Anathem

Like everyone else I love Neal Stephenson, own all of his books blah blah. I have been reading for 40 years and love SF. This just fell short for me. Not enough challenging ideas not enough humour and it just lacked something.

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.

I have an advanced degree, a background in science and I enjoyed all of Neal Stephenson's other works -- everything from Zodiac to In the Beginning... to The System of the World -- but this thing was freaking unreadable.

Because everything else he'd written was worthwhile, I kept trying to pierce this novel but to no avail. I finally passed it off to my brother-in-law -- another Stephenson fan -- who also found it impenetrable.

Perhaps this would be a good choice for a true super-genius, but it is too much for a mere genius like myself. I guess I'll just read The Baroque Cycle again.

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2)
The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)

..it fell short.

First off, the other reviewers are right for chastising Stephenson's editor. He should've showed up for the game and cleaved at least 300 pages from this massive novel. Look, if you're going to give me a 900 page book, make it worth it. And by worth it, I mean that I shouldn't be able to predict the ending, and that the writer should delve deeply into topics - like quantum physics - instead of providing us with a cursory tail of "worldtracks". The whole worldtrack theory could've gone so much deeper. So much meat could've been added if Stevens had bothered to incorporate more knowledge from 21st century physicists like Brian Greene and others. But instead, Stephenson was lazy and scattered. And he spent far too much time describing the setting. It's a "concent". We get it. Now move on and get to the good stuff! Sadly, Stephenson never did. My time and effort slogging through this book were wasted..

This book suffers greatly from a lack of an editor with a strong hand. I finished it at last and was angry. Is that all there is after 937 pages? His story was like a slinky stretched out for 5 miles. The polycosmic ideas are not explained well (The Wick?), I don't think he understands them well enough to write about them or I could just say they were half-baked. And the verbal warfare between schools excuse me suvins of thought was just dead end prose. I have read EVERYTHING by Neal Stephenson and this is nowhere near The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash. This book is really a rough draft. Good characters,though.

Unreadable, unless you want to spend a lot of time figuring out Stephenson's special language. To me, his approach to describing a situation or scene is lazy authorship because he makes up his own descriptor words instead of using verbiage that's understandable or that the reader doesn't have to figure out. I'm sure there are many who enjoy learning Stephenson's method of describing things, but since I read for pleasure, story and plot, this was an exasperating book that I couldn't finish. This was the first of this author's work that I've purchased and wish there was a way to get a refund.

The book was part of a larger order and came in a timley manner and well packed. The inner wrapping of tight plastic as well as a backer board of cardboard both waterproffed it and assure a mint quality of the book(s).

I'll get this out of the way upfront . . . I have a complicated relationship with Neal Stephenson's novels (as opposed to his relationship with me, which is nonexistent). Even since his debut with "Snow Crash" I go into each novel hearing people, including friends, rave about his ambition, his skill at tying together various philosophical and mathematical concepts, the density of his imagination and almost every other compliment you can think of that could be applied to a novel. And yet despite my best efforts I often find myself utterly underwhelmed. "Snow Crash" felt like Pynchon-lite and I remember "The Diamond Age" being interesting but nothing to get that excited about.

Then around the time of "Cryptonomicon" he started go the route of writing massive books centered around high concepts featuring a sprawling cast and locales. Anyone who takes even the smallest glance of what books I wind up reading will probably note that the quickest way to get my attention is to up the page count to an absurd degree and most of the time I find the effort worthwhile. Yet through "Cryptonomicon" and all three books of the "Baroque Cycle" I found him leaving me so far out in the cold that concerned penguins were starting to offer me blankets. Yes, the books were big and centered around stuff I theoretically found interesting but Stephenson's presentation often turned me off, pitched to a tone I found slightly smug and all too aware of how eruditely clever he was being, as well as being almost desperately willing to show me every bit of hard work that went into making his book so brilliant (it doesn't help nearly every one of his books is hyperbolically promoted as a genre-breaking masterpiece, like its the only SF book they've ever read). I felt it was more determined to dazzle me into nerdgasms than give me a resonant story with deep ideas to ponder over.

After enduring "The Baroque Cycle" I had pretty much written him off but then I saw this one taking up a fat bit of shelf space at the bookstore. A move away from the pseudo-historical novels that I had found . . . less than enticing, it had a vaguely interesting scenario, an award to its name, the promise of a discussion of a raft of ideas and by the way its nine hundred pages. Okay, fine, we'll do this one more time.

And I have to say, this is the first Stephenson novel that I finished feeling like that . . . wasn't bad. Set on an alternate world pretty much like Earth except that events in the past have pushed all the math geek into monk-like existence while everyone else goes on about their regular days. The "avout", as they're called, live in sanctuaries set up in rings, with each section only emerging once every year, ten, hundred or thousand years depending on where they decide to study. The novel follows Erasmas, who's on the ten year plan and experiencing his first contact with the outside world in a decade. And while he and his friends are waiting to see all the movies they've missed they go about their usual routines of studying and debating abstract philosophical concepts at great length.

As several people have pointed out, the early pages are rough going as Stephenson seems determined to convince you that you're on another world by introducing a whole new vocabulary on top of the new history and customs so you'll probably spend more time than you'd like trying to figure out what some random word is from context. Being that book is written in normal English and he goes out of his way in the introduction to note that things like carrots and cats are called that even though its this world's version of such things it makes you wonder why he doesn't just call a phone a phone instead of making up a weird word. Being that he doesn't seem to be pulling a Tolkien and creating an entirely new language out of whole cloth you can probably assume its just part of his need to be clever-clever and leave it at that. Fortunately the new words number about maybe fifty at best so it doesn't take too long to get into the rhythm of things.

What helped here for me was the first person narration . . . he gives Erasmas a wry voice, innocent but not completely naïve and surrounds him with the equivalent of all the people rejected from the Honors Society for being too smart. His descriptions of every day life inside the monastery, er, concent don't bog the story down and give enough hints of a developing mystery. I also found, despite myself, being interested in learning about the culture of the avouts and all their little rituals (and I have to admit, Erasmas's description of being punished by "The Book" did make me laugh), which kept me engaged until the plot decided to ramp up.

And it does, gradually but eventually, slowing expanding outward as the novel moves from a young monk learning about the world and himself to what could possibly be a world involving instance of first contact. He manages to make the early scenes where people in intentional isolation are trying to figure out what's going on based on very limited evidence fascinating, keeping enough information out of reach to jog things along while hinting that the theories are going to become practical very, very soon. It lead to something I wasn't totally prepared for which was, in a first for a Stephenson novel, actually caring about any of the characters and being interested in their lives. The aforementioned philosophical discussions are probably too often and too digressive at times to be utterly crowd pleasing but for once they don't feel like a five year old eagerly dragging me into the next room to show me his latest art project. Instead it feels like how it should, a bunch of smartypants kicking back and tossing ideas around and if some of them come off as insufferable or go on for too long, well, people do that in real life as well. But they feel, if not essential to the plot, at least vaguely relevant and while they do bog matters down once in a while for the most part they're at least interesting.

Should it happen as often as it does? Probably not. By that token, should the book be nine hundred pages? Probably not, either. The early sections with the mystery and sense of discovery are the most worthy while the later unpeelings turn the plot into a slightly more rambling affair. But that point you're either along for the ride or have given up. He does his best to spice things up despite the slow pace by throwing in every scenario he can think of that isn't grounded in high-level math . . . so before the book is over you've encountered secret societies, martial arts cults, alien warfare, doomsday weapons, possible alternate worlds, space, dinner meetings, and even somewhere in the midst of all that, romance. Its done competently enough that it never feels incoherent, even if the revelations never quite have the impact of, say, "The Book of the New Sun", yet I found myself interested in the next development almost against my own will, even when its clear that Stephenson isn't going to be able to get his grand plot totally married to the concepts and resorts to going with the hazy version of a multiple choice quiz for the climax, which wasn't as annoying as perhaps it should have been but it could also be past experience setting my expectations accordingly. Maybe I was just thrilled not to be angry/exasperated when I finished, which is closer to my usual reaction.

Is a masterpiece? Oh goodness, no. I liked it, much more than I expected and that's considering that I read a chunk of it on a six hour plane flight with a kid kicking my chair and loudly narrating a cartoon to his father (in case he somehow missed that Donald Duck got into a car or was wearing a hat) . . . but part of that I think was responding to the camaraderie of the main characters and how they dealt with the languid twists of the plot and not the heady mix of SF and philosophy that was supposed to bowl me over. As a sprawling adventure story, its fine, but its far from original (as many writers have probably discovered, matching Gene Wolfe's blend of the erudite, literary and lyrical at his peak is just as hard as it looks, with the results hardly guaranteed) and if you want to believe this is Stephenson's attempt to give us an actual decent sequel to "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as opposed to the one we actually got, well there's perhaps a valid argument to be made for that.

How much will you like it? That depends on your tolerance for Stephenson's usual quirks, which are still everpresent . . . perhaps better embedded in the plot and diluted slightly by the length but for better or for worse, he's still got to be himself. The deep dive into philosophy doesn't disguise a fairly run of the mill plot but for once the characterizations made up for it and his sense of world building at least gave me something to work with. I'm not about to get on the train declaring him the greatest SF writer of our time (ideas aside, the book goes down easy for the length but his prose will never be mistaken for Samuel Delany) and while my inordinate fondness for ambition may be influencing me more than I'd like, I will say it was a distinctly enjoyable book and perhaps the first Stephenson novel I enjoyed cover to cover without feeling I had suffered through an endurance test of some kind. His previous attempts to give me a math-encrusted real world fell flat but by going back to simply making everything up he gave me something I wasn't expecting at all . . . an entertaining story.

How sad. I do regret for being a willing, albeit hopeful, participant in Neal Stephenson's negligible intellectual experiment - Anathem. The book is self-indulgent, story-less, and utterly disappointing. While reading just the first chapter, it become apparent to me - the author has very little regard for the reader. His abilities to carry the narrative of no consequence are impeccable. Picture the writer impressing him self, and if it is something you willing to put up with - go for it.

Anathem is a thousand pages of talking, conversing, arguing, speechifying, lecturing, *and* dialog…altogether unleavened by plot, narration, or character development.

The book is littered with made-up words for everyday things. (This is known as the 'call a rabbit a smeerp' school of science fiction.) These are annoying when present and disruptive when absent: Stephenson didn't bother to come up with a smeerp-word for the north pole of planet Arbre, so his characters just call it the Arctic.

Are there Deep Philosophical Contemplations of Existence in this book? No, just more made-up words ("cnoöns"?).

Reading Anathem reminds me of the joke about the optimist in a room knee-deep in horse manure. "With all this manure, there has to be a pony!" Only there is no pony in Anathem.

I'm a HUGE fan of Stephenson's work, ALL of his prior books hold a prominent place on my book shelves and in my heart. I had been waiting eagerly for his next work, and pre-ordered my copy of "Anathem" as soon as that option was available. I must say I have tried to give this work its fair shake, but I find it a shadow of the Baroque Cycle and Stephenson's earlier Sci-Fi stories, even "Diamond Age". What's missing? The FUN! Stephenson's other books are FUN. This one just isn't. And I'm very sad.

This is one of the worst books I ever paid for. 1000 pages of mystical drivel, and I enjoyed several of the authors other works.

I'm sure the author regards this as an intellectual tour-de-force, but I view it as a total waste of "words". After fifty pages, I realized that it requires 15 pages of history to "explain" how they got there, another 25 pages of glossary to get past the invented "language", and three appendices to discuss the pseudo-science involved.

There is no way that this book is worth reading for any reason. One might as well try to read greek orthodox theology written in Urdu, or follow Jesuit "reasoning"..

A massive disappointment - I deleted the book after wading through 60 painful pages. I won't bother reading any books by Stephenson again.

Difficult read. There seems to be no reason for the made up words. I could not make it thru the first chapter. Why would someone want to work this hard to read a story. This is one of the very few books I could not make myself read.

The dialog was very tedious. In some ways it resembled Ray Bradburry's "A Canticle for Lebowitzs" but with far less drama It was very tedious and I found myself speed-reading/skipping over page after page.

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.

He aimed too high. The task was too much for him.

I respect him for his attempt at what he was trying to do, but my experience of trying to go through the author's book is like experiencing a prolonged cramp.

The subject matter is different, but if you like this kind of thing take a look at Gene Wolfe's Books of the New Sun. If only the content of Anathem could be delivered like that, with that kind of writerly finesse.

It would have been awesome.

Two things inspired Neil Stephenson to write Anathem: first, the Long Now Foundation's Ten Thousand Year Clock project and second, Roger Penrose's book The Emperor's New Mind.

On the planet Arbre, Erasmas is a twenty year old avout (a monk or a nun). Like all avouts, he spends his days in deep study of science and philosophy and also takes turns at cooking and cleaning the math (the monastery). Avouts are forbidden from using most forms of praxis (technology).

Outside the maths lies the Saecular World, where there are few scientists but many technicians and engineers, doctors, priests and ministers, politicians, accountants, government officials, civil servants, and families.

The avouts are segrated into classes according to how often the doors of their sub-math open and lets those avouts go out into the world for a ten day period known as an advent. Erasmas, like most avouts, is a tenner, and he goes out into the world with his friends every ten years. There are also unarians (one year) but they are generally not commited avouts, merely Saecular students who come to study a little science and technology to take back to their world. Finally there are the mysterious centenarians and millenarians whose doors open every one hundred and one thousand years, respectively.

Stephenson spends about two hundred pages presenting us the Arbre and its maths and how the avout interact with the Saecular world during an advent. Up until this point, Anathem reminds me of Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game: a monastic-like order devoted to study for its own sake that is mostly but not completely isolated from the world.

The history and culture of Arbre is reminiscent of our own Western culture but with different people coming up with the same ideas: the Pythagorean theorem is called the Adrakhonian theorem, there's a conflict between Halikaarnians (Platonic formalists) and Procians (logical positivists and phenomenologists) and so on.

After that introduction *something mysterious* happens. A centarian avout is evoked (he's ordered to give up his monastic life at the request of the Saecular Powers) for an unknown reason. Then, a tenner is subjected to the aut (rite) of Anathem (excommunication) for using forbidden technology. This is where the real story begins and where the Ten Thousand Year Clock part of the book segues to the Emperor's New Mind part.

I won't give any spoilers, but at this point quantum physics begins to matter. Stephenson presents Big Questions that are debated by physicists today and the plot turns on proposed answers to these big questions. Why is the universe the way it is? Why do the physical constants have exactly the right values to permit chemistry and therefore life? Are our minds a manifestation of quantum states?

These are fun questions to think about and while knowing math and some physics helps, that knowledge isn't a prerequisite to understanding the book. What you need to enjoy Anathem is a basic layman's knowledge of western culture (you need to know about the Pythagorean theorem, about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, about Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein and their place in the history of western thought) but you don't need to have read Euclid or Heidegger or done the math.

Anathem's plot turns on answers to these big questions and because I have my own opinions on those answers, which disagree with Neil Stephenson's, this spoils Anathem for me just a little bit. On the other hand, Anathem always feels like hard science fiction and never like fantasy. It is *speculative* fiction at its best.

