Anathem

I was gonna say the synopsis reminds me of Canticle, and amazon seems to agree. I'll take a closer look at this one.

Well, I've been looking for some new reading. I'll have to pick this up next.

It restored my faith in Stephenson after the plodding boring Baroque Cycle. I still choose The Diamond Age as my the favorite from his works, but this is right up there with Cryptonomicon.

I loved Snow Crash but Cryptononicon was tedious wanking...the the thought of reading 500 pages of the Baroque Cycle to get maybe 400 pages of plot (shudders)

Is this a stand alone or another Cycle?

...wut?

^For the first couple hundred pages I agreed with you. Then I started to suspect the novel wasn't going anywhere. Plus, I'd recently read a nonficiton book that went over most of the real life incidents Stephenson uses in the novel, but much more concisely.

But like I said, I really liked Snow Crash, so if you're saying he's removed the bloat from the story, I'll probably give this a try.

I read this in November and enjoyed it a lot.

In fact, my biggest complaint was that it felt somewhat rushed. I think there was enough material in there to fill several books and I would have enjoyed spending more time in the world he sets up.

Possible spoilers? To be safe, swipe to read: I also felt like there was a missed opportunity for more toying with the reader in terms of whether or not that world is our future or a different world entirely. As it is, I felt like the question was answered in this really perfunctory way, despite it being a pretty central mystery to the reader. Maybe that was never Stephenson's intention. I dunno.

On a random other note, I'm in school for philosophy. Between this and the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson has single-handedly given my parents a much more exciting and educational depiction of what I do than I ever could.

I only just cracked page 100 but the culture building is pretty great.

Here's a piece of the real-life inspiration for the book: http://www.longnow.org/clock/

This is Stephenson's masterpiece*. He marries his esoteric interests with great writing, a good plot and characterization, interesting and challenging themes and philosophy, and still manages to bring it all to a good, satisfying - even moving - conclusion**.

I LOVE this book.

IMHO the only guy currently writing SF who even comes close to Stephenson in terms of prose and thematic material is Iain M. Banks. But he's a distant second.

*Alright, it's his second masterpiece. The Baroque Cycle is just a mind-boggling achievement, even if it runs out of steam at the end. He wrote that bloody massive thing in fucking longhand. Longhand! With an ink well!

**Sticking the landing has always been Stephenson's biggest flaw for me. Prior to Anathem his books have Stephen King-esque "everything blows up real good" endings, or they sort of peter out to an unsatisfying anticlimax. He really brings it all home here, and you close the book with that warm, satisfied, humbled feeling you get when you know you just finished something special.

I picked this up just the other day. Only 75 pages in but the world Stephenson's created is really sticking with me and making me wish I didn't read so damn slowly. I'm getting a real Hyperion vibe off it.

Don't mention 'Hyperion' in a thread started by Devin...

Oops. Thanks for the heads up. It's a shame he read Simmon's (admittedly terrible) horror stuff. It doesn't reflect what came afterwards. In any case, back to the topic at hand...

Anathem is on my radar, but I've got some other stuff to get to first. I had (almost inexcusably) never really read anything by Stephenson then a couple years a go a friend was going off on his love for the guy's work and suggested I start with Snow Crash. I'm glad I did because I thought it was excellent. I've since snagged a copy of Cryptonomicon but it is as of yet unread. I've got plenty of books on my 'to read' list. Glad to hear good things about Anathem though.

If you're on the fence about reading this book, I have three words to convince you: kung-fu space monks.

I was slowly getting around on reading Stephenson, but then again: SOLD.

Science geek kung-fu space monks, no less.

Just finished the novel. Loved the way the reader has to immerse themselves in the world and how, in the span of 900 pages it goes from 17th century medieval procedural to space opera.

My only gripe was that at times it fell into the trap of "And then we found out this really important piece of information. But the time wasn't right to talk about it so you, dear reader, must wait 50 pages." But then, I'm all about instant gratification.

I'd never have thought I'd find extended discussions about metaphysics so gripping.

My understanding was that Lio & Jesry each experienced two different narritives with Jad - one involving the world killer being activated and another more 'positive' one, though the specifics of the narritives were different than those Raz experienced.

