Neal Stephenson's Anathem

...was published today.

Anathem was an "Early Reviewer" book here on LT.

So, has anyone read it?

I got the book on Monday and so far its a rollicking read! I have been waiting a long time for this!

I've read it.

It's 900 pages long and full of lengthy philosophical discussions. It's definitely not for everyone, and my attention wandered at times.

It's also an adventure novel set on another world, where the protagonists are mostly cloistered, highly educated scholar monks. They're bright and interesting people.

The main character is a 19-year-old who definitely wasn't the brightest in his class, and is probably the most boring character in the book. I'm not sure why Stephenson did that, and it probably could have been a tighter book if the main character were older and more knowledgeable to begin with.

Nevertheless, I sucked it down in a week and a half, and thought it was absolutely brilliant. And it was the sort of book that I immediately wanted to re-read, because I suspect that I missed some things along the way the first time through.

hmmm...i felt rather burnt by the last two volumes of The Baroque Cycle..but this seems intriguing...Unfortunately it's checked out and there's a hold on the one copy in our county library system...Amazon or not.....??????

#4 ...i felt rather burnt by the last two volumes of The Baroque Cycle...

That's it exactly. Much as I loved Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle pretty much burned me out, too, and I'm reluctant to take on another 1,000 page doorstop until somebody talks me into it.

(Accidently double-posted, because LT went down....)

I really loved Cryptonomicon, but stalled out halfway through Quicksilver. I feel that I ought to try again some day, but I don't know if I can summon the energy. I liked Anathem.

I've started it, but only about 1/3 through it. At least it does not try to change history by demanding that people with modern sensibilities lived then. That conceit made me livid. People ARE a part of the culture! If you start with a fresh planet, with its own history, then you can add or substract cultural assumptions as you will.

I only got my copy on Saturday, and just finished it today.

I loved it, and think it's the best thing he's written since Cryptonomicon. I did enjoy the Baroque Cycle, though I felt it didn't need to be that long and suffered from the separation of the stories.

Anathem is chock full of philosophy, for sure - it's almost an alternate-history primer on western philosophy. I enjoyed this, but then I enjoy philosophy generally.

It earns its classification as science fiction by becoming a hard-sf treatise on parallel universes and the nature of consciousness.

I definitely recommend giving it a go.

I'm in Anathem...but giving it a break right now. The positive response here has given me some hope..I liked/loved just about everything through Crypto..but got SO tired of the Baroque Cycle..yeah..he probably, no certainly does, have more general knowledge than I do (and ...gives geography majors a good name), but writing for the sake of glorifying the author just turns me off. Show me how smart you are...don't shove it in my face, thank you very much...

Today's xkcd nails it:

xkcd #483: Fiction Rule of Thumb

As the floater says:

("I'm looking at you, Anathem")

I know, I saw that and I thought "but.. but.. no, look, you just don't understand!" ;)

I understand how it can be irritating and a barrier to suspension of disbelief for some people. I think it's justified in Anathem, however.

Also, is this a spoiler free thread? Cause I really want to talk to someone (anyone) about what happened to Fraa Jad.

I also would love to discuss the ending to Anathem. I am new to Librarything, how does this work? Should I just start a new thread? I tried searching around for any existing threads. Any suggestions?
Dan

I'd start a new thread and, out of courtesy, include "SPOILER ALERT" in the title. I, for one, plan to read it at some point, and would rather not stumble upon a lengthy explanation of the ending with no advance warning. :)

ETA: Welcome to LibraryThing!

SPOILER THREAD HERE: (started by BookListener - msg 13)
http://www.librarything.com/topic/55100

I just finished Anathem and would be happy to discuss. I, too, got bogged down in The Baroque Cycle Trilogy (only read the first two) after having LOVED Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, and Snow Crash. (In case anyone cares I was also not a fan of Zodiac although my spouse - who agrees with me on the others - thought "It was all right.")

i'm exactly where #15's spouse was/is...Though i started Anathem, stopped after 50 pages and am waiting to resume @ some point soon. I started too soon after slogging through Gene
Wolfe's book of the new sun and the beginning was too reminiscent of the Wolfe at the time.

Anathem actually managed to have an ending. I've described Stephenson before as an author with awesome beginnings, interestingly baroque middles and then endings that just sort of peter out... Anathem actually managed to reverse that formula and I really appreciated it. I think at this point it may have jumped above the others as my favorite work of Stephenson's. It helps that it echoed some things that I've tried to write in some of my own short stories and I've got enough of a linguistic, mathematical and scientific background to have a reasonable jump on the novel.

(Cryptonomicon's last few chapters left a bad taste in my mouth, and I've yet to even try tackling The Baroque Cycle.)

I ended up enjoying anathem a great deal. It took me forever to get past the first 70-80 pages - but once past that initial hurdle i became, somewhat to my surprise, totally engrossed. It's almost as if NS took the literary equivalent of an inverse function of Snow Crash. Where SC was non stop action and light on characterization, Anathem features lots of (interesting) discussions, digressions, characters who one EXPECTS to be "talkers" and characters i found myself worrying/caring about.