Vincent Poirier, Quebec City

The plot of this book is unintentionally hilarious! Heinlein's YA fiction is more plausible: not every kid in Starship Troopers went straight to top spots at Command Headquarters.

This book centers around a group of 18 and 19 year old friends from a cloistered order of intellectuals.

For reasons not explained, they from among countless more experienced and intelligent persons in a huge worldwide pool are chosen to be the center of action when the entire world is threatened

My unanswered question is this: Why, if he is so smart, does the young protagonist never ask what I kept thinking:

"Holy Coincidence, Batman! How did my best friend end up being the only intellectual(Avout) in the entire world chosen to go with an 8 person group on a world-important space mission? How did my girlfriend, who is even younger than I am, get put in charge of military
strategic evacuation plans? Why was I chosen to attend the world-saving conference when I am only the equivalent of a college freshman, and know squat? And how come all my other friends are coincidentally at this conference, too, including a kid who only recently joined the order and few people can even stand?" And so many more, but you get the idea.

I'm 3/4 through this, and will finish, but it's actually getting funnier as I read. The juxtaposition of deep scientific discussions with blatant disregard for the silliness of the entire endeavor is wildly entertaining.

Maybe something will turn up at the end to explain it all, but the teenagers' lack of curiosity in that regard is amusing.

to be fair i gave up before page 100. having said that, getting to even page 20 of anathem was simply an exercise, not a pleasure. what has happened to this author? i read fiction for enjoyment. if i don't enjoy the book, then what is the point? this book was too much like homework. another reviewer suggested that reading anathem was like reading "godel, escher and bach". well i own that book too...i don't want to have my head in the same place when reading fiction. the section of anathem that i read went into great detail explaining the world of the book, but without reason or motivation. look at books like dune...alternate universes can be introduced without boring the reader. i skipped the baroque cycle after giving up early in the first book...i doubt i will bother with stephenson after this.

This is one of my favorite novels, and one I can open to any page and just start reading. It's a science fiction adventure with astonishing ideas, set pieces, and characters; built on an alternate history spanning thousands of years of philosophy, monasticism, and academe; and, if you reach the end of the book, you might realize there was another genre hidden in there all along. You will be smarter after reading this book, full of new ideas, but you will only be able to express them in Arbran nomenclature. (Something for the Procians to chew on.) The world is so complete and meticulously-drawn that I really do believe the same story could be told from the perspectives of two or three other characters and it would be just as interesting. The world-building the kind of expansive-and-deep that I associate with, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien.

My only real criticism concerns the book's rather one-sided portrayal of religion, but it is written in the first person, and the protagonist has little interest in theology for reasons that are adequately explained.

My first attempt at reading Neal Stephenson's work ("Seveneves") didn't go so well -- I ended up not finishing the book and going online to learn the ending, and felt it was one of the weaker sci-fi books I'd read. However, I felt I was willing to give the author another chance. "Seveneves" IS one of his newer books, after all, and sometimes an author's older works are better than their newer output. I know "Snow Crash" is one of his most popular works, but the concept behind "Anathem" looked interesting, and I figured it was worth a shot. And while it does share some of the same flaws as "Seveneves," the world Stephenson has built and the fascinating story largely make up for said flaws.

"Anathem" takes place on the world of Arbre, where the intellectuals, scholars, and geniuses of the world -- the avout -- are segregated from the rest of society in monastery-like "maths." The avout are forbidden from using modern tech or even interacting with the outside world save on certain celebration days, and only share their knowledge with the rest of the world on a need-to-know basis. Fraa Erasmus, a young avout, is eager to step outside the gates for the first time in ten years... but his world is shaken to its core when his favorite teacher, Fraa Orolo, is exiled from the math for using forbidden technology. In his quest to uncover the truth behind Orolo's fall from grace, Erasmus and his friend stumble on a shocking truth -- an alien ship is hovering over Arbre. And as the avout and those living outside the maths struggle to work together for the first time in centuries in order to determine what kind of threat this ship poses, Erasmus finds himself swept up in a quest to learn the truth behind these visitors... and perhaps save Arbre from a cataclysmic conflict that could destroy multiple civilizations.

This is not an easy-reading book -- Neal Stephenson makes his reader work and think to take in the text, and doesn't always define terms right away (though thankfully most versions of this book have a glossary of terms). He also has done painstaking research on philosophy and scientific theories, and seems eager to share them with the reader -- a little too eager at times, as the plot sometimes grinds right to a halt so characters can have philosophical discussions that go on for pages. A philosophy major will probably greatly enjoy this book, and ordinary readers will probably come away with new food for thought and having learned a thing or two... but for those of us who come to this book wanting a plot, it gets frustrating. At least much of the philosophical chatter in this book eventually ties into the plot, unlike the scientific info-dumps in "Seveneves" that feel like they were just there to show off how smart the author was.

The characters themselves are fairly one-note, with one or two personality traits each and not a lot of development as the book goes on. Erasmus himself is largely bland, even for a narrator, and seems to be more of a passive protagonist than an active one -- he's largely pushed along by the plot instead of affecting it much himself. The most likable characters are his sister Cord, her lover Yul, and his snarky best friend Lio. Most everyone else is there to fill a role, whether it's villain or ally or just plain set decoration.

The best part of this book is the world it has constructed, one where ordinary people have eschewed deep thought and science for the most part and left that up to the avout in their maths. It's a startling parallel for our own world, and there are times when the book goes into just how fear of too much knowledge and scientific advancement can terrify the populace into violence. I'm somewhat sad that we didn't go deeper into the history of the Sacks -- three times in the planet's past when the world turned against the maths and attacked them -- and wonder if Stephenson will ever write a prequel for this book.

The plot moves along fairly slowly and is interrupted frequently by philosophical discussions, but when the plot does get going I found myself enjoying the ride. It's not your standard first-contact story, and it raises some very interesting questions on the nature of alien life and alternate universes. The ending gets rather jumbled (again, alternate universes are at play here), and I'm still scratching my head a bit at just what happened, but the journey to that point was fascinating, at least...

I'm still not sure how much I like Stephenson's work, and wonder if he has this tendency to info-dump all over the reader in every book he writes. But while I'm not sure I'll re-read "Anathem," it's certainly a memorable work, and left me thinking every time I took a break from reading it. If you like your sci-fi heavy and full of intellectual meat rather than light and space-opera-ish, you might enjoy "Anathem."

Off-world influence forever alters life for the citizens of Arbre and its math-based monastic order. Math-as-philosophy/-as-speculative-concept/-as-worldbuilding is unique and engaging, and kudos to Stephenson for also making it accessible. There's an attempt to balance the math-heavy sections with daily detail, but these details are boring and there's a sincere dearth of interesting characters or interactions (or women); the worldbuilding is clumsy, especially the use of language, and I don't entirely buy the plot (in particular, the importance of human consciousness). A book this long and obnoxiously dense needs to be a virtuoso work. This isn't. Dump the first 50 pages and the middle action sequences, trim it to about 400 pages, and there's some clever concepts worth exploring. But as it is, it's in no ways enjoyable, nor worth the effort.

I just went back and reread Anathem after enjoying Seven Eves. The books remind me of each other: surprising views of our universe evolved forward from the perspective of the characters who live in those eras. The big difference is that while Seven Eves evolves through time, Anathem evolves in a different way (no spoilers).
I love this book. Stephenson takes his time establishing the world we will live in for over 1,000 pages, and then heads off in unexpected directions. The lead characters evolve with us, learning about the evolving world they live in and responding from their strengths, evidencing their weaknesses. It feels real.
That said, it's not a book for casual readers. You commit 200 pages learning the language, characters, world and variables that the characters will work from for the next 800. The investment is completely worth it though, as the characters problem solve their way to their future. In that sense, it's science fiction at it's best: we learn from the characters as they learn from their world.
Highly recommended!

Neal Stepenson is my favorite novelist but this book is unreadable. Imagine taking a novel and replacing every tenth word with a nonsense word. So you basically have to learn vocabulary to read the book. A LOT of vocabulary. If I have to learn a foreign language Id rather learn Latin, it's more useful.

I really wanted to like this book, but I really struggles\d with many elements of it.

First of all, the author chose to use different words for things, since it was a 'different world,' but there were few or no context clues provided to the reader on how to connect these "words" to prior knowledge. As a result, I was extremely confused in the first 1/4 of the book, and the only reason I continued reading was because my husband had purchased it for me, and I would have felt guilty had I stopped reading. He had read the book, and he said he liked it, so I trudged on and just created my own interpretations (which I sometimes found later to be horribly incorrect) of the elements presented in the book.

Secondly, this book is HEAVY on technical math/physics type language, and to those of us who are not math types, it was difficult to visualize what was being discussed. The basic story line was interesting enough to trudge along, I mean\, I wanted to know what happened, but I found the (unnecessary) references to geometric proofs to be frustrating. Was he trying to impress his readers with his extensive knowledge of these things?

Finally, I found the final 1/4 of the novel to be contrived in its plot. At that point, I was way too invested in the story (it's a LONG book - possibly the length of a decent trilogy) to not know how it ended, but I was rather disappointed in the pedestrian resolution.

All in all, it was OK. I'm not sure I would recommend it to any non-mathy-science-fiction-people.

I kept wading through this tome figuring that there had to be a worthy reward eventually. NOT. Instead of reading this go pull out your fingernails and then try to pick your nose. That will be more fun.

Anathem is certainly not for everyone but, if you enjoy speculative fiction and are interested in the interplay of philosophy, science, and religion in society, it's a veritable feast of brain candy. The novel begins with a long introduction to a cloistered monastic society dedicated to the pursuit of purely secular knowledge with some byzantine intrigues that hint at coming intrusions from the outside world. Although this first half was rather dense and slow moving I found it engrossing due to the complexity and depth of detail in the author's conception of this alternate society. As in The Name of the Rose there are frequent, and sometimes extended, philosophical dialogues that initially seem abstract or esoteric but later become instrumental in explaining the motivations and actions of the characters. For those that find this part tedious, it may be worth soldiering on because in the second half the book transforms into a full-on science fiction adventure, with technical prowess and attention to detail similar to Rendezvous with Rama. Although it comes to a satisfying conclusion, by the time I reached the end of this 1000 page epic I was so caught up in the characters and their universe that I had the feeling one gets when moving away from a familiar and well liked place.

It took me about 100 pages to get the hang of the vocabulary and the setting. Then just as I started to settle in comes the revelation that turns it all upside down. Whaaaaaat??! It is rare to find a science fiction book that invents a different universe to such depths, so seamlessly mingles theoretical physics and an action-packed story. Others critiqued that sometimes it isn't clear where the story is going. Well, if you are an 18-year old who grew up sheltered and all of a sudden is thrust into power plays by known and unknown forces, while figuring out the greatest mystery his world has seen in millennia, of course it's not always clear where this is going. I found it all the more exciting to follow Erasmus and figure it out one step at a time.

I love Neal Stephenson but this book bored me to tears. I kept waiting for it to come alive but it continued to bog down in philosophical speculation that I found deadly dull. I felt like it's the exact opposite of ReamDe which was thrilling. And maybe that's exactly what the outrageously clever Mr Stephenson was trying to do.
As I was reading the book I kept complaining to my husband (also a Stephenson fan) about how boring it was. 50 pages in, totally boring. 100 page, still boring. 200 pages, nothing happened yet. He started laughing and kept assuring me that he was CERTAIN something great was about to happen. But no. There I was at the very end of the book and what sounds like something really exciting was going on and the characters continued to endlessly philosophize.

How to describe Anathem? If you like philosophy discussions, Socratic dialogs, then you'll be thrilled. I was never fond of philosophy in school, so that may be part of my problem....much ado about irrelevant abstractions, but somewhat central to the theme of the book. Better with quantum physics and scientific concepts...making one think; while it doesn't do "parallel universes", it does "cosmic narratives"...which while not the same, can leave one to puzzle over the conclusion. One could consider the first....400 pages as a turgid set up for the remainder of the book. The plot moves slowly. If you're looking for pure entertainment, I don't recommend this book. If you're looking for something that will make you think, its good...but it takes time; its dense and can be frustrating.

Audiobook not read by author

This is a great book that has both awesome sci-fi tropes (like time travel and alternate universes) as well as thought-provoking philosophical discussions. The heavy philosophical discourse in this book has left some people feeling like the book moves to slowly, but if you like to think and interact with material that you read, this is the book for you.

Set on a different planet, Neal Stephenson writes this book in a way that forces the reader to learn along the way. There is heavy world-building happening, and little explanation at the beginning as to why things are happening the way they are. I had to be OK with feeling confused for a lot of the early section of the book. I was also aided by a good friend who had already read the book, and benefited from his explanation of things to me.

Simply put, I loved this book. It was full of unexpected twists as the author slowly built a picture of a complex world with similarities and differences to our own, and of the world-changing events now happening in that world.
So, what is the book?
Is it an action thriller?
A religious text?
A mathematical textbook?
A philospher's handbook?
A journey of discovery / coming of age?
An excuse for the author to build many plays on words (both good and bad)?

It contains all those things, but I'm not sure that any of them really define it. Perhaps the "journey of discovery" part appeals to me most, as it helps the author to slowly build up a picture of a world like ours, but at the same time not. I also particularly liked the reimagining of maths and science in a religious setting and competing with other religions. Many think the book is too long, but I'll give the author this: the most random parts of the book, parts that you think "why is this here? Where is it going?" do turn out important to the plot. All in all, a great read.

From the opening, I was sure Anathem was going to be a book about words and their meanings. The word 'anathem' lies somewhere between anathema and anthem - two words too disparate to be easily combined - but doesn't suggest either over the other. Opening the book didn't change that impression; once past the chapter header, we are launched directly into a fictional dictionary entry for the word 'extramuros'. Now a word like that might suggest an obvious meaning just by inspection of its roots, but Stephenson uses the dictionary entry as a rich, clever way to establish the setting in a few paragraphs. The dictionary provides us not just with a single definition ("those who live outside the walls"), but evolving definitions over three different time periods, none of which seem to correspond exactly with any period on Earth. Yet there are undeniable references to Earth, or something too earth-like to be comfortable, suggesting without confirming that there must be a link. We're left to wonder if this is some future, post-apocalyptic, post-rebuild Earth, or if this is just fantasy rendered into a sort of uncanny valley.

But it turns out that Anathem is not a book about words, or the meaning of words. Or not *just* about the meanings of words, as the book is long enough and deep enough to be about many things all at once. It's about the meaning of *things*, and the nature of reality, told through the eyes of a monk cloistered away 'intramuros', where they are preserved from the vicissitudes of society. Cities and nations and religions come and go over periods of thousands of years, but within the walls, these monks persist, and so do the philosophies they study. That's not to say that the monks don't change as well, but their change is the slow, steady picking away at the nature of reality, not the tidal swings of popular culture. Some of the monks have religion, but religion is not their purpose (except insofar as the existence of a god intersects with their understanding of reality).

