this. I think I may be done with Neal Stephenson, at least for a while. It seems that, as Stephenson's fame and clout have grown, he's grown more and more self-indulgent. Snow Crash, his first big success, was concise and brilliant, and maybe even a bit too tightly edited; it could have benefited from another 200 pages. The Diamond Age is, to me, his best work, and one of my ten favorite books ever. It strikes an amazing balance between conciseness and allowing Stephenson his manic rambles. Cryptonomicon, which came after, was great but sprawled hugely. Stephenson got away with enormous math-based research dumps - some 20 pages long - that never would have gotten past his editors when he was less established. It didn't ruin the book, but it detracted somewhat from my enjoyment. I found myself skimming a few times, whereas I had clung to every word in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. Finally, we come to Anathem, and I just found it kind of slow and boring.

    Slow and boring would have been bad enough, but the book also represents a leap forward in terms of another disturbing Stephenson tendency: elitism. In all of his books that I've read, there is a certain contempt for the stupid, the uneducated, the technologically unsavvy. That's to be expected; his books are written by a geek for geeks. But Anathem is heavy on the mean-spirited depiction of "slines," the obese, uncouth spiritual descendants of 20th Century white trash. The book's tone towards "baseline" Americans (the root word of the term "sline") is very reminiscent of Idiocracy, and I generally expect a sharper level of cultural satire from Stephenson than I do from the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head. Anathem just basically comes off as Stephenson's revenge on every mouth-breathing jock who gave him a wedgie in high school. Congratulations, Neal, you sure showed them.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This giant book starts out looking like it is going to be a somewhat unusual fantasy about a medieval time period on some other planet. That's not the case at all! The monastic 'avout' are scientists confined to low tech monasteries to save the world from their 'theors' and the technology they produce. After about 700 pages of mind numbing theor-izing about the nature of thought and the cosmos, human "aliens" from 4 other cosmi arrive, apparently because they were summoned by thoughts from 'up Wick' and came to Arbre in a quest to find the HTW. If that sounds confusing and very philosophical, that pretty much sums up this story. If you'd like to believe that ALL of our ideas come from some other more slightly advanced world, you might find this interesting. The characters are good, and there is a bit more story than I've indicated, but I still found this to be a very long intellectual exercise in the process of thought. I have to give this fewer stars than I might usually because you really, really shouldn't read this unless you have lots of spare time or absolutely have to read all of Stephenson's books, or have nothing else to read at all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Anathem was great for most of the reasons that Reamde was not. It was well thought out, clever, engaging, and truly epic, in the sense that I felt Stephenson had immersed himself in this world he had created and was not (like Reamde felt to me) merely making it up as he went along.I would be hard pressed to summarize the plot succinctly here. Alternate universes. There you go. Summarized. You can read other summaries elsewhere. The really amazing thing I want to point out is all of the time and obvious effort Stephenson put into creating this world of Anatham, with it's strange cult-like figures worshipping math and logic instead of gods. The clocks were nothing short of brilliant. The rules they followed were well conceived. The only downside to all of this planning and setup was that it took a couple hundred pages to get to something that resembled the main narrative. But with a little patience, you get there and suddenly you're drawn forward into a plot structure that has you racing across the globe and off into space.Yeah, this is hard sci-fi, something akin to Frank Herbert, if I were so bold as to make that analogy, in that Stephenson creates entire new cultures and describes them so vividly that you feel you actually visited them and have now returned home. (The only difference is, Stephenson's world is quite Earth-like and Herbert's certainly wasn't.) Even now as I flip back through the book to recall some of the names and places, my eyes glance across words Stephenson made up as part of this culture, and as my mind makes the mental leap to grab meanings I think to myself, "Oh right I remember those [various things]," as if they were real. Neat trick.Enough gushing over this novel. Did I have any complaints? Sure. The characters were quite stock-ish. Not a great deal of development there. And the main character, Raz, I felt spent the vast majority of the novel whining. That's an inherent downside in writing a first-person novel where the main character needs to learn and experience things to inform and educate we the readers. He ends up spending way too much time saying things like, "I don't understand! Explain it to me!" As my Aunt would say, "Would you like some cheese with your whine?" I could have done without all that.Aside from that, I had a really good time reading this novel. And if I must, from time to time, I will sacrifice character development for a wholly original story (I just had the same experience with Shades of Grey come to think of it) and will thoroughly enjoy it, but the next book I read better have a good set of dynamic and developing characters in it to cleanse the palate.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5


