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| Anathem | 
 enlarge | Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $16.35
You Save: $13.60 (45%)
New (56) Used (16) Collectible (2) from $14.78
Avg. Customer Rating:  109 reviews
Sales Rank: 247
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 960
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.5 x 2.2
ISBN: 0061474096
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061474095
ASIN: 0061474096
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 104 more reviews...
 no spoilers review September 9, 2008
144 out of 151 found this review helpful
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.
Another intellectually amazing novel from Neal Stephenson September 10, 2008
89 out of 94 found this review helpful
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.
The Book About Everything. September 16, 2008
50 out of 54 found this review helpful
Is Neal Stephenson a science fiction author? His two earliest novels, "The Big U" and "Zodiac" are contemporary satire; his masterpieces, "Cryptonomicon" and "The Baroque Trilogy" are historical romances. Take away the two Crichtonesque thrillers he collaborated on under the pseudonym "Stephen Bury," and what's left is a pair (could this be a pattern?) of books, "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age," that combine the near-future info-tech milieu of 80's cyberpunk with the irony and social consciousness of 60's sf. These two, and only two, indisputably science fiction novels came out back to back within a couple of years of each other in the early 90's.
Now, thirteen years later, we get a third: "Anathem." It is the first time Neal Stephenson returned to a genre. I think it's significant that genre is science fiction. I wanted to know, does he revive the tradition of those previous two works, or has he created something new?
Actually, he has reinvented the wheel. Shockingly, it is a bigger, better wheel. And it's about time.
"Anathem" is a work of Hard SF, meaning that everything that's weird or new in it is a rigorous extrapolation of science, mathematics and philosophy. It's the kind of book Arthur C. Clarke used to write in the 40's and 50's. He wrote about rockets and satellites because scientists were working on rockets and satellites.
Most (I would argue all) recent Hard SF, however, is about "rockets" and "satellites." Science Fiction has become an exclusively literary genre, with books inspired less by new scientific research than by previous science fiction books, and, regrettably, movies. Ideas turn into tropes, and instead of extrapolation, we get variation: of the generation star ship, the space alien, the artificial brain, the parallel universe.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Writers like Ted Chiang and Gene Wolfe write brilliant books by breathing new literary life into these old tropes. But their concerns are ultimately moral. They're not interested in New Ideas About Everything as much as in the problems and choices those ideas pose.
In the last thirty or so years, the only sub-genres of Science Fiction willing to take on new science and technology have been cyberpunk and its cousin ribofunk (addressing respectively info- and bio-tech.) But recently, both these sub-genres have been petering out because, I would argue, real-world progress in both those areas has been both too fast and too gradual: fast enough to make most writing obsolete shortly after, or even before, publication; too gradual to produce anything truly transformative for the long view (we're still waiting for AI, immersive VR, and genetically modified humans.)
(This is probably why Stephenson left the field.)
Well, now he's back with his big fat (wonderful) book, and what he's done is pretty startling, because it's been done before, but not in a very long time. Instead of borrowing tropes from existing science fiction, he started from scratch. He went to the source, to the work of physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, and even French literary theorists, and produced a nineteen-forties-style SF book of Big New Ideas About Everything.
The result feels both fantastic and oddly non-fictional, or non-literary. "Anathem" often reads more like a book by William Gladwell or Douglas Hofstadder, or Jared Diamond. But that's okay. The ideas are real and new, and developed in exciting ways. And Hard SF is supposed to be chunky. (After all, it was Arthur C. Clarke who came up with the idea of the geosynchronous satellite.)
Don't get me wrong: Neal Stephenson can write. And so "Anathem" is also a cool, funny, and exciting read. (Intriguingly, aspects of it greatly resemble Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" and "Book of the Long Sun" and Ted Chiang's "The Tower of Babel," which could be a case either of convergence or descent. But I don't care.)
And best of all, if Neal Stephenson sticks to his pattern, there's going to be a second one soon.
Philosophy as Popular Entertainment September 14, 2008
40 out of 46 found this review helpful
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.
 Snow crash awesome, Anathem not so much September 24, 2008
28 out of 30 found this review helpful
I won't bore you with a long winded review. :) First of all, I'm not a fanboy but I have enjoyed many of Neal Stephenson's books. For me, Anathem was an ok book. It had an interesting story and dove into some complex ideas and topics that are fun to think about... however, it still felt about 300 pages too long. Even though I liked the book and even enjoyed the divergences into the various topics... I got tired of them. The book takes place in a world similar to earth, but not earth... and to reenforce that aspect, the author introduced a whole new set of vocabulary for the reader to grok. That coupled with the deep topics and heft made this decidedly NOT an easy read. Arduous perhaps. The ending also felt a bit empty and lacked the 'reward' for my making it through the many pages.
If your a Stephenson fan, give it a go, you might love it. However, if it wasn't for lack of power due to hurricane Ike, I'm not sure I would of made it through it.
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