Don't think that means that the story is just a bunch of dry, quasi-Socratic dialog. There is philosophical dialog, but it exists in the context of characters and their motivations and uncertainties that we quickly come to care about - much us Crichton used to make us care about some particular aspect of science not just because it was intrinsically cool, but because it related to the story and the characters and their conflict. And, once the story gets rolling there's a surprising amount of intrigue and adventure, of danger and world-changing events, and revelations that - in the way of good sci-fi - leave your view on the nature of things just a little bit permanently shifted. The mystery of how it all relates to Earth is hinted at early on, but when it's finally revealed the answer is ensconced in a deeply satisfying sort of meaning.

What works:

This book convinced me that Stephenson is my favorite writer. It's extremely easy to get lost in the story as the prose becomes transparent, even in technically tricky areas like monkish dialog. Like Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon, the world is complex and robust and lived-in. The characters are very likeable, vague enough in their description that we can put our own stamp on them without really even noticing that we have.

But all of that is just pleasant window-dressing to the ideas and concepts that Stephenson unpacks here and elsewhere. He writes science fiction, but it's also 'social science fiction' - it's about people and reality and the way we are. What the book is *really* about is something better left as a surprise for the reader, but it turns out to be a thoughtful, unique unpacking of a sci-fi trope that is usually handled so badly as to become an annoying cliche, but now strikes me as very interesting. The Diamond Age accidentally pushed me headlong into steampunk; this is similar.

What doesn't work:

Like most of Stephenson's books, Anathem is very, very long. It's long enough that even knowing how much I enjoyed and how quickly I raced through it, knowing how much it deserves to be re-read, I suspect I'll find it hard to tackle it again as a project. That alone is reason enough to put off a lot of readers: it's a rewarding experience, but it seems to be quite an undertaking to get there.

It's a minor quibble, but a few of the characters seemed tacked on to the story - they were there more for contrast than because they were needed or even made sense within the story. They weren't annoying, and I even found them rather enjoyable (I'm thinking particularly of Cord here). If I hadn't been pushing myself to take notes on details for this review, I would have been too deep into the story to notice that she didn't belong.

The takeaway:

To say, "This is a book for smart people," sounds terribly pretentious and is liable to come across as a backhanded compliment, but still, the phrase rings true. It's long, it's complex, and it's about monks discussing the nature of reality. It's that rarefied form of science fiction that doesn't have the *Wow!* technology factor to draw the reader in - at least not in the beginning. In many ways, it's a meditation on an idea. But it's really, *really* good. It's engaging, rewarding, and the pages fly by. So often when I read a good book and reach the end, I come away a little depressed that I have to withdraw from the world I've become invested in; in this case the story launched my enjoyment of the book out past its end, as my head kept spinning around the ideas. I can't recommend it enough.

As others have stated, starts slowly. At the same time this is important for the setting and the mood, and for getting the reader to understand the secluded, traditional and regulated world of the protagonist. The rest is "easier" to read, but it definitely helps if you have at least a fleeting interest in rational thought, philosophy and science. The ending is incredibly tense, I couldn't put the book down. I really loved this novel, but I can see why it is not for everyone. Already planning to read it again, I think it is one of those books where you will have a different and more nuanced understanding the second time. The "word swaps" (the author uses invented synonyms for many important words) didn't bother me, I think they added to the atmosphere and made you stop and think about what words really mean and where they come from.

Reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem is like taking an extended road-trip with a car full of your least favorite relatives: any enjoyment derived from the experience is vastly outweighed by the tedium of the journey. This is a first-contact post-apocalyptic novel-of-ideas written from the perspective of the alien race. The premise of the story is that this alien culture on a planet named Arbre is "just like us only a little different". So if you hope to follow along, you must spend much of your time translating concepts and terms that Stephenson has invented into terms you are familiar with: a concent is like a convent for people who practice the local "religion" which is actually mathematics and philosophy. The internet is called the Reticulum. A fetch is a truck, a car is a mobe. Fair enough, he is inventing a whole parallel universe. But some of it is obtuse: A school is a Suvin because they used to hold their lessons under the vines. And as you read the philosophical debates and discussions you can't help but suspect that they would be familiar to a student of philosophy (which probably does not describe you). So you can't tell if it is fiction or just "Bulshytt" a term on Arbre that means "Speech...that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said." How fitting.

You have been warned. This book is over 980 pages. "Heavy lift" doesn't BEGIN to describe the commitment you have to make to get through it. If you are the kind of person who gives a well-know author the benefit of the doubt and continue reading--hoping that it will get better, you may be disappointed. It is fully 450 pages before much of consequence happens in the plot. It takes 740 pages before the aliens even show up. If you MUST read this book, start with the Glossary (it is over 60 pages by itself!) My recommendation is save yourself the trouble and just poke a sharp stick in your eye. It will hurt less than slogging through this tedious monstrosity and then you can get back to your life.

"Anathem" reminds me of Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" -- except I liked "Name of the Rose" a lot better.

Neal Stephenson is, however, a superb writer, so the many, many, many pages continue to turn and I wouldn't call "Anathem" a bad read. It's just that I expect a little more from Stephenson than what I got.

As usual, his love of ideas comes shining through, and just as "Anathem" is a mixture of "anthem" and "anathema," so the intellectual pursuit that drives the early part of the book is a mixture of "universes" and "universals." (Universals were the object of much monastic study in the Middle Ages, with the central question being this one: Does the overall idea of "a horse," as a group of four-footed animals, have actual existence out there in the world? Or is it just an idea we carry in our heads that varies from person to person?)

Stephenson has a neat, if not entirely plausible and completely unexplained, solution to this age-old philosophic dilemma, and he delivers it while telling the story of Fraa Erasmas, who would be considered a medieval monk on Earth except for the fact that on the planet where "Anathem" is set, those who live in cloisters are scientists and the written history of the world stretches back many thousand years.

To go much further into the setup would be to reveal too much, but suffice it to say it takes a while to figure out what's happening (though there's a very helpful glossary at the back that's worth looking for, and won't give away very much) and for the plot to get into third gear. Once there, we get more and more action and less and less discussion -- but again, the action is more than a little farfetched and the denouement just a little too neat.

For most authors, "Anathem" would count as one of their best. For Stephenson, though, it's a slight step back.

Anathem is a masterpiece, yet I won't rate it 5 stars because most readers won't be drawn into it. Every faux-historical scene in the book illustrates and provides commentary to yet another aspect of the human experience as well as some historical event or trend. This book could be used, just like Rushdie's "Satanic Verses", as a test for cultural literacy. Rushdie tests for literacy in the multi-culturalism of India/Pakistan and the British Empire. Anathem could test for literacy in Greek philosophy and Aristotelian science blended with medieval history I "got" enough of both authors' allusions to laugh on every page but probably still missed half or two-thirds of the humor.

I saw echoes of Shangri La fantasies in this book as well as the superheroes of Marvel comics. But this novel focused on blending themes of emergence with those of multiple universes as its core scientific driving force. While I reject the concept of a multiverse in reality, I embrace it as inherent within the scientific method. Imagination is a real thing, yet rarely does it puncture this space-time continuum and actually change history. An allegory based on that fact is embodied in Stephenson's novel Anathem and has produced a thoroughly enjoyable book.

Bad news: The first two hundred or so pages are dedicated to world-building and getting the reader accustomed to all the terminology that Neal has created for this book. HOWEVER, once you’ve read the book once, the first portion can be re-read with a new set of eyes and it makes so much more sense!

As to the rest of the book, it is very typical Neal Stephenson. I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s hard to find fictional works that are more thoroughly realized than his—-and I mean that from a perspective of detail, characters, themes, and dialogue. It’s an awesome sci-fi story with a unique take on “aliens”! Definitely recommended!

I'm a big fan of Stephenson: "Snow Crash", "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer", "Cryptonomicon" and The System of the World series and just went back to re-read TSotW. This one didn't do it for me.

The book is highly technical, with its own vocabulary, history, historical figures, and philosophical schools. There is a glossary, which helps; I found I had to flip back to it every couple of pages.

I like Stephenson's sense of humor. This book had less of it than most of his books.

The plot involves a serious threat to the planet. After a while, I found the philosophical discussions and digressions on alternate worlds and quantum physics dragged down the plot. Too much heavy intellectualism and not enough forward motion.

I had a personal problem with the lead character, Fraa Erasmus. Deep into the book, I wondered why he was invited along on the planet-saving mission. The author apparently noticed this, too, and around page 780, made the point that he's a lummox, he's there to do the heavy lifting, and to observe. Frankly, I prefer my protagonists to be the movers and shakers, not part of the audience.

Stephenson is a master and this may appeal to some readers. I don't think I'll go back to it.

I've had several false starts with Anathem; I found the beginning pretty hard to get into. There is a lot of new terminology, and it seemed a bit dense. However, once I finally got going, I couldn't stop reading.

Anathem is set on the planet Arbre, in the Concent of Saunt Edhar. Concents are similar to monasteries, but are staffed by people called avout who are dedicated to research. We follow Fraa Erasmus, a young avout as he prepares to see the outside world for the first time in ten years. As this is happening, people around him have started acting mysterious, and he's a pretty curious fellow. I don't want to say much more for fear of spoilers, but he goes on a pretty epic journey, emotionally, philosophically and physically. The book is plotted tightly and has a very apt ending.

I'm not sure how much my academic background helped me understand this book - I was familiar with a lot of the concepts. The philosophical arguments (or "Dialog"), the rhetoric and the explorations of the nature of the universe/consciousness were pretty breathtaking.

The worldbuilding was extensive - we learned a lot about the history, geography and culture of Arbre, and how it differed across the world. I loved the detailed history of the various chapters and concents within the mathic world (the avouts), with sound philosophical backing. It was an extremely immersive experience to read about them. I much preferred the orderly world of Anathem's avout to the more gritty worlds portrayed in Neal Stephenson's other novels (Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash.)

The characters were well-rounded, and a lot of fun and the relationships between them extremely touching. By the end of the book, I felt like I knew Fraa Erasmus' friends almost as well as he did. It's always extremely satisfying when a book can balance a consistent and reasonable story with actual heart, and Anathem did a great job, especially considering it deals so much with ideas and debate. It would have been really easy for the book to come off as cold, academic and dry, but it never even comes close.

There's some good stuff in this book, but you have to wade through many monotonous pages where nothing much happens in order to get to the good bits. In the end, I'm not sure that the plot itself nor the "big ideas" of the novel justify the immense boredom much of the book induces. However, I still give this book four stars because it is intricately crafted and full of clever references. If that's not enough to keep you going for 1000 pages, you're not missing too much if you decide to skip this book in favor of something a little better paced.

The first 60-80 pages, I struggled to get used to the irritating new vocabulary. As far as I can tell, this vocabulary accomplishes a few goals: remind the reader that the world in question is not Earth; lampoon academic jargon but ultimately justify it; and perhaps make a subtle Procian point that symbols don't have much meaning outside of a culture that gives meaning to them. I am not sure such trivial points justify the annoyance of having to learn new words for a variety of commonplace objects. Eventually, however, I got used to it.

Nothing happens at all until at least 150 pages into the novel. The action doesn't really get going until around 325, in the "Peregrin" section. Many of the most interesting events occur off-page while the main character is sitting in a cell copying pages out of a book or on a quest to find his mentor. The novel would have benefited from adding additional points of view so that the reader could witness these happenings first hand. I would have loved to hear the perspective of characters like Ala, Tulia, Jesry, and perhaps even Orolo or Jad. At the very least, I would have appreciated a window into the early days of the Convox. I can only guess why Stephenson chose to write the book from the point of view of a guy who is ultimately a rather minor character compared to his friends.

The emotional tone of the book was flat until the very end. The beginning of the narrator's relationship read as implausible to me, because there was little build-up and no apparent reason why they were suddenly interested in each other. Oh, someone important to you dies? Cry about it for a page and then forget about it. There's even one point in the novel where Stephenson has his main character saying to the reader that everything that happened was emotionally chaotic so he will give an arid, emotionless technical description instead of his first-person account. Uhhh, what? Why would you choose to leave out the kind of narrative that might have rendered the characters relatable and believable for a few pages? It's not as if the book was lacking in boring technical descriptions! I think part of the problem is that Stephenson thinks emotions are for women. He describes many of the female characters (Cord, Tulia, Ala) as emotionally competent, in contrast to the emotionally incompetent male characters (Raz, Barb, Lio). That kind of stupid stereotype has no place in a smart novel like this. Being a man is no excuse to refuse to learn how to write emotionally resonant scenes when the plot calls for it.

It's somewhat difficult for me to evaluate the novel's "big ideas." I didn't think anything that was proposed at the Concent of Saunt Edhar was all that interesting or new. It was fun to puzzle out the correspondences between Arbre's Saunts and Earth's intellectuals (e.g. Plato = Protas, Socrates = Thelenes, Adrakhones = Pythagoras, Ockham = Gardan, Husserl = Atamant, and so on). The interesting ideas come out mostly during the Convox and afterwards, when the characters discussed quantum physics and multiple worlds. As someone who studies philosophy, I rolled my eyes at the Platonism that was central to this novel. Or, in other words, I was nodding along with the Procians who ridiculed the Hylaean Theoric World. Stephenson's thoughts on the possibilities for re-integrating religious and secular studies and for forming alliances between the sciences and humanities were interesting, although they clearly came from the perspective of an author who sympathizes with the sciences over the humanities. That wouldn't have bothered me as much if it didn't appear to be Stephenson's rationale for steadfastly refusing to discuss anything humanistic or "Procian" in any detail, leading him to gloss over the political machinations of Arbre (which I thought could have been very interesting!).

So, despite these complaints, why do I give it four stars? Well, once the novel got going, it turned out to be a cool story. By the end, I enjoyed it. Plus, whatever I think of Platonism, it was a very clever book with a cool concept that was at least reasonably well-executed. I can't give something this smart a mere three stars. But honestly, this book is not for everyone and I'm not even really sure it was for me. I'm glad I finished it, but I'm not sure it was worth the opportunity cost since I could have read three or four other books in the time it took me to finish this one. Stephenson really could have used a more forceful editor.

I am a huge Neal Stephenson fan and I feel that this is his best work to date. His stories are always compelling, his characters are interesting, but most of all, Mr. Stephenson's knowledge is encyclopedic. He has written about so many diverse subjects in very different genres.

This story is about an alien race, but that is not clear from the beginning. The story appears to be about humans that have developed a very different model for society. Perhaps one of the reasons that I enjoyed this story so much is that the society is one that I resonate with. They have created monastary-like communities that do not study, dwell or worship through a religion, but instead pursue intellectual activities. Some study physics, others politics, and a few study the martial arts. Some of these beings begin to suspect that they are being observed by another race, and that is when the story gets really interesting.

Stephenson is an incredibly talented speculative fiction author. I hesitate to call his work science fiction: Although he deals heavily in technology and mathematics, he always manages to go beyond that.

This is a novel that’s difficult to summarize: Anathem takes place in a world where the intellectual elite have entered monastic communities for the sake of pursuing a lifetime of study. Possessing very limited access to technology and living in complete separation from the secular world, the isolation of these “avouts” is what gives them the opportunity to develop highly complex mathematical and philosophical theories about the world.