    This isn't my favorite Stephenson book. In fact, it is my least favorite. However, that isn't saying a lot since I generally have loved his writing quite a bit. This particular outing is still very enjoyable and well written. However, the concepts that he looks into required more detailed philosophical efforts than I felt that putting in for 900 pages. That being said, I still read it and enjoyed it. It will not slow me down on his next book - but while there are more than a few of his books that I will eventually re-read - I will probably give this one a miss the 2nd time around.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    If you've read Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" (and if you haven't, you should!), then the themes of this novel will be familiar: the nature of the mind and its connection to the physical body; the nature of time, space and frames of reference -- all wrapped up in a science fiction novel where theoretical science plays the role that the monastery played during the Dark Ages. The author deliberately changes names and vocabulary: you will need the glossary in the back. I've wondered why he felt it necessary to use new words for old concepts. I guess it's because he wants the reader to doubt his own understanding of familiar concepts; to make us pay attention and look at these ideas with "new" eyes. Sharpen your imagination, if you plan to read this book. Much of this nearly 1,000 page novel is description, and I found myself having to slow way down and create images in my head. Otherwise, I got lost. Stephenson has once again produced a tour de force. A writer who doesn't dumb down narrative for the reader, and expects the reader to work as hard as he does. Worth many rereads.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I put off reading this book for quite a while, mostly due to its size and the fact that I was never able to get through Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I'm glad I eventually took the plunge. Yes, Stephenson spends pages on exposition but I don't mind that at all when the world being explained is interesting and well-considered. I enjoyed the story too, which was a nice surprise as the back-cover synopsis also had turned me off.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Can't believe I ended up really liking this, but I ended up really liking this! The painfully slow introduction of an entire world history and philosophical viewpoint (literally) one definition at a time actually served a purpose and paid off in the end. I'll actually give this a second reading some day - I feel like there's a lot I missed because I was just not into it during the first 2/3rds of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wonderfully inventive, intriguing and educational. Sometimes I felt the technical details were overdone, but I think that's because I'm not enough of a nerd to appreciate them.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Anathem is a very odd book, and one whose appeal I do not understand.

    I don't think it would be unfair to call it an piece of expository nonfiction disguised as a novel. Virtues like plot momentum, characterization, drama, verisimilitude, and the like are subordinated to exposition. The book intends to do one thing, and one thing only -- it intends to expose the reader to a set of concepts and arguments Stephenson finds interesting. Stephenson is pretty explicit about this in his acknowledgements:
    Anathem is best read in somewhat the same spirit as John L. Casti's The Cambridge Quintet, which is to say that it is a fictional framework for exploring ideas that have sprung from the minds of great thinkers of Earth's past and present.There's nothing wrong with this as a goal. Sometimes ideas go down better when put in the mouths of characters -- anyway, that's one possible explanation for the appeal of philosophical dialogues. (Anathem, in fact, includes a lot of exchanges that sound, self-consciously, like philosophical dialogues.) And by using an entertaining story as a delivery system, an author can get concepts across to people who would never encounter them otherwise. What's disappointing and perplexing is how flimsy Anathem's delivery system is, how little appeal it has on the level of pure story. (SPOILERS FOLLOW.)