I read this a while ago and really loved it. Although I found the culture at the beginning of the book (once I got passed the very long descriptions of buildings) to be amazing and it was more interesting as it went along.

Particularly I like that we're allowed to linger in the monastery (I forget the term used for it in the book) for a bit longer at the beginning rather than simply getting whisked away on the grand adventure. The ending was definitely, for me at least, an unexpected turn but a great one.

I've definitely recommended it to a few people. Especially since a lot of the people I spend time with are anthropology/history graduate students and the scholarly pursuit as a monastic order is an great idea and the thing that is executed most interestingly in the book.

So could I read this without losing anything or should I read some of his other books first? Actually, would anyone mind listing the order I should read his books in, should I just follow publication date? I need something to read after I finish up with the Henrietta Lacks book I'm reading.

The only books I've read of his are Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon and neither are really relevant to this book at all.

As I understand it, the only ones that have an order are the Baroque Cycle books.

I've not read any of his other books and don't feel like I missed a thing.

There is also a slight order between 'Snowcrash' and 'The Diamond Age'...

From wiki
The Diamond Age can be seen as set in the same universe as Snow Crash, many years later. This reading is based on a connection between Y.T., a major character in Snow Crash, and the aged neo-Victorian Miss Matheson in The Diamond Age, who drops oblique references to her past as a hard-edged skateboarder. This would set The Diamond Age some 80–100 years after Snow Crash.[17]

Further supporting evidence to connect these two novels include:

Stephenson's short story "The Great Simoleon Caper" which refers to both the Metaverse seen in Snow Crash and the First Distributed Republic seen in The Diamond Age (another short story which fits in the Diamond Age milieu and even shares a character is "Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast").
references to Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities (FOQNEs) in both novels.
When taken as part of Snow Crash's timeline, The Diamond Age provides insight into the setting of its predecessor. In a conversation with Miranda, one character tells her that the nation-states of the world collapsed when electronic communications started using an untraceable relay system that made it impossible to enforce taxes on online transactions. Deprived of their funding, large-scale governments collapsed, and small, voluntary governments like the burbclaves depicted in Snow Crash emerged in their place.

Both novels deal with an almost "primitive tech" replacing a current, worldwide use technology, in the sense of the reprogramming of the mind through ancient Sumerian chanting in Snow Crash (which also uses allusions to Babylonian prostitutes passing an information virus like a sexually transmitted disease), and the idea of nanotechnology propagating and communicating through sexual intercourse, passing from body to body like a virus. Both novels use an ancient, almost primitive threat to modern, "Western" technology and ideology (The Raft in Snow Crash and The Fists of Righteous Harmony in The Diamond Age). Stephenson explores the idea of the tech divide and its social and economic ramifications to the extreme using these violent, but not all together surprising, social revolutions.

That seems like a bit of a stretch in relevance to answering the question about what order to read them in. They may be related but it doesn't seem like there really any reason that one has to be read before the other .

Hey...just providing the info so potential-readers, 'who wish to', can make an informed choice.

Tonally 'Snowcrash' and 'The Diamond Age' are very different stories. In Snowcrash Stephenson is indulging in boyhood fantasies as much as anything, were as The Diamond Age is not about boyhood fantasies.

How anyone can not fucking LOVE Crytptonomicon is completely beyond me.

Goddamn, I loved that book.

Just picked up a hardcover copy of this book for three bucks at a thrift store. Honestly, I've never heard of Stephenson but when I saw it sitting on the shelf, I thought oh, that's the one Devin really liked!

Any recommendations for a beginner like me? Like other books that are similar but aren't so daunting that I should read so I can prep up first. I do want to get the most out of this book that I can the first time though but I can count on one hand how many hard sci-fi books I've read.

Of course, I'm open to just diving into this sucker.

It's a book. Just read it.

Yeah, you're probably right.
But if someone is starting to get into The Beatles, I wouldn't recommend starting with The White Album before Sgt. Pepper's (of course, there's nothing really wrong with that).
Just thought there'd might be value in approaching it this way.