The novel follows one particular avout, Erasmus. The first few chapters read as a coming of age story - We’re treated a basic breakdown of his daily life, his relationships, his family (as it exists both within the monastic community and outside of it in the secular world), and his love interest. But just as the reader settles into a plotline where Erasmus is deciding upon his future career path, Stephenson changes genre on us: The story turns into a mystery, investigating the sudden excommunication of another character. The storyline then changes again, this time into an adventure story. Then science fiction. Then spy novel. Then political drama. Stephenson genre-hops over and over again, continuously making the reader question their assumptions about how the story will progress.

Anathem is a unique mix of religion, anthropology, sociology and bildungsroman. I once heard it described as a “space opera about math and aliens,” which is actually quite accurate. Any way that you frame it, this is a wholly engaging novel that I’ll need to reread at least twice more in order to fully appreciate.

This book, being in a class by itself, is not something I can easily recommend to everybody. If you have a good background in sciences, mathematics or engineering, as well as an insatiable curiosity for philosophy's fundamental problems, and then if you also have a good grasp of the history and current workings of Internet technology, well then this book will whet your appetite so much that you'll wish it never finishes.

But make no mistake, it is definitely not one of your run-of-the-mill summer reading pieces. After all, we are talking about a masterpiece that was reviewed in the famous and prestigious science journal Nature (see Jennifer Rohn's review entitled "Imprisoned by intelligence" in Nature 456, 446-447 (27 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/456446a; Published online 26 November 2008), a publication that normally publishes original science articles and reviews of scientific books.

Apart from its very dense narrative, something that will make nerds feel at home, Anathem also doesn't forget to keep a line of energetic action to keep you breathing up-tempo. Moreover, in the middle of information-rich prose, Stephenson never fails to communicate the most intense emotions and fundamental aspects of being human.

If you feel ready to read a book written by one of the most curious authors of the 21. century, whose spectrum of interest and imagination is probably very much wider than many scientists, philosophers and futurists combined, then please make time for yourself and start reading Anathem slowly.

I have been a big Neal Stephenson fan since reading 'Snow Crash'. I was fully on board with 'The Diamond Age' and enjoyed 'Cryptonomicon'. However, I was disappointed with The Baroque Cycle novels. I respected the ambition but didn't feel the plot paid off that ambition fully. So, I was a bit leery when I read about 'Anathem'. A friend whose taste fairly closely mirrors my own spoke highly of it so I decided to read it.

I am glad I did. I can tell you what the book is about, in terms of the action, but it's about so much more than that. And, to be honest, I am not sure I can do it full justice. In fact, I am pretty sure I can't, but I will try anyway.

So, what is it about? It is about a planet called Arbre. On Arbre are two main groups of people: avout and extramuros (literally 'outside the wall') or 'extras'. Avout are philosopher/scientist monks who live in cloistered communities and have varying degrees of interaction with the extras. Some avout are permitted to mingle in the extras' society (called Saecular society) for ten days every year, others for ten days every ten years, others ten days every hundred years, and still others remain segregated for a thousand years.

After first introducing us to the avout world, Stephenson then introduces a crisis in the form of an alien ship that threatens Arbre. The rest of the novel then follows the efforts of several of the avout to figure out what the ship is, and then make contact with it and try to neutralize the threat.

In one sense, 'Anathem' is a first contact novel. However as I said, the book is about so much more than that. There are the philosophical debates between the avout factions, the Halikaarnians and the Procians, which must be resolved before the threat represented by the ship can be understood and a proper response devised. There is the tension between avout society and Saecular society that must also be factored into a response to the alien ship, since Saecular society has long seen the avout as a threat to Arbre as a whole and hence has confined them to the maths (gatherings of avout).

The book also draws heavily on the 'many worlds' branch of physics and the philosophical implications of there being more than one cosmos and how information gets transmitted between cosmos. To say anymore would probably give away too much (and expose my woeful inadequacy on this topic). Other themes prevalent in the book are Platonic idealism and mathematical formalism. (I had to look those up. I grasped the ideas in Arbre-speak but didn't know their Earth counterparts. Thanks Wikipedia!)

Another main feature of 'Anathem' is the language. In just reading this review, you've already got a taste of it. There are avout, fraas (males, derived from the Latin frater) and suurs (females, derived from the Latin soror), living in Concents, divided into their different Orders, and temporal separations (Unarians, Decenarians, Centenarians and Millenarians). One order are the Edharians named after Saunt (a contraction of Saint and Savant) Edhar. The act of opening the doors of the concent to the extramuros (another Latin-derived term) is called Apert (as in the Latin 'to open' as in aperture, for example).

Clearly a basis in Latin or one or more Romance languages will benefit any reader. Yet, the language, while a great world-building tool, also presents a barrier. The back of the book has a lengthy glossary which I found myself referring to often (this despite the fact that I speak three Romance languages well - there simply is no way to intuitively know what an Edharian or a Procian is). This is not a summer beach read.

Characters are not the book's strong suit. They exist to move the action along and convey the ideas that Stephenson wants to discuss. They don't have much depth at all. However, in this case I won't fully penalize Stephenson for this since the book is already so dense to introduce character conflicts and motivations would needlessly weigh the book down.

The world-building, always a Stephenson strength, is some of the best I have come across. The problem is that I could have done with a tad less detail and a little more concision. A fully-fleshed out world is a wonder but at 930 pages the book could have stood some editing. For example, our protagonist, Fraa Erasmas, embarks on a journey across Arbre and I felt that some of this material could have been pruned down a bit.

Another thing I found missing was humor. Normally the humor is a Stephenson strong suit but this book was sorely lacking in it. (Funniest line in the book? "'Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs,' I said. 'We have a protractor.'")

I enjoyed this book immensely however I felt that the length and the language barrier made it needlessly inaccessible. Perhaps Stephenson is testing his readers and only wants to bring along those willing to invest the time to fully understand what he is talking about. If so, I respect that decision while not fully agreeing with it. Hence the four stars instead of five.

Neal Stephenson is an author who spits out fully-realized, deeply plotted and thoroughly intriguing 1,000 page books at a frightening pace. It is not hard to believe that he does so in order to keep his head from exploding from the pressure of the sheer volume of ideas inside it.

In Anathem, we encounter a world divided into the "Saecular" and the "Avout" - respectively, everyday people in a somewhat futuristic world, and a society of thinkers, mathematicians, scientists and the like - who are rigidly segregated from one another as the result of periodic upheavals rooted in fear of the technology and advancement propagated by the latter. The central character, Erasmus, is a young man just beginning his adult life as an Avout, ten years after being "collected", when a series of mysterious - and ultimately world-threatening events - recast him as a central figure in the fate of his entire race.

Anathem is science fiction, it is drama, it is romance, it is philosophy, and it is quantum physics. It is an immersive story in a fully-realized world much like our own - but also more than a bit different - and a tale that moves at it's own pace. There is action, but there is also plenty of dialog and exploration both internal and external, and readers who do not enjoy lengthy asides, the contemplation of profound ideas, and puzzling out the intricacies of the world the author has created will be frustrated by what could conceivably be perceived as fitful pacing and a failure to stay on point. Anathem is sci-fi in the tradition of Asimov and Clarke - everything within it is rooted in things that exist today - and it is a rewarding story for patient readers.

I was a Neal Stephenson fan going in - I have also read and enjoyed Snowcrash, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon - and I am even more of one for having read Anathem.

A good story wrapped in a lot of inessential detail. Who are we? Are we different or unique from others on other worlds? How did these other worlds come about? Great questions that make a fine story, but this time Stephenson bogs it down with details about space suits, geometry of the environment, techno babble about machinery, and so much more - - - that I often lost the point of the story. Maybe I am just too dumb to appreciate the sophisticated science of this novel.

As a basic overview, this novel is about a young man who lives on a world divided into cloistered "religious/philosopical" communities within the secular world. While initially seeming to be low-tech, these communities appear to be bastions of higher learning and thought. When a crisis in the outside world calls for an unprecedented call of those cloistered, this sets in a series of actions that will change the world forever. This is a challenging book to review as I have mixed feelings about it. The concept is ambitious, building an intriguing society with a complex history and language, requiring a glossary and several appendices as aids. However, the sheer length of the novel at over 900 pages, and the erratic pacing/directions of the story were frustrating. I ended up having to put it down for a while and read something else before coming back and finishing the book. In some ways it seemed like 3 books crammed together: one a philosophical primer, one an action/adventure, and one a sci-fi/physics thriller. I wanted to know more about the different sects and how they came to be and what secrets they held, but got distracted by other elements in the plot. For initial concept, I give the book 4 stars, but for execution, 2 stars.

If you're a nerd who delights in detailed speculation about technical subjects, philosophical questions, and the intersection between the two, and has a somewhat sarcastic sense of humor and an appreciation for creative action sequences, chances are that Neal Stephenson is already high on your list of favorite novelists. If you don't fit this type, you might find that his doorstop-sized works leave you bored silly, feeling like you're watching an interminable lecture by an overly-caffeinated TED Talker who's prone to demonstrating some point about network topology by hacking things apart with a samurai sword.

Obviously, I belong to the former camp, but I'll admit that I never made it through the Baroque Cycle trilogy. I just didn't have the attention span for so many hundreds of pages devoted to why the late 17th Century was a cool proto-Information Age.

Anathem definitely isn't a reboot to Stephenson's glib Snow Crash style (for which I'm thankful), but it is a welcome return to writing a self-contained novel, with a manageable cast of characters, a single protagonist, and its own universe. He imagines a planet called Arbe, home to an ancient, austere monkish order called the Avout (since they're more or less agnostic about God). In the manner of classical Greek philosophers, the Avout have developed and maintained their "Mathic World's" knowledge of mathematics, science, and philosophy, and have lived apart (or been segregated for mutual safety, depending on the point of view) from the rest of society and most electronic technology, even as outside civilizations have risen, violently collapsed, and risen again over thousands of years. Naturally, there are many factions and suborders, with their own ideologies, rituals, and politics. It's like the old "school of wizards who live outside the Muggle world" trope, but much nerdier. (Some readers might also be reminded of grad school.)

Anathem is narrated from the perspective of a young, socially naive Avout named Erasmus, living in an era that's roughly similar to present-day Earth terms of technology and social order. Erasmus has just spent the past decade of his life walled off from the "saecular" world (which, like many terms in the novel, plays on what a similar word means to us), and is about to leave his "concent" to revisit it, as a once-per-decade ceremony briefly opens the gates between the two realms. But, this time, the event is marked by strange goings-on on Arbe, which set in motion a plot that I won't give away, except to say that it takes a number of turns over the course of the novel, evolving from mystery to science fiction to adventure to a parallel-universe story that enlists some pretty mind-bending meta-quantum-physical ideas.

The first hundred pages or so of the novel are somewhat confusing, and readers might feel overwhelmed by all the invented names and terminology. But, if you're patient and pay attention, it'll all make sense -- and you should pay attention, because all the lectures, dialogues, and histories are central, in an Umberto Eco-esque way, to everything else going on. Fortunately, the story, once it comes to the fore, is interesting, and I grew to like the characters, particularly the brilliant, maddeningly roundabout teacher figure, Orolo; the martial-arts-obsessed oddball, Lio; the lovably irritating kid with Asperger's Syndrome, Barb; and the humorously at-arms-length narration style of Erasmus himself. For me, watching different ideas and philosophies play off each other through witty dialogue and cleverly-constructed scenes was the joy at the heart of the book, far more than "what happens". Stephenson does a fine job of getting difficult concepts to make sense. I also enjoyed the intricately constructed action sequences, though these are fewer.

Criticisms? Mainly just the usual one for Stephenson -- i.e. that the geeking out takes precedence over everything else. If you're not onboard for all the idea-construction and digressions, the plot doesn't offer any innovations or emotional experiences that haven't been done better in other science fiction novels. Also, I found the world-building a little skewed. We certainly learn a lot about the Avout, but the rest of the cultural/political/geographical reality of Arbe remains vague until needed for the plot in some way -- e.g. "oh, by the way, there's a legal consideration that justifies what this character did" or "now I will explain the religion of Arbe (which is pretty interesting), so we can ponder that for a chapter before moving on". I wouldn't have minded more balance.

Still, I think Anathem will stand as one of Neal Stephenson's most ingenious novels, if you can embrace the challenge of reading it. It's got the intellectual adventurousness of Cryptonomicon combined with the humility to perceive the author's own small place in a vast chain of human thought (even an imagined one). It also proves that he can do appealing characters, too. As both a thinker and a writer, he's come a long way from the brash, callow cyberpunk who wrote Snow Crash, and has become one of the leading lights of literate geekdom.

On the audiobook experience, this is one of those rare books where I appreciated having both the audio and print editions. The character voices add some personality that doesn't come across in the text and make the invented terminology easier for my brain to grok, but the print edition provides a helpful glossary and is useful for parts that require several reads to make sense.

4.5 stars

I borrowed this novel from the library because a few years ago I had purchased and read the Baroque Cycle and absolutely loved it. I knew from experience that this would be a richly detailed story and it didn't disappoint at all. Getting into the story at the beginning was initially a challenge though, due to the concepts and such, to wrap my head around some of the "discussions" that occurred between characters required me to Think instead of just read..and it was so worth it! Probably not a good book to introduce your friends to the author, but for a fan of the style, skill, and intelligence which Mr Stephenson writes with, I highly recommend Anathem!

This is the first book by Neal Stephenson I've read, but it won't be the last. If that doesn't convey fully to you how much I enjoyed it, suffice it to say that at the moment of writing (and reading, as I just finished the book this morning) I have several final exams to study for, but instead spent three nonstop days reading this book, unable to tear myself away from it. It's that good. Now, my feelings about it made clear, I will move on to describing (in a spoiler-free way) what the book is like and about, and *why* I found it as good as I did.

The book is the first person account of one Fraa Erasmus, a scholar, or what we would perceive as such. A significant part of Anathem deals with analogs, whether direct or skewed or wholly inverted, to our world. These analogs include the organizations of the Anathem universe, the language that Stephenson invented for the story, and the things those new words represent. Normally, I am not a fan of multitudes of made up words being used in a book. They bog down the reader, make things unnecessarily complex, and therefore detract from the experience. That's what happens normally. Somehow, Stephenson sidestepped this problem in Anathem. Perhaps it is because he included a very helpful glossary of terms in the back of the book. Perhaps it is because he interspersed definitions in asides throughout the book, when certain terms are about to become particularly important. But the main reason, I believe, is because of how analogous most words are to our world. This allows readers to use context clues to puzzle out the meanings of most words, and serves as a reminder of just how similar, and how different, the Anathem universe is from ours. This holds great thematic significance for the story.

The initial shock of entering a new universe with a new terminology and history (perhaps the toughest part of reading sci-fi or fantasy) wears off quickly in this book. Initially you'll need to consult the glossary frequently, but after the first few dozen pages it becomes less of a necessity and chore, and more of something you want to do for yourself in order to have as full an understanding as possible. This ease of transition is because of how skillfully Stephenson incorporates complex subjects into his writing. Even when teaching a fictional history, or discussing complex philosophical and scientific theories, the book maintains a pace that never slows down or becomes dull. There is a lot of philosophy and science in the book, however, so if that bothers you, it might not be for you. But as I said, it is incorporated into the text in ways that fit perfectly, so it never seems like Stephenson is giving too much exposition, or spending his time lecturing the readers. The story flows, the dialogue is consistently quick and snappy, and very frequently humorous, and the deep philosophical overtones that would bog down and stifle a lesser book only add to this one's appeal.

