OK, someone please explain to me how Neal Stephenson is a best selling author in America. The man writes these huge, complex, meandering thought experiment novels, that require good foundations in scientific thinking in order to be parsed and understood; like Stephen King writing XKCD. This is a criticism, yes, but still, I quite like his books. Usually (still haven’t managed to get all the way through Cryptonomicon.) But I seriously don’t get how it’s possible that it’s not just me. America’s been telling me for years that I’m a freak for liking stuff like this, that she likes it too just boggles me.
Not that you SHOULDN’T like Mr. Stephenson’s work, because you should. And I have said so, so please start liking it now. Thank you. In all honesty, I’m glad that so many people DO like his books. There’s a lot to like about them, and some of them are important books. Anathem, in particular, is up for a Hugo this year. (For the record, my Hugo prediction for best novel is Saturn’s Children, since three of the other four nominees are books I adore and the fourth is a book by a writer I quite like. The Hugos have a long and distinguished career of being awarded to books I don’t like and don’t quite get. Except when it gets awarded to books I like, in which case it’s perfectly valid for me to use it as justification of the books’ quality.)
(Seriously, I’m glad I’m not responsible for choosing between Anathem, The Graveyard Book and Zoe’s Tale as the best book of the year. ’Cause I won’t, man, I just won’t. They’re ALL good.)
Confession, I haven’t actually read Anathem. Remembering my failure to finish Cryptonomicon (after three tries, no less), I figured I’d give it a whirl as an audiobook. Do you know what Anathem comes to as an audiobook? Twenty-eight freaking CD’s, that’s what it comes to. Thirty-four freaking hours. To contrast, I just looked up Cryptonomicon, which has a similar page count (918, to Anathem’s 937) and it comes up as almost 9 hours according to Audible. Which makes me wonder if the guy from the Jimmy John’s radio ads is reading it, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, this is a really long book.
Click here to see a trailer for the book.
Come back after you’ve read (or listened) to the book.
When evaluating speculative fiction, I think it’s important to keep two things in mind. One is what is being conveyed, the other is how well it is being conveyed. Speculative fiction is the fiction of ideas, and as such should be evaluated primarily on the ideas presented; the ability of the book to communicate those ideas is secondary, but still vital. Anathem is a book that succeeds in both criteria; it is both interesting and entertaining.
In Anathem, Mr. Stephenson posits a world in which those who are capable of sustained discourse on mathematics, science and reason are gathered up and fostered in concents where they spend their lives isolated from the saecular world and are carefully, mindfully trained to use their powers to the utmost. It is revealed that the ultimate result of this training is people capable of communicating across the multiverse, yet who are incapable of interacting with the majority of people on their own planet.
Interestingly, most of the people living in the concents appear to have some degree of Asperger syndrome (or, as Mr. Stephenson would have it, Attention Surplus Disorder); the core group’s “mascot,” Barb, being described in detail to convey that idea. This personality trait, as it is perceived in Anathem’s universe, is not seen as a disability or a disorder; it is instead an asset to concent community. The concents are viewed, by the saeculars, as the proper fostering houses of (or dumping ground for) children with this personality trait. Given a culture that encourages their strengths and does not needlessly penalize their weaknesses, the children of the concents grow into strong, intelligent, integrated adults.
In the world of Anathem, the concents have been destroyed and rebuilt three times in the past, and the story of Anathem is the story of the fourth rebuilding. The three prior rebuilds have all come at the insistence of the saecular world, who have sacked the concents out of fear of the developments made within their confines. The third sack occurred 3000 years before the beginning of the novel, and resulted in the greatest restrictions imposed on the concents by the saeculars.
To most of the people of the world of Arbre, what happens in Anathem is that some aliens show up, threaten Arbre, and a select group of the avout, including the protagonist, get shot into space, blow up the aliens’ biggest weapon, and then instigate peaceful negotiations with them. Ironically, it is revealed that what happened may not be as clear-cut as all that, that in fact, the aliens were drawn to Arbre by actions taken 3000 years ago, during the third sack by the avout themselves. The aliens are akin to Alan Moore’s squid monster in Watchmen, they are an outside threat brought in to disrupt the argumentative status quo of a contentious planet and foster a sense of unity between distrustful factions. The initial appearance of the aliens causes a large contingent of the avout to be allowed to leave their various concents to join with saecular leaders to discuss what to do with about the aliens. The discovery of purpose of this meeting (the convox) by the aliens leads to the creation of the antiswarm. All steps along the way involve the careful, peaceful insertion of the avout into the saecular world, and the end of the book describes the new style of consent, in which the mathic gates that once opened each year, decade, century and millennium are simply left open.
I find it intriguing that a novel that describes in great detail the benefits of creating a separate “thinking” culture concludes with the reintegration of that and the “active” culture into a new society. Presumably the assumption is that after 3000 years, the Mathic Society culture is strong enough to withstand the influence of the saecular culture. The Mathics are not convinced that the reintegration will last, they are preparing for the eventuality that it will not last, but ultimately, everything that happens in the book is set in motion to bring the reintegration about.
To return, for a moment, to the squid monster analogy, I find it interesting that Mr. Stephenson’s protagonists choose to employ this kind of deception to further their goals. Is their cause just? Are they more right to do so than Ozymandias, since they aren’t trying to save their world from imminent nuclear devastation, they are simply trying to free themselves of unreasonable oppression? Or are they, in fact, planning on maintaining the deception? The book is written in the first person, and the narrator specifically states at one point that he is writing the book with the possibility of it being read by aliens in mind. And the avout themselves are not temperamentally inclined toward deception; frankly, it annoys them. So, ultimately, who is Fraa Erasmus writing the book for? The saeculars, to let them know how they have been deceived into accepting the avout as heroes? The avout, to make sure that a large group of people who have difficulty engaging in deception are aware of how their new rights and responsibilities have been secured through deception? Or the aliens, to let them know that they have been used for political gains by the people who encouraged them to leave their worlds in search of some mathematical heavenly ideal?
Also, if aliens show up in Earth space, and the only recognizable markings on the outside of their ships are a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, and they ask to speak to a representative of our planet, please don’t let anyone send the pope. Especially if we turn out to be living in a Neal Stephenson novel.
Philosophical quibbling over the morality of the ending aside, I really enjoyed this book.
Tags: Anathem, Neal Stephenson