Yeah, I mean that sure some people will say to read them in order but the truth is that if the book can't stand on its own, it can't stand on its own. If you can get past the slow introduction (which can be a fairly standard issue in most sci-fi or fantasy novels) it's a great book that stands fine on its own.

I am about half way through it, and it not related to any other story of his. It very wordy though, so it might help to have a big vocabulary. So far I would say it is his best work.

This book spanked me. One quible, I guess, (spoilers)is that the Erasmas/Ala love story kind of fizzles out at some point. That's how I felt anyway. Most of the book Raz's life is in so much danger that the odds are pretty good that he's never seeing her again. And I kept wondering if Ala even had the same feelings for him. Then she shows up and it turns out she does, and they fuck for the first time, and Raz maybe loses his virginity. Or did they? Did Ala give Raz a handjob or something? What the heck was that scene in the Geometer hospital?

So after nearly a month, I have finally finished the book. It was amazing. So good.

It contains a lot to think about and appreciate, that when I finished, I got a feeling of wanting everyone I know to read it as well, to share my appreciation of it.

Despite its length, the book just flys by. The fact that Stephenson can maintain a sense of excitement and page-turning urgency for over 900 pages is a testament to how good a writer he is.
My only complaint is that I wish it was longer. There was so much that could have been expanded upon.

Now that I've gotten over the emotional part of finishing the book (c'mon, I can't be the only one who tears up a bit when a book I really like comes to an end, especially a happy one), I can now start thinking a bit more analytically. So now I have a ton of questions, mostly concerning what happened at the climax.

Spoilers:
I don't really understand why the worldtrack that the led to the peace negotiations necessitate Jad dying. Couldn't the Narrative in which Erasmas and Jad meet the Fulcrum leader continue on, with the same results?

Considering I absolutely hated Snow Crash (I probably would've liked it if I'd read it when I was 15 but at 25 I found it to be excessively juvenile) would you guys still recommend me Anathem?

I'm not really a big Snow Crash fan and I really liked it.

Each or his stories are their own thing and are not really related. I didn't like Snowcrash, but liked Diamond age and they are in the same universe, and both even have YT in them, although one take place 60 or 70 years ofter the other.

The world track thing at the end is simple an example of the human intellect theory. The thousandyear have the power to do thing even after death.

That wasn't my impression, Jad told Raz he knew nothing about what happened after death. I took that literally.

When Lodoghir tells Raz that no one truly understood what the incanters were capable of I took that as a hint that Jad didn't really die he just removed himself from the narrative. Why? For his own reasons I guess, I don't really know, but I think his final statement might explain it.

It's a great story, and it's tempting to start over-analyzing the events in it. I'm guilty of this because I like not taking things too seriously and I haven't fully digested all the philosophical ideas the book presented.

I did like what the book said about the pursuit of knowledge. Raz makes a comment about Jesry's family that they were very smart but had know idea why they knew the things they knew. This hit a chord with me, I'm guilty of that. I liked the contrast between the avout, who mostly pursue knowledge to better understand the world, and those in the Saecular society who pursued knowledge out of a misguided sense of superiority or subscribed to irrational beliefs in lieu of real knowledge .

Anathem has very, very few moments that I would characterize as "juvenile." I would categorically say "none", but it's been awhile since I read it, so I'm not 100% sure.

It's very adult and deals in Big Ideas. It's complex, but understandable. It's academic, but exciting. It's tightly plotted, and well written. It's just wonderful.

The Baroque Cycle and this prove to me that he can do anything. To me, Stephenson hints at having the power to produce a truly Great Novel with Anathem. Anathem isn't quite it, but it's oh so close.

And now I want to drop everything and read it again...

That's convincing. I'll give it a try, thanks!

Yeah that's the impression I got as well. But pretty much everything that Jad does near the end doesn't make much sense to me. I really have to read that section again.

Any one else wonder why Stephenson nearly ignores the character of Tulia? She doesn't even get a reunion scene at the end or anything, despite being set up quite a bit in the beginning. I thought that was odd.

What was the name of the book?

I also took an option to be that Jad didn't ACTUALLY die in the "final" worldtrack, he simply removed himself from it, and the powers-that-be on Arbre "faked" his death so as not to freak out the Geometers.