I started the book without knowledge of any of the metaphysical concepts discussed within it, and now that I've finished it, I find my head packed with new knowledge. More significantly, these are ideas that I want to dig further into, and research further--have been researching further, even. It isn't common for a book to have such an effect, and it is even rarer for a book to manage it without once becoming dull. In fact, my only frustration while reading the book was that Erasmus could not learn, and I could not read, about the things we wished to discover fast enough. So if you like a book with great characters, a unique and interesting world, great story, and concepts unlike anything you're likely to find in another work of fiction, I strongly urge you to give this one a try.

I generally am not one to re-read books. In my time on this Earth, I can probably count on my hands the number of books I've ever felt the need to re-read. Anathem has joined that elite group. I've read most of Stephenson's catalog and generally enjoyed all of them, but Anathem is a notch up in difficulty from a lot of the rest of his other books. In his other novels which are set on Earth, a lot of the world-building is taken care of for him, and he spends time on characters and story. In Anathem, he also has to spend time on the language in addition to world building, characters and story. He succeeds brilliantly in creating a tale that combines science, philosophy and interesting characters and creates a world that's an exciting place to be, and unique from other science fiction settings.

If you come into this book expecting the rollicking world spanning adventures like Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash or REAMDE, you are going to be a little surprised and will likely be tempted to give up. The tempo of this book is more akin to The Baroque Cycle, where a lot of foundation is laid at first and then the story begins to gather steam until the big payoff at the end. I do dearly enjoy Stephenson's world spanning rollicking adventures, and Cryptonomicon is another of my elite re-reads, but Anathem is not a book like that. It's much deeper, and much more far-reaching. If you go into the book with an open mindset you'll likely enjoy it. But do give it a chance -- it will likely stick with you for some time.

Like other people have mentioned, this is a very difficult book to review and also a difficult book to read at times. The obvious first issue is the language of Arbre which is the planet in the book. It becomes a bit tedious after 600 pages of reading to have to constantly be flipping to an appendix to remember what something means, and we are talking about a large lexicon here. The plot, overall, is intriguing and kept me involved. The goings on of the young people are what is most interesting but when we get to the second portion of the book, it turns into a drab, mildly boring and slightly confusing "teens and tweens save the world". There is A LOT in this book...multiverse, which they call the polycosm, and some other very high level though experiments, for lack of a better term. But my God Neal, 1000 pages is just too much. You need an editor and as I am currently reading REAMDE right now, I could say the same about that book. You need to turn off your inner Stephen King and get to the point. The book was frustrating to read and I'll be honest, there is a tinge of arrogance, from my perspective, when I read a book like this. I like Mr. Stephenson's early works, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age but his latest stuff....it just seems like he is trying too hard to do too much all the time.

On a reader-to-character level, Anathem is a novel which is easy to become enveloped in and at the same time the greater scheme of things is engrossing. Much like Snow Crash (the only other Stephenson book I've read to-date), the pages are frothy and thick with a menagerie of provocative ideas and technologies but is ultimately weighted down by its own sheer density and occasional reader unfriendly passages. Considering its place in the genre of science fiction, Anathem blows away much of what has been written since the genre has began, with the exception of some of the current British space opera sub-genre.

What I initially found so captivating about Anathem was its noble beginnings at a hermetic cloister resided by knowledge devolving monks... or sorts. Gradually, the reader is brought closer to understanding the true nature of the convalescence with its denizens of fraas (monks) and suurs (nuns). Their levels of commitment rank from 1, 10, 100 and even 1000 years and their focused studies are even more varied (wine making, astronomy, gardening, etc.). The reader is introduced to this hermetic retreat at a time when they open their gates at the turn of the decade, where the fraas and suurs can leave for ten days and the townspeople can visit the enclosure. This period starts as any other decadal unveiling would have started, but at the end of day ten it's obvious that some concerning matters have been abreast which will test the tenancy of the avout (devout).

What is really the focal point of Stephenson's work in Anathem is his amalgamation of different sciences and philosophies with persistent dalliances in religion and metaphysics. It's obvious that the book has been well researched and well thought out (just look at the list of acknowledgments on his website!). The menagerie of topics isn't one which is loosely woven together, like some other science fiction drivel but is rather neatly pieced together with an intimate care and warm passion. Stephenson's energetic zeal for the completion of this novel has been made abundantly clear.

However, this same vibrant enthusiasm tends to weigh down some passages as the reading becomes denser and more tedious. Throw in some idiomatic Anathem lexicon and the reading of these paragraphs and pages requires focused thought and sometimes even rereading. It's definitely not light reading for the beach! Anathem will require your undying attention for at least seven days as your absorb the nomenclature, plot directions and a sopping up of the material presented by Stephenson. Challenge yourself.

Neal Stephenson writes about big ideas. Frequently very big ideas. It can be a little off putting at times.

Certainly the first few chapters for Anathem were a struggle. Stephenson threw me head first into a new world with a new language and very little explanation. It was frustrating.

But perseverance sometimes pays off and it did in this case. Once I started to get a feel for the setting, the richness of it and some of the ideas that Stephenson was playing with started to shine.

Personally I found this a much more compelling story than Cryptonomicon. Admittedly at least half of it is people standing around and telling each other things, but Stephenson has a knack for making that seem interesting.

He's always had a fondness for playing with language and he gets to take that to the nth degree here. There's an impressive logical consistancy to the evolution of language displayed here and it's actually one of my favorite parts of the book. I'm not quite so keen on some of the more out there ideas that are introduced later on.

There are some sections that really weren't entirely necessary. Parts of the road trip seemed to serve very little actual purpose and at 900+ pages I'm pretty sure it could have benefited from some editing. But over all I think it's one of his stronger works.

I was given this novel because of my interests in large scale science fiction stories and in philosophy. And it does fulfill both desiderata, but boy was it a struggle to finish. It doesn't really get going for almost two hundred pages, which really tested my patience. When the story finally takes off it keeps your attention for a while, then slows down to a crawl again; then picks up, then slows down again; and so on and so forth. Some people may actually enjoy this, but time is a precious commodity (ironically, time is a major theme in the book), and you need to consider your investment in Anathem seriously before you plunge into it. The love story in which the main character is involved is entirely irrelevant to the plot, and harder to swallow than the fictional science. Oh, and yes, there are several interesting philosophical themes peppering the story, but they aren't sufficiently developed to give you a sense of the underlying metaphysics and metaethics, unless you already know enough about them. Then again, to be fair, this is not a textbook.

(Edited and re-posted in Nov 2011)

'Anathem' was one of the most engrossing reading experiences I've ever had, in any genre. As a long-time Stepehenson fan, one could say I'm slightly biased. But, considering that I've now read this three times in three years, even though it's a 900+ page monstrosity, should tell you something. And I'm not one who normally rereads books.

First off, I should mention that it definitely helps to have even a slight interest in the 'big questions,' such as the nature of reality, life, etc. If you do, this novel has some amazing concepts, interweaved throughout a great story about Erasmus, a young student/scientist living in a cloistered sanctuary for hundreds of scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, etc, on a planet called Arbre, which is similar in some ways to Earth, but a little more advanced. These scientists are kept separate from the rest of society, with no real possessions or technology to work with, only free to leave every ten years for ten days. But all that is about to change when a major threat to the planet is discovered and their help is needed in the regular world, changing their lives forever.

Narrated in the first-person by Erasmus, 'Anathem' is a breathtaking feat of worldbuilding and story. The first 100-150 pages can be a bit of a slog, as you're introduced to quite a few new words and concepts, and have to constantly go back and forth between the narrative and the glossary. But hang tight because, after that, the story grabs hold and never really lets go, at least for me. I found this to be much more of a page-tuner than Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, with less bloat. The discursions are somewhat held in check here, and always related to the story in some way, even if it doesn't seem so at times.

As I mentioned, there are a lot of philosophical concepts discussed, but much of it is between two or more characters, called 'dialogs,' in which the conversation is almost like a battle, with one gaining the upper hand, the other losing. This makes these sections fun, almost like action scenes, rather than a chore. There's plenty of real action as well, and an adventure that spans the globe, and beyond(It's hard, but I'm REALLY trying not to give anything away), with some of the best characters of Stephenson's career. Oh, and it actually has an entirely satisfying ending, which is quite refreshing, and somewhat unique as far as Stephenson is concerned.

Anyone looking for an epic sci-fi adventure with some great characters and far-out concepts, not to mention a world every bit as rich and detailed as Herbert's 'Dune' or Asimov's 'Foundation,' owes it to themselves to read this. It's a novel that demands constant attention, but it's one I will never forget, and I'll most likely read it again and again in the future. It transports me to another world in a way that few have ever done, to the point where at times I forget I'm reading, I'm so immersed in the world of Arbre. I don't know if there's higher praise than that for fans of great worldbuilding in sci-fi or fantasy.

Neal Stephenson is the best of what I like to call "philosopher-geeks." He is knowledgeable on a wide variety of topics and weaves insight into all of his work. I would bet his appetite for new information of nearly any type is voracious. He probably absorbs every tidbit he can get his hands on. Then, he takes this knowledge one step further and applies it all in an examination of philosophical beliefs and societal behaviors. He presents a treatise about consciousness, the cosmos, and humanity which is well-supported by the detailed information he weaves throughout this addictive story.

This book, like most of his others, lingered in my mind long after I finished. Some of the ideas were almost haunting in the obvious truths and possibilities they expose. This is a book which will stretch your imagination, but will also leave you feeling more enlightened for having read it. It definitely left me badly wanting more, which is no easy feat for a book spanning nearly a thousand pages.

The book was a mildly challenging read and to be honest, started out rather slowly. The earliest chapters took effort to get through, because they were laying necessary language groundwork needed to understand the rest of the book. Hang in there, though. The rewards he provides in this story are worth that early effort.

I'd say this is a highly recommended read for life long students of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, consciousness, physics, the cosmos, mathematics, or even world religions. It explores and combines all of those elements into one cohesive experience that will leave you thinking.

On the world of Arbre, scientists and philosophers shut themselves away in monastery-like institutions known as "maths", and only emerge to interact with the "saecular" world outside at intervals of 1, 10, 100 or 1000 years. Fraa Erasmas and his friends have grown up in a ten-year math and are awaiting their first entry back into the world since they were children, after which they will start choosing which direction of study they will spend their life in. All of that is disrupted when something unknown is discovered orbiting Arbre, and members of the maths including Erasmas are pulled out to work with the saecular authorities to determine what to do.

Anathem is a very ambitious book that attempts to invent a new culture, explain a good portion of the history of science and tell a good story all in one, and mostly succeeds at it. I enjoyed the whole idea of a culture where science is known to be important, but is considered dangerous enough that the ordinary people of the world need to be kept isolated from it. Creating this entire alternate culture can bog the book down at times. The use of made-up words, for what seem to be fairly common things can be a little much, although some of the words do just sound right for what they are supposed to be. The book can get bogged down in trying to explain the difference between various mathic Orders such as Procians and Halikaarnians which are hard to keep straight throughout the book. As the book progresses though, there is more story, and it comes to a fast-paced conclusion with an ending that is more conclusive than a lot of Stephenson's other works. Overall. this is one of the top science fiction novels of the decade.

I really wrestled with my feelings on this one. It’s clear Stephenson is a talented and imaginative writer, and I’m no stranger to long and complicated books (this one even has story problems!), but the last quarter of this book, especially the end, really left me cold.

It saddens me to say this, as I thought the whole social system, philosophy and tech was really interesting, especially the neat bolt, cord, and sphere, capable of many winning combinations. The story has a nice build to it which led my to believe some kind of revelation was coming towards the end - and when it kind of fizzled out, well, it tainted my view of the whole story. I think it can be worth reading, some of the details are great, but I won’t return to this world again.

If you long for a reason to read great science fiction in the dead of night, preferably in secret and with the aid of a flashlight--then get cozy my friends, this is it! One must approach works of this magnitude with an open mind and the humility of a dictionary just to make sure you're not crazy and Mr. Stephenson did in fact make up that word or play on one of it's alternate meanings. To me, this book was like a polyamory love child spliced from Sophie's World, The Elegant Universe, A Clockwork Orange and The Name of the Rose. An entire list of references would be limitless to be sure, but I found myself aware of so many threads here--from a concise social critique of humanity and it's often ingrained behaviors (Slines & Panjandrums) to a nuanced fluidity of gender roles and expectations from primary/ancillary characters (Cord, Suur Ala, Magnath Foral).

This would be my first introduction into Mr. Stephenson's work and I was challenged, impressed and delighted to follow the adventure's of Raz (Fraa Erasmas of Edhar) and friends. I also couldn't help but picture Ian Holm as Fraa Orolo throughout the whole book haha! But I digress. It is difficult to paraphrase this great work without giving away some key plot features and yet, let me say that as a science fiction nerd and an arm-chair scholar in quantum or theoretical physics--this novel presents very interesting interpretations of modern day science and a "worldtrack" of possibilities that will leave you surprised, confused and smiling to yourself like a child. The design of my paperback edition was unfortunately no match for the utter breadth of this tome and pages kept wanting to escape as I got into the 300 page mark, but to me it symbolized the irony of having to decipher both the coded philosophical references and mathematical proofs in the text in addition to exploring the most efficient way to hold the book without it falling apart!

This novel is as witty as it is sad and some characters will inspire such fervent vexation (Fraa Lodoghir) as they will amusement and awe (Fraa Jad) or even paternal love (Fraa Orolo). I see it as a testament to Mr. Stephenson's great writing ability that these characters can evoke such emotions from the reader and although some might say it is a difficult book to get into, I would say it is worth the effort to discover this alternate dimension called Arbre.

...so my review may be a bit slanted. That being said, I did initially think Anathem was going to end up like A Canticle for Leibowitz, but in this novel, Stephenson shows us his ability to tell an original story from a strange angle, and literally invent a world, a language, Theorics, and a new concept of what planes of existence are/could be. It is unlike anything else I've ever read. It did take about 150 pages to get into it, but once I was hooked, the book took on an incredible pace. Sure, there are parts that were long winded, and figuring out what certain things were in relation to what would be comparable to what is found on Earth (HTW, theorics [math], Praxis [engineering], speelycaptors), but they really needed to be in order to draw what was going on in Stephenson's mind. It isn't Cryptonomicon, but in a sense, it has all the elements of adventure that Crypto had, except it takes place on Arbre, not Earth. Not being a mathematician, astronomer, or a rocket scientist, I'm sure there were parts (as other reviews have stated) about the nature of orbit, molecular decomposition, blah blah blah. People are haters.... it's entertainment, not Scientific-bloody American.

Best line- Erasmus: "Our opponent is an alien starship with nuclear weapons. We have a protractor."

That being said, this book is fantastic, and it made a week and a half go by pretty quickly...which is good b/c I'm currently in Afghanistan. I will continue to drink the Kool-Aid that Neal Stephenson publishes.

Science fiction (or speculative fiction, which I feel better describes this novel) is supposed to open your mind and show you things you have never seen before. It teaches you and gives you things to ponder and contemplate. "Anathem" does just that. This is not an easy novel to read. The ideas in this novel are complicated and not every question has an answer. The scientific and philosophical ideas raised in "Anathem" break past the typical trope lines and transcend into new and exciting territory. To say what actually happens in the novel plot wise would, I fear, take away from the impact of the teachings and theories that come with it. The characters are very likable and their adventures are entertaining because the characters take time to consider their options to make smarter choices. This alone is something that I feel is missing from many stories today, as a lot of other science fiction characters just become quick acting sarcastic clones that always seem to have something witty to say, while really having no intellectual value. The characters in "Anathem" are real and believable. Combining them with the theoretics and ideas in this novel make for an entertaining and thought provoking experience.

I always said that I wouldn't bother writing a review until I read something that was worth 5 stars, and "Anathem" has taken that prize. By simply raising hard questions and breathing new originality into the genre, Neal Stephenson has created something truly unique. This novel deserves more attention than it has received (not winning the Hugo in 2009 is simply a testament to that) and I hope that the recent release of Stephenson's new novel, "Seveneves", will cause more readers to take notice. I hope this review gave you an idea of what you are in for if you decide to give this novel a chance. Thank you for your time.

On another world, mathematicians live monk-like lives in monasteries, thinking deep thoughts about truth, triangles, and a hypothetical skein of connected universes. Then, something appears in the sky and the monks' world of contemplative solitude is broken.

I blazed through this book in a matter of weeks, which might say more about the amount of free time I had then the book's quality. It took a little while to get used to the invented jargon, but that was an easy hurdle. The plot kept evolving, and every time I thought things were coming to a head, Stephenson took the story one step further.

I really, really enjoyed it for the most part; it was sort of an easy-reader sci-fi "Name of the Rose," what with the monks and pages of philosophizing. (This is nowhere near as good as Eco's book, though.) It was a pretty developed world the author created and I got swept into it. It may have even been a bit over developed, because Stephenson clearly never met an explanation he didn't like. Often times the author would just info-dump to the point where my eyes glazed over and I started to think about other things. Then the plot would happen, or someone would suggest an interesting idea, and I'd be back in the saddle.

But then, about 4/5ths into the book, I just wanted to be done. I'd spent enough time in that world with those characters (such as they were—they were really just loudspeakers through which the author could express different philosophical ideas) and I wanted it all to be over. But I kept going. And the book kept going. And then there was what I thought was the denouement, but, lo, the book still had another 50 pages in it.

I almost feel like this could have been a really, really long YA novel. The main characters were all late teenagers, all totally pedantic, and all carrying the "every moment is life-changing!!!" mindset that pollutes the brain during those years. It was a pretty accurate take on the teenage mind, but it was also a little annoying. I felt like I was being preached to often. Also, Stephenson's characters thought they were much funnier than they were, which might also be an accurate depiction of teenagers.

All in all: enjoyable, but too long for its own good.

I was somewhat unlucky in that Anathem was my introduction to Neal Stephenson and it made all of his other work seem dull by comparison. While Anathem does not have a fantastic ending, his other stories, such as Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, just run out of steam without ever coming to a resolution.

If you paid attention in math class and you know a bit of the history of logic and philosophy, Anathem really has a whole depth of meaning that a casual reader may miss. However, that background is not required in order to enjoy the story. The plot is interesting and never predictable. The characters have quite a bit of depth and the philosophical ramifications of the book's central thesis will keep you thinking.

Definitely not a book to be missed. I really hope Neal Stephenson writes more books like this soon.

Let me just say right off the bat that "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson is not for everyone. It starts slow. It takes forever to read as you try to remember what each of his new words means and which fraa and suur is which. Stephenson started the pace of his book slow on purpose; he is able to capture the slow and deliberate days passed in a monastic setting (for an example of this in film, the only one in recent times that comes to mind is Kevin Costner's slow pace at the start of "Open Range"). All of a sudden, 200 pages in or so, comes the tipping point when the reader is at the edge of his seat and has come to take interest in the plights of the characters. Stephenson has a message for modern society in "Anathem" but at the same time he has lovingly created a fascinating world and a host of fun and intriguing characters. There have been few novels that have haunted me and sent me to the world of the text the way "Anathem" has. By the time I was done, I did not want the story to end and was saddened when I had finished it. There are parts of the book that will drive you crazy, forcing you to take notes or reread past passages. Despite this, this remains one of the best speculative fiction novels, and yes one of the best recently released novels, I have read in a long time. It's not for everyone but if you can survive the first part of the book, you will be rewarded with a spectacular, well crafted and intelligent novel.

Need to stretch your mind a little? Consider some new ideas, live for a time in a better world, and in the process learn bits of a language that you'll never use again? Then you'll enjoy Anathem.

It's a very clever book. (Reticulum, indeed.) Bordering on too clever, but not crossing.

It's also a frustratingly weak criticism of spirituality and faith, and a shameless proponent of pure humanism.

The book starts very, very slowly. At some point you'll start to wonder if it's actually deserving of the sci-fi label, as it seems to be more of an examination of the lifestyle and culture of another world. Don't give up! Soon the hints that have been dropped all along start to congeal into a real story with real adventure and mystery. And heartache.

Anathem is clearly not for everyone, but I liked it and I'm glad I read it… which is certainly not something I can say for most of the sci-fi I've read in the last fifteen or twenty years.

It seems, at least from the best-received reviews, that people who haven't yet read any of Neal Stephenson's other works are in the minority here. I fall into this group, and it's debatable whether that's an advantage or not, but I *can* say that I came to Anathem with few expectations other than that I would be delving deep into a thrilling universe powered by ideas, and Anathem did not disappoint.

Yes, it is slow. Yes, there is a lot of invented language. Yes, concepts play such a massive role that it sometimes feels like fiction-in-name-only. But believe me when I say that these characteristics are far from flaws when considering the work as a whole.

The slow pace, especially at the beginning, was indeed frustrating and at one point led me to take a week-long break from the book. But how much sweeter was the payoff later in the novel for having invested so much attention to the details of Arbre, the world in which the story is set. There is a lot of content in the novel that probably could have been cut for the sake of quicker reading, but only at the expense of understanding the ideas. And in a book as driven by philosophy and science as Anathem, I believe that leaving the reader with an incomplete understanding would leave them with far less satisfaction at the end. I found that bits like those dialogues on the nature of consciousness and the multiverse had a huge return on investment later in the book. It may seem long-winded, but none of it goes to waste.

And as for the invented language: you get used to it, and it helps to establish that Arbre is a world that is almost--but not quite--ours. Most, if not all, of the invented language is loosely based on Latin or Greek roots; for example, "fraa" and "suur" refer to male and female members of a scientific order, respectively, much like our words "fraternal" and "sororal".

I get that it's not for everyone, but if you're looking for a work that's something like Hofstadter, Tolkien, and Heinlein thrown together with a dash of various philosophers and shaken well, Anathem may well be what you're looking for. I count it among the few books that I will undoubtedly read repeatedly in the future, and Neal Stephenson's other novels Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) have leaped to the top of my reading list.

NOTE: I updated this review on 7/27/2011. Update will follow my original review below.

I love Stephenson's writing, I really do - but I consitently find significant gripes that really affect my overall impression of his work. As far as writing is concerned I place him somewhere between Iain M. Banks and Dan Simmons - Like Banks, he knows how to formulate a sentence very creatively, but unlike Simmons, who is also an amazing writer, he tends to pile on too much, sometimes making it a bit of a chore to wade through the pages.

There are many reviews out there that outline the plot, so I'll keep it really brief.

Anathem takes place on an Earth-like planet called Arbre. Behind walls there are concents where the highly intellectual 'avout' live, separated from the more consumerist society on the outside. Because of their intellect, they are banned from using anything highly technological. The avout belong to different 'maths'. Depending on which Math one belongs to, every so many years they are allowed into the outside world for a short period of time, and the outside (saecular) world is allowed in. Depending on the math, the switch can take place every year, decade, century or millennium.

Anathem is told in the first person perspective of Erasmas, a young avout who belongs to a "Tenner" (a math who is sworn to not emerge from the walls for a decade). It is discovered by the avout that something alien is orbiting Arbre.

I have heard many reviews say that this book is incredibly difficult for the first hundred pages or so. I actually found the first hundred pages to be a tolerable read if you take it slow, and use the timeline and glossary judiciously (though your brain will hurt!). Anathem contains a ficticious vocabulary of probably a hundred or so words, which seems daunting at first, but once everything comes into focus it's actually quite easy to follow.

Anathem moves at a snails pace, which, for me, wasn't actually a bad thing. I enjoyed reading about the architecture, the relationships, etc. The story really starts moving probably 200 pages in, and for the next 300-400 pages I thought it was excellent and highly engrossing, though you really do have to pay close attention. The problem is that Stephenson packs on so much weight that it really begins to slog towards the last 200 pages. Everything sort of comes to a halt. I actually had to put this book down because it became so painfully slow. After reading about a dozen books I decided to finish (it was a bit of a chore to re-orient myself). In the end it does pick up a bit, but the payoff felt a bit small considering how much I had to wrap my head around to get to this point.

This is another Stephenson book that has awesome scenery, some amazing ideas, intriguing discussion, but it just started to become too much.

**** REVIEW UPDATE 07/27/2011 ****

I have to update this review. I was in my car waiting for a storm to pass so I could hike, when I had wished I brought a book with me (how could I forget my book!?). I remembered that I had Anathem in the backseat, so I decided to read from the beginning again, only intending to pass time and not get sucked back in.

I got sucked back in.

Anathem on a second reading is proving to be absolutely amazing. On my first pass through, I enjoyed the book for the most part, but the constant need to flip back-and-forth between the story and the glossary does cause one to miss an awful lot, and perhaps a few headaches trying to keep everything in your brain. However, once I started to read it for a second time and I already understood the language of Anathem, as well as a better idea of how the characters are developed -- I am finding the story to be absolutely engrossing, if not downright impossible to put down (I missed my hike, though the storm had long passed).

I have a feeling that this is one of those books that provide you with new experiences with each pass, as you really begin to understand this crazy world a little more each time.

I'm not changing my review yet (3 stars as of the time I write this), but I very well may in the future. I am re-reading Anathem on the side so it might take awhile to get through it again, but multiple efforts might prove to be quite fruitful, and I very well could up the score a star (or two!).

This could be a real work of genius, or I maybe I've been fooled twice (well, maybe not 'fooled', I didn't hate it the first time through). Anyways, I have a feeling it could be the former.

We'll see.

I read Anathem a couple of years ago. I'm just reviewing it now because recently I had an "upsight": I realized that, by looking up all the reviews of other readers whose reviews I agree with, I can find recommendations for other good books. As you will see below, I can be a slow learner. So don't feel bad for marking this review unhelpful. I realize I am writing it for me rather than a potential buyer. While Anathem doesn't need another review, having realized how much I rely on the store book reviews, I want to do my part. Plus, I really wish I had someone to discuss Anathem with in person.

I love Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age; I didn't love Interface or Quicksilver.

The first time I read Anathem, I was really concerned with understanding the math... which mostly I still don't. I rushed through the story's events because I was stressed about my lack of understanding of the more technical details.

So I read it again in order to focus more on the story rather than wracking my brains for a subject I'm not so great at anyway (the aforementioned math:). During the second reading, I freed myself of understanding tech details and I focused more on what the heck was happening in the story.

It took a third reading to put it all together for me. It's not unusual for me to read a book I enjoy twice, but with Anathem I felt compelled to read it three times in a row because I owed it to myself to understand and enjoy it to the utmost. I am glad I did. The third reading was totally rewarding.

This review is a labor of love.
Katy

I came to know of Anathem through a co-worker that come to work one day looking very excited. He had been reading Anathem on his way to work and just before he entered the office he had just read about "spaceships that s***s out nukes as propulsion". It was an amusing concept to wrap his mind around, so he had paused from the reading to share his amusement with someone, only then could he continue, otherwise he feared he could suffer from 'amusement exhaustion'. The person he shared with sat behind my desk.

Since 2009, I have read the book twice each year and it has helped me maintain a bright enthusiasm for curiosity, science and history.

First off, I am not a Neal Stephenson fangirl. He had been recommended to me for awhile, but this was the first book of his that I'd ever read. I expected density, and I got it! This book demands a second reading, and I'll be happy to give it one.

The reviewers who say you've got to give this awhile are absolutely right. For the first roughly 150 pages, I wondered if this was going anywhere, if it had a plot, if it was worth my time. But I'm so glad I stuck with it. And after I finished the book, I understood why he'd had to take so long to set it all up. He's created an entirely new world, new culture, new language. Maybe he didn't have to, but he did, and it is fascinating. It just takes awhile to get used to. So plow through those first couple hundred pages. Don't get frustrated if you don't understand a word or a historical reference - just file it away and all will be explained in good time. By the time you get to the first Anathem (trying not to spoil anything), the plot really gets moving.

The plot quickens, but this is never a fast-paced, action-packed book. Don't expect it. There are long descriptions of highly theoretical things that walk the boundary between science and philosophy. If you've ever read a science or philosophy non-fiction book for fun, you're probably going to enjoy these digressions. I certainly did. If you're looking for more of a space adventure romp, go find something else to read. Don't skip or skim them either, or the plot - when you get back to it - really won't make any sense (hence, I suspect, the criticisms about the confusing ending).

The book is well thought out, intriguing, intellectually challenging. I could easily read this two or three more times (except my library wanted it back). The only thing that prevented it from getting five stars is an exceptionally, frustratingly slow beginning that almost stopped me from finishing.

I read through Anathem slowly at first and then with more and more eagerness as the story built on, spending a fair chunk of evenings (and Metro rides) into finishing it. It is a wonderful book, especially for mathematicians!, and while it could still qualify as a science-fiction book, it blurs the frontiers between the genres of science-fiction, speculative fiction, documentary writings and epistemology... Just imagine any other sci'fi' book being review in Nature! Still, the book was awarded the 2009 Locus SF Award. So it has true sci'fi' characteristics, including Clarke-ian bouts of space opera with a Rama-like vessel popping out of nowhere. But this is not the main feature that makes Anathem so unique and fascinating.

Indeed, while the story is universal enough to appeal to all readers, witness the above-mentioned award, what I find most endearing about the book is the connection with mathematical thinking and the many ways mathematicians share characteristics with monks. The universe imagined by Stephenson segregates scientists and philosophers into convents, under strict rules that prevent any theoretical discovery to be turned into a technological application. This appears to have been imposed by the secular powers after scientific experiments on anti-matter, nuclear fusion or genetic engineering ran out of control. The final twist in the story is how the scientists manage to escape this prohibition while apparently adhering to it (and save the planet on the side).