    The characters are made of cardboard. The dialogue is stiff and artificial, full of exposition awkwardly jammed into characters' mouths through unconvincing "as you know, Bob" devices and the like. This is the kind of book in which characters often make jokes that are not actually funny, requiring the narrator to explain to the reader that a joke has been made -- the point being not to make the reader laugh, but to convince the reader that the characters are people and not robots. The setting is a fictional alternate universe which is described in loving detail, but which is strangely uninteresting, since many features of its culture turn out, upon examination, to be features of our own world given new names. (The alternate history includes a Rome-like empire called "Baz"; Catholics are "Bazian Orthodox" and Protestants are "Counter-Bazian"; Socrates, Plato and the Sophists are "Thelenes," "Protas" and the "Sphenics"; academic scientists/logicians are "Halikaarnians" while humanists are "Procians"; philosophy and theoretical science are "theorics"; the internet is the "Reticulum"; smartphones are "jeejahs"; Occam's Razor is someone-or-other's steelyard; etc.)

    The plot moves at an absurdly slow pace. Its core is a set of maybe three or four major revelations, each separated from the next by hundreds of pages of dithering and blather. There is a huge amount of scene-setting before finally, on page 300 or so, we get introduced to something that, in some science fiction novels, would appear on page 1: the characters discover that an alien spaceship is hovering over their planet! It isn't until maybe page 600 or so that, after a huge amount of overly obvious foreshadowing involving theories of "the polycosm," that the next big plot point drops: the spaceship is from an alternate universe!

    In some science fiction novels, the alternate universe concept would just be tossed off in the course of a page or two, and things would move on. In Anathem, the concept itself is the whole point. There are, I would guess, upwards of 100 pages of dialogue in the book solely about whether alternate universes could exist, whether they could interact with the universe in which the book is set, their possible relation to a much-discussed realm of Platonic mathematical forms (the "Hylean Theoric World"), whether they can be understood by invoking the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, etc. The book does very, very little with its alien spaceships and alternate universes; it ends, so to speak, where many science fiction stories would begin. Rather than crafting stories about the effects of these concepts, it crafts a story about people who try to understand them.

    Yet very little understanding is achieved. Despite all the long-winded argumentation, the key concepts and arguments remain vague. The basic line of thought that leads the characters to the alternate-universe idea in the first place is odd and questionable. (Much of the argument hinges on the fact that the aliens and their ship are made of "newmatter," a special sort of matter that could conceivably be formed in an alternate version of the Big Bang -- but which the characters also know how to produce technologically on their own planet, which would seem to render the alternate universe explanation unnecessary.) The characters talk on and on about the Hylaean Theoric World, but it is never clear exactly what the term means. A realm of perfect mathematical ideas that influences the real world? But what form would that influence take? Mathematical inspiration? The mathematical nature of fundamental physical law? Both? No one is ever quite clear on this score.

    Why did this book make me angry? Because it sacrifices so much for so little gain. With 1000 pages of pure, hardcore exposition, uncorrupted by any need for likable characters or humor or action or plausibility, the least Stephenson could do was create a truly captivating web of concepts. Yet all he really gives us is a few ideas about alternate universes and Platonic forms bolstered by a few vaguely specified and unconvincing (though very, very long-winded!) arguments. The book received a good deal of high praise from reviewers for being "philosophical," for challenging the reader to engage with big ideas. What's funny is that the conceptual burden of Anathem is actually much lighter than that of many science fiction and fantasy novels (no -- of many novels, period). Readers are capable of absorbing information at a much faster rate than Stephenson presents it; a reader of Anathem is more in danger of being bored than being overwhelmed. The difference is that in other novels, readers will gladly do the "work" of puzzling through a confusing fictional edifice as long as they have some prior investment in finding out what happens. Give people a fun protagonist or a bit of action and they'll ingest ten Anathems worth of "theorics" without complaint. In some perverse way, maybe the very austerity of Anathem is its appeal: people (like the book's many rave reviewers) felt that something so boring must be good for them, like eating vegetables. To me, it just felt wasteful and insulting.

    (I haven't even mentioned one of the core conceits of the setting, which is a group of academic, non-religious monasteries called "concents" that live in slow, measured contemplation in isolation from the outside world. I think the concents are a cool idea, but one that Stephenson doesn't fully make convincing. In any case, I don't want to go into them because the book isn't really about them, just as it is not really about the characters. As Stephenson himself would admit, the whole setting is a pretext for conceptual exposition.)