Beside the attractive order of a monastic closed environment (and the appeal of being shut from the outside world!), one appeal of Stephenson's construct is the almost detective enquiry of the "mathematical monks" who end up solving fundamental quantum theory questions about parallel universes. Toying with all those theories is obviously another appeal of Anathem, as is fishing for well-known principles like Occam's razor, the travelling salesman problem, cord theory, Einsteinian causality cone, Schrödinger's cat, Platonic realism, and so on. (There are so many quotes I could have include here!) Some may find the deliberate hiding of standard theory behind a novlangue a nuisance but this is rather light and one quickly gets used to it. (Until the aliens start detailing their parallel universes, at least.)

Compared with earlier works of Stephenson, Anathem is closer to The Baroque Cycle and to the excellent Cryptonomicon than to the wonderful cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. Anathem (and The Baroque Cycle) reflects on how deep is Stephenson's pondering on the nature of Science and the philosophy of scientific discovery. That he manages to turn those reflections into a lively and fascinating story--much more than in The Baroque Cycle--shows how impressive an author he is. If a comparison with William Gibson was making any sense, I would say Stephenson has gone beyond. While Gibson ponders on the increasing impact of technology in/on our lives, Stephenson looks at much deeper (epistemological and philosophical) issues. I thus rank this book amongst the best books I read in the past months!

I have been a Neal Stephenson fan since I first read "Snow Crash" 10 years ago. So, please understand I carry that prejudice.

Anathem is a bit more challenging than other Stephenson novels...much like an Umberto Eco novel. There is a lot of geometry, science, math and even a made up language in this book. If you enjoy that sort of thing as an adornment to good plot and character development, than you will likely enjoy this book. If such things are a burden that you must put up with to make it through the book, skip "Anathem". One thing I enjoy immensely about Stephenson books is getting completely lost in the novel and knowing that I can travel quite a ways with the book and enjoy a great deal before passing through the ending.

Some reviews have indicated that character and plot development suffered in this book in order to support digressions into other topics - I disagree. In fact, dealing with the challenge of monastic life in this totally alien world is a plot and character development I found rich and absorbing. Your mileage may vary. But, if you're a Stephenson fan, you'll likely enjoy "Anathem" in with much the same delight as "Crytonomicron" or "Snow Crash" provided you.

This is Stephenson's best novel. While Anathem is a thick book, it is more disciplined than Cryptonomicon or the Baroque Trilogy. Anathem has one main plot line, a central character-narrator, and action concentrated over a relatively short interval of months. In terms of plot construction, this is a really ingenious book. Stephenson combines, in a creditable fashion, three of the major themes of Science Fiction novels. Anathem is simultaneously a parallel worlds, first contact, and post-holocaust novel. Stephenson uses one of the most effective science fiction plot devices, following the maturation of a young/inexperienced central protagonist as he or she experiences a new world, as his central narrative element.

Anathem is essentially a novel of ideas presented as a parallel worlds adventure story. Stephenson does well in presenting the ideas in the context of the adventure story. The primary ideas presented are a mixture of Platonic metaphysics and parallel worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Drawing on a broad spectrum of Western history, Stephenson throws in a variety of other scientific and intellectual concepts. These include, for example, a version of empiricist epistemology and a version of the nominalist-realist debate. This is surely the only novel influenced by the work of the contemporary epistemologist David Lewis.

Like his prior books, this one contains a reasonable bit of satire. Stephenson is only a competent stylist and the real strength of this book is his ability to put the intellectual content into a reasonably sophisticated but nonetheless popular fiction format. This is not a criticism because the latter is undoubtedly quite difficult.

Stephenson's parallel earth, Arbre, has clear parallels to our world but also one in which there has been a basic divide between science & philosophy, largely based on Platonic metaphysics, and religion. If this is intended to be a comment on our world, its not accurate as Platonism proved to be very hospitable to theology. Arbre is also apparently a world without any equivalent to Aristotle.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

When I met Neal Stephenson on the Anathem book tour, as he was signing my copy of Anathem, I thanked him for teaching me how to slow down and chew my fiction. To be expected, there is much to savor in his latest work.

As in his other works, Stephenson creates a rich and believable world, filled not just with memorable characters but with entire societies that persist in memory long after finishing. The planet of Arbre is alien enough to necessitate deep exploration, though familiar enough that its exploration doesn't impede character development in parallel. Like many of works in the genre, the addition of terms unique to the environment serve as a constant reminder that Arbre is not Earth, no matter how familiar.

The many-worlds interpretation served as a great premise to allow the reader to experience frequent 'upsights', where the correspondence between some element of the Arbre cosmos and the Earthly equivalent is discovered. These continue to lend credence to the quantum theories present in the book, specifically the existence of parallel yet slightly altered planets like ours, which helps to smooth out some of the irrational and unpredictable events that happen at the end. Gardan's Steelyard as the Arbre equivalent of Ockham's Razor, the collapsing of probable states like Schrodinger's cat, Lady Baritoe as Lord Herbert of Cherbury (perhaps with a splash of Kant?)...exemplifying the depth of research and breadth of subject matter Stephenson is willing to incorporate into his works.

The emergence of the Ringing Vale avout was excellent, a rescue on par with the chapter of The Confusion where Jack exacts vengeance for Eliza. If Anathem had a different author, I'd look forward to another book on the Ringing Vale math and their origins, or even the Ita and the split. I especially enjoyed the clever literary recursion of the Ganakelux creation narrative of the Magistrate, the Condemned Man and the Innocent. The question I have is, who is the authors Innocent? I appreciated his willingness to sacrifice important characters. Orolo's act of self sacrifice for the Convox was reminiscent of Bobby Shaftoe's sacrifice for the marines in Cryptonomicon.

Unfortunately, Anathem failed in a few ways for me, most glaringly with the protagonist. As the protagonists of other Stephenson works seemed to be incredibly intelligent, wiser than their station would indicate, I found it oddly ironic that Erasmus was such a laggard. For a Decenarian, I found myself wondering why he hadn't been Thrown Back years before the beginning of the story. He's aware of this, mentioning it periodically, even at the end when he admits that his purpose in one of the alternate strings was simply to open hatches for Fraa Jad. Further, the point is made often that he's clearly outmatched by his close friends, Jesry in intellect, Lio in his brawn and dexterity, and Ala in her organizational ability. (Perhaps he is smarter than Arsibalt?)

What Erasmus does have (beyond an ability to recall his story and write it later) is a sense of adventure. He's downright indefatigable (very Shaftoesque) for someone who was sheltered i a concent with very limited extramuros contact or knowledge. I found it to be a difficult pill to see this trusting, naive teenager to suddenly turn into a brave, adventurous, not-quite-hero. I think the transition between fid and leader should have taken much longer, only after learning a few lessons along the way. Perhaps the Gheeth could have exploited his trusting nature by luring him into an alley and jumping him, or some other sequence of hardening the character.

He's certainly not the hero in matters of love. His relationship with Ala was lacked cohesiveness in that they both appeared to share a strong bond, yet as his persisted and strengthened with distance and time, hers withered and died. Yet, even after finding out she'd been having sex with Jesry (his best friend?), he not only accepts this and waits patiently for her to pick a suitor, with little or no mending he's back with her ready to marry her on the spot! I understand and appreciate character flaws, but this one (as it wasn't particularly germane to the plot, maybe simply a love interest to humanize the protagonist?) was too much for me.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, as I reflected on what I had read, I was upset about how poorly established the previous ages were. Their technologies, their ambitions, all simply glossed over in order to delve more deeply into the working of the clock, the maths, and developing the relationships of the main characters. Had there been more background (overt or otherwise) on these prior ages, especially those leading up to the Reconstitution, it might have been more plausible that the Saeculars would have such an advanced society. Given only the reflections of a Decenarian to build a mental model of extramuros, the first third of the book I wildly underestimated the history and post-3rd Sack state of Arbre. This made many of the aspects of the book (interactions with the Saecular world mostly) feel contrived, as if constructed haphazardly to bridge the plot across a crevasse of missing background. Naturally, after Advent it was clear that Stephenson had constructed this history of Arbre, though I think he left too much out in the early going, possibly due to the chosen narrative style.

One of the more subtle flaws that irked me after finishing the book was how the entire planet of Arbre seemed to be reflections of only a subset of Earth's cultures. Everything stemmed from Greco-Roman, Christian and post-Christian roots. While I might be forgiving of this in lesser authors, and chalked it up to the massive task of creating an entire planet, Stephenson is one of only a handful of speculative fiction authors that can achieve exactly this aim, and account for myriad cultures.

Another problem, which I'll attribute to the choice in narrative style, is that all the heroes of the story just so happen to be all the Decenarian buddies from the same concent. Of all the people in all the world of Arbre, these handful of individuals happened to be perfectly suited to the task of saving the world? While I appreciate the necessary addition of muscle with the Valers, I found the others relationships to be implausibly convenient. But, perhaps there are hundreds of other worlds where the book is never written, because the group assembled can't accomplish the task and the protagonist dies before writing his journal?

I enjoyed Anathem, and recommend it for science fiction fans, especially those who prefer a more ordinary protagonist and frequent explorations of theoretical physics.

This book was really amazing. The scope of the world Stephenson creates is broad, with loads of detail that makes it come to life.
The story nimbly rolls through societies, geographies, and cosmologies.
For sure the narrative/dialogue can get complicated, but it also broke down some complex ideas in ways that I found understandable and though-provoking.
I don't believe in gods, but this book provided the most compelling argument for divine consciousness that I've ever been exposed to, all the while undermining popular conceptions of religion and "planing" the religious enthusiasts of our own world.

"Anathem" is a giant doorstop of a novel that manages to remain interesting, even compelling, throughout its entire length. It is difficult to review it without giving spoilers. As the novel begins, we meet Fraa Erasmus, the equivalent of a monk, in monastic seclusion. However, on Arbre, unlike Earth, the cloistered orders are scientific and philosophical, and the "secular" world outside is the religious world. We see Arbre through his eyes, and one of the interesting aspects of "Anathem" is how one would perceive a society based on only seeing bits of it on short occasions, as opposed to being immersed it in as a participant. I'll stop there in describing the plot; other reviews have done a better job than I have, and you will enjoy it more the less you read about the details of the plot.

Stephenson has often been criticized for the endings, or perceived lack thereof, of his novels. I used to agree with that criticism, until I returned to some of his works and "got it" the second time around. Nonetheless, "Anathem" includes a more conventional ending that most readers will find satisfactory.

The idea of "more conventional" may explain why some readers did not like "Anathem" as well as some of Stephenson's past works. Most notably, "Anathem" lacks the digressions and diversions that have characterized his previous novels - from the chapter in "Cryptonomicon" about eating a bowl of Captain Crunch, to virtually all of the Baroque Cycle. Indeed, the Baroque Cycle didn't have a plot so much as thousands of pages of stuff happening - the journey itself was the destination. In contrast, "Anathem" is much more tightly plotted and rarely gets off-track in the course of 900 pages.

After I finished "Anathem," I was reflecting on how different it was from Stephenson's past novels, and how it is not connected to any of them. However, I realized (without giving away any spoilers!) that the special gold in the "Baroque Cycle" and "Cryptonomicon" may have its origin explained in "Anathem." Perhaps I'm reading too much into certain events in "Anathem," but that's my interpretation and I'm sticking to it.

"Anathem" is SF as literature, or literature with SF elements. Although hard science is part of the story, this is not a hardware-dominated novel - in contrast to "The Diamond Age" or "Snow Crash." As such, people who do not read much SF may find this to be accessible and interesting. I recommend it highly to anyone who likes interesting, thoughtful writing.

This book can not be explained in a short review. Stephenson creates a world that is very complicated, has its own history, and creates a language to go along with it. While some elements of the novel will be very similar to what the reader is used to, some of the book can be very confusing.

The story follows Erasamas, a young avout, as he is pulled out of his math (a scientific monastery of sorts) with several of his companions to solve a problem of the secular world. The beginning of the book is set up to explain to you what a math is like before you get to the actual plot. The pacing can be slow at times but lightening quick at others. This is a very aggressive work by Stephenson and may be called his masterpiece. Not that it is perfect, but Stephenson set out to write a literary science fiction novel and he succeeded.

Readers of Stephenson know that he has a tendency to not end a book so much as he stops writing it. In this book Stephenson did a good job of wrapping things up on some degree and leaving a lot up to the imaginations of his readers. A goal that he has been tweaking from day one.

This book is hard to suggest to just anyone. People with very scientific minds that love talking about and exploring theories and science should really get into this book. The literary elite have seemed to enjoy this book as well. This book is very deep and thought provoking though. This isn't popular sci-fi. Personally, I loved it.

Neal Stephenson writes books that you can't get out of your brain once you've let them in. "The Diamond Age" remains for me the quintessential "paradigm shift" novel of ideas; I think about the world differently having read it. Anathem is not quite up to that level, and also does not seem quite so spectacularly original as his other books. The special kids taken in to be trained up behind high stone walls at the age of 10 who then choose or are chosen for separate orders reminded me of Harry Potter, and the travel over the polar regions to a place where the "alternative universe" sources of consciousness can be explored echoed The Golden Compass (and Stephenson seems to give the nod to that trilogy by contrasting consciousness with "dust" at one point). Nevertheless it is rare to find an author who can write so felicitously and can also clearly explain some of the most abstruse physics issues out there. I especially liked the idea of astronauts floating in space who cut themselves off from measurement by any outside force and thereby become a waveform that can take on an infinite number of possibilities that can all exist at the same time, with some of the possibilities seen through dreams. I also liked the hard science exploration of space flight possibilities by individuals. I even liked the incorporation of Max Tegmark's ideas that the entire universe is just one big mathematical expression if seen from the right vantage point, and that our occasional glimpses into that framework could correspond to Platonic forms. Stephenson also directly takes on religion and highlights the ways that it prevents the rational brain from achieving the truth, although he less than courageously denies that this was his object in post-book blog posts. His language is endlessly inventive; the coinage "deolater" for god-worshipper in his alternative universe brilliantly highlights the worldview of those who use this word. Other wonderful neologisms: "avout" for a "devout" one minus religious baggage, "concent" to evoke both a "convent" and a "concentration camp," which aptly describes the places to which the intellectuals in the novel's world have been banished. What I didn't like was endless discussion about the niceties of assigning names to various philosophical approaches, with the concept being that if only we could "mathematize" philosophy we could write equations manipulating it the way we do physics. There are also some science aspects of this that seem unreasonable on their face: part of the plot depends on objects and animate beings from several different universes operating under different laws of physics being able to travel together through the "multiverse": Stephenson doesn't even begin to provide a theory as to how that could work. Notwithstanding these quibbles, this one is a "must read."

First off I worked as a math tutor while studying philosophy in undergrad; I loved reading Anathem. I have recommended this book to everyone I know that enjoys either of these fields (and loaned my copy to my fellow, financially poor, philosophy grads).

Between my passion for and experience in these subjects, it was like this book was written for someone with my background. I mean, more so than any other of Stephenson's books, and I have enjoyed so many other Stephenson works.

I don't mind reading slow and wandering prose (provided it's well written, which Stephenson's prose most definitely is). If you like your books fast paced and hard hitting and then finished, then you probably won't like this, or any of his other works.

Title: Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

Time spent on the "To Read" shelf: About 2-3 days.

Days spent reading it: Around 3 weeks.

Why I read it: Honestly--The cover looked really, really awesome. So I read the inside flap and thought it sounded interesting. I have read Neal Stephenson before (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age) so I thought I'd enjoy reading another.

Brief Review: Ok, this book was huge. My first comments would have to be, Neal Stephenson needs a real editor. This book needed to be about 300 pages shorter, maybe even more.

Stephenson drops you into a world called Arbre. It is similar, but dissimilar to our own. The first 175 pages are spent dropping new words and vocabulary as if Stephenson was speaking a foreign language I was supposed to understand. Once I got acclimated to his language, the book became a fairly good read. Stephenson is prone to talk about esoteric ideas, and integrate them into his plot as if they make sense. Maybe Stephenson is smarter than I am, but I spent a good part of the book saying, "That's sounds interesting, but I don't understand the point."

When Stephenson was actually moving the plot along, instead of having two or three of his characters in a strange Dialog about these bizarre ideas, the book was really cool. It would be difficult to give a synopsis of the plot without having to explain a billion terms, but the general idea was cosmological theoreticians are assembled to figure out how aliens have arrived at the planet Arbre. Great and strange events follow. A good overview is given on the wikipedia page made for Anathem.

Not for the faint of heart at 937 total pages (45 being appendices), but not a waste of time for the dedicated. One of the things I love about sci-fi is an author's freedom to explore interesting ideas about religion, politics, science, etc. without having to fit into a set of rules. Stephenson definitely exploits these freedoms to their max. I don't regret reading it, but if I had known how difficult it was going to be, I might not have started it.

Favorite quote from the book: "Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?"
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor."

Stars: 3.5 out of 5.

The Final Word: Extensive.

I started trying to read this book once and ended up giving up due to the difficult language, wordiness of some of the descriptions, and the slow progression of the plot. I returned to it almost a year later and stuck with it this time. After the first 200 or so pages, this book caught me up and I couldn't put it down. The difficult language got easier as the book progressed. Stephenson does still use a large amount of "made-up" words, but they started to blend more seamlessly.

The ending of the book did leave me a little disappointed. For the majority of the book, there's this great climax building. But when I reached the end, I felt like I was left hanging and saying "Really?? That's it??? That can't be how this story would truly end?!?!"

But, all in all, highly recommended to fans of Stephenson and anyone that wants something a little more complex to dig into.

Anathem represents my second encounter with the genius of Neal Stephenson (third, if you count my aborted read of Quicksilver), and I can honestly say that while the reading experience does not get any easier, there is the same sense of satisfaction waiting at the end. More dense, less accessible, and somehow not as interesting as Cryptonomicon, it's a book that almost violently defies categorization.

I find it a really difficult book to review. The university-educated, critical reading, spectacle-wearing intellectual who lies deep within me wants to award it five stars for its sheer audacity, limitless depths of esoteric concepts, and laudable efforts to make math interesting. It really is a book to be admired as much for what it sets out to accomplish as for the skill behind it. However, the tired, overworked, long-haired geek in search of entertainment who resides a bit closer to my surface is struggling to award it any more than two stars for the brief, fitful glimpses of story hidden between the concepts. There's a really exciting novella buried here, but it would take an entire concent another millennium to unearth it.

More than anything else, I guess my problem is its all just so boring. Plot developments are so few and far between, it feels like the story never moves ahead. There's a lot of talking, a lot of thinking, a lot of writing, and a lot of calculating going on that, quite honestly, I would have been content to have seen left off the page. Yes, it's interesting and, yes, I can honestly say I learned a few things, but they were hard lessons. By the times the aliens actually appear, I'd honestly forgotten that there were aliens in the book, and by the time we get to the revelations about Fraa Erasmas . . . well, I'd stopped caring.

It took me nearly a year of on again/off again reading to get through it, and it was more a sense of obligation that kept dragging me back than any real desire to get back into the story. The book never really grabbed my attention, and simply didn't offer my any incentive to keep reading. I feel bad, because there's a nagging voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I should appreciate it more, but appreciation is not the same as enjoyment, and therein lies the rub.

Read the first 100 pages and couldn't keep going, found it quite boring and dense.

Hardly anything interesting happens in the first 100 pages, the author spends to much time describing the environment instead of giving a story.

Also the language on the book makes it a difficult read, the author uses a lot of made up words instead of plain English, there doesn't seem to be a good reason for this, just an attempt to sound like an alien world which this doesn't achieve. It just makes reading the book hard to enjoy.

This review is for the 28 CD unabridged audiobook read by William Dufris.

There seems to be a sufficient amount of reviews that discuss the relative merits of Neal Stephenson's gargantuan ANATHEM, so I'll try to keep my own thoughts brief - my real purpose in submitting a review was to raise a few points particular to the audio version.

First of all, I highly doubt that I would ever have read the print version of ANATHEM. Although I did read an enormous amount of science-fiction at one time, most of it came from the seventies or earlier, and I have not been able to sustain interest (or not been able to keep up with) the genre since then. Nor did I have any previous experience with Mr. Stephenson's work, although a friendly comment left on another of my reviews did suggest THE BAROQUE CYCLE to me. The only reason I did pick this up is because I have to make a long drive once a month, usually five to ten hours, and I wanted something to help pass the time.

I apologize for all the background information, but it seems necessary as I think this audio version is better suited to some listeners than to others, and perhaps even those who enjoyed the print version may not like the book as read, and vice versa. In fact, I'm almost positive that I would not have stuck with reading the book myself - only the fact that I was a captive audience, so to speak, and faced with the alternative of staring vacantly at the road in front of me with nothing else to do kept me listening. My first impression, once the narrative actually began, was instant dislike.

There is a bit of a preface to this audio version, one in which the listener is warned that the complexity of subjects and the depth of the world Mr. Stephenson creates may prove challenging to comprehend in this venue. I fully agree. I do think this is somewhat ameliorated by the emphasis the narrator, William Dufris, is able to elicit from the text. The problem there, though, is that, on a personal level, I simply did not care for the sound of Mr. Dufris' voice. This is an enormous hurdle to get past in the course of twenty-eight CD's, though I did eventually grow accustomed to his reading style. This highlights what I think was most helpful to getting past both problems - that I had long unbroken blocks of time to listen to the recording, which aided in immersing myself in the world of ANATHEM, as well as adjusting to the narrator.

But the instant dislike I had for the book was a combination of my getting used to Mr. Dufris' characterizations, and the actual words of Mr. Stephenson. Now that I've completed the book, my judgment of Mr. Stephenson's work is that it was an enjoyable yarn, highly imaginative, and written in a competent yet pedestrian manner. It was this initial averageness of the prose that was most offputting, coupled with the manner that it was read. It reminded me of the stereotypical banal epic fantasy that was so commonplace thirty years ago (and may be still, for all I know). I nearly ejected the first CD before Mr. Dufris finished the first page. I'm glad I stuck with it - as I said, now that I've finished, I think the book was engaging, and it did certainly take up a chunk of time that would have been otherwise wasted.

Almost impossible to know who to recommend it to though - the story of Fraa Erasmus and his friends as they leave their cloistered retreat and come to grips with another intelligence is a rather simple story gilded with an incredible amount of literary world building and discussions of physics, causality, and inter-dimensional theory. I freely admit that through some of this I was hanging on by my mental fingernails - but I do think that the book is written so that even non-academics like myself can at least come away with the gist of the arguments if not the details. Readers, though, who primarily read from plot point to plot point, and who find any divergence from the story's advancement to be a waste of time or an example of authorial indulgence may not appreciate ANATHEM - in audio OR in print. This is a VERY leisurely stroll through the world of Arbe, its history, its politics, its religious ideas, and its scientific community, along with many detailed discussions (often in the form of Socratic dialogues) of mathmatics, physics and other scientific theories.

If that doesn't put you off immediately, then ANATHEM may still yet be for you. To those considering the audio version, unfortunately I couldn't find any audio samples on the internet toward which to direct you in order to get an idea of Mr. Dufris' voice. I doubt it matters too much - much like any other narrator, some will like his voice and some will not. I do think he did a very good job overall at presenting the material - some of his characterizations were jarring, but it is a huge cast that he had to cover, and in the end I think he succeeded. I will say that ANATHEM would not be the first book I'd recommend if you are only looking for something to listen to on short jaunts around town, or the few minutes into work everyday. I do believe having a sustained period of time with few distractions was critical for my enjoyment of the book. I just don't believe I could have digested the material in thirty minute chunks or less.

While different listeners will have different threshhold levels for works of this kind, with persistence I found it manageable. Overall, ANATHEM is an entertaining, skillfully read, escapist epic. Four stars.

NS does it again!

Who else can invent a whole world (called Arbre) that isn't quite Earth, but is sort of similar, give it seven thousand years of its own history, invent a language for it that has words that sound a lot like our own Earth words, and writes nine hundred pages worth of story about it?

This being a Neal Stephenson book, I expected, and got, detailed discussions about hard science concepts, and in this case, hard philosophy and quantum concepts throughout the book. Also, I had to get through two hundred pages of exposition before stuff really started happening. Being a NS fan, I expected and enjoyed this! I couldn't make it through all the frantic Lost-style running around at the beginning of the first book of the Baroque Cycle, and bailed on that, so I although I do like NS, I do have my limits.

That wasn't an issue with Anathem. Of course, I had to do a lot of flipping back and forth between the timeline and the glossary, but I don't mind that.

This being a Neal Stephenson book, there are lots of little funny bits sprinkled throughout that readers familiar with philosophy, quantum physics, and Earth history will recognize and appreciate.
There are a lot of similarities between Arbre culture and science and that of Earth. Part of the fun of reading this book is catching the "in-jokes". There is an "aha!" moment (upsight?) in the book that is by itself "worth the price of admission".

If you are a fan of NS books like Cryptonomicon, this is the book for you.

This book took me several tries. I would read the first chapter, then put it down and forget about it. The world building is complex, the vocabulary is very specific, and the science a bit hard. BUT if you hang on, and plow through the first chapters, you will find a thrilling adventure book, which elegantly explores advanced scientific hypotheses, and plays the anticipation game really well. The ending will blow your mind, and necessitates several readings. In the end, I was glad I read this book - it quickly became one of my favorite stephenson novels.

I've liked everything that I've read of Stephenson's, although I haven't read it all yet. With so much of his work well over 500 pages, I have a hurdle to get over before diving into it. I know that I need to have enough time to devote to the book, and so his books have slid further down in my to-read pile in favour of shorter material. And then, each time that I do get to one of his books, I kick myself for waiting so long. "Anathem", one of the 2009 Hugo nominees, is yet another example of this.

Only Stephenson could write a book that is nearly 1000 pages, keeps up interest throughout the whole thing (can you describe a book of this length as a page-turner?), and still somehow manages to have a rushed ending. One of my friends observed that he writes great beginnings and middles, but only so-so endings. I think he's right here.

"Anathem" isn't an easy read. I wouldn't take it to the beach. Stephenson has his own language sprinkled throughout the book. Mostly you can pick up the meaning from context, there are dictionary definitions heading each chapter, and there's a glossary in the back. Also in the backmatter are mathematical proofs, which only serve to prove the awesomeness that is Neal Stephenson. But then, I've got a math degree, so you know I'm biased. But for all that, the book isn't unapproachable either, and I never felt myself lost. Instead, I was immersed in the story, and hated wrenching myself out of it to do things like sleep or go to work.

You could consider the basic premise similar to that of Harry Potter: kids go off to a special school (in this case, monastery-like entities called "maths") where they learn special stuff (mathematics, philosophy, etc) and have adventures and generally save the world. But here, the special stuff that they learn is an important part of the story, and has meaning that carries forward throughout the book. The characters are well-considered and complex. The issues at hand are not ones that have a simple solution. This is not a book of black and white: everything has subtlety and depth.

I found the whole story engrossing, and will probably read it again in a few months to see what I pick up on a second trip through it.

This paving brick of a book (over 900 pages) gets off to a leisurely start. In some ways, it reminded me of Magister Ludi: the cloistered academics leading apparently ineffective lives, for sure, and an eventual return to the outer world, but also the somnolent pace. To tell the truth, only engaging characters and a richly detailed imaginary culture kept me going through the ponderous first half.

The pace grows almost exponentially, though. Around midway through the book, the Cousins arrive - visitors from somewhere other than the protagonist's world. The book's tempo seems to double at about that point. Then, halfway through what's left, the first-person narrator leaves the cloister and the pace doubles again. Then, halfway through the remainder ... you get the idea.

Although the history of Stephenson's world and the lives within its nearly religious centers of knowledge give plenty to think about, the later parts of the book scintillate with remarkable conjecture. The space war has a believable pace: days of boredom punctuated by minutes of terror. It's carefully constructed approach makes the attack credible, though: a tiny assault team sneaks up on a miles-wide starship with thousands of years' experience in space war using entirely believable hardware. The many-worlds physics mixed with Doc Smith mental powers work well, too, even if the "new matter" conjectures seemed weak to me.

If you have some time on your hands, a bit of patience, and a passing knowledge real-world science, you might find a lot to like here. I haven't read much of Stephenson's work, but I'm coming back for more.

-- wiredweird

This book vividly describes a completly unique alternate world. It is rare to come across a writer like this, who can present a truly original and different story.
The plot starts off slowly, with a good two hundred pages devoted to setting up the scene before anything happens. However, the description is handled so deftly with intresting details, that this section does not drag. Later, tension builds up, and plot twists and surprises continue until the end.
The use of language is superb, with the writer staying 'in character' throughout. Even in the edge of your seat actions bits, the book does not slip into typical action language and continues to be in 'avout speak.'

I have had all of Neal Stephenson's books (to date) on my shelf having bought them when they appeared in paperback. Something about the editorial reviews always persuaded me to buy them. BUT they sat and I didn't read them until one day in 2014 I decided that my first book by N.S. would be the Baroque Trilogy in order. A few years ago I did the same with Frank Herbert's Dune series: read them all for the second time and discovered the wonderful ecology story that I hadn't even understood in the first reading.
I was enthralled. In less than 2 months I finished them. A feat indeed. Over 4,000 pages of font 6 or 7. What a way to pass time. Then I continued to read all the others. Cryptonomicon I had started several times but this time I finished it in one gulp.
Anathem - a whole new ball game. I started it 3 times and put it on one side. Then I read a few of the the store reviews and one of the writers/reviewers wrote that he didn't get into the book until after the first 200 pages. I decided to persevere. I continued reading. This morning I finished the book, honestly, with a sigh of relief.
My thoughts: I felt that the end was not well thought out and illogical. Some "explanations or Dialogs or messalans", although explained at great length - the book could have been 300 pages shorter and thus much more readable - were too complicated to be convincing. I am assuming that "cosmi" = multiple universes=multiple "choosable?" timelines!. I felt like saying do me a favor! Sorry but that was not at all convincing either. Other writers have done it better in less convoluted language.
I am glad I finished this book but I cannot say that I enjoyed it as much as - to date - I have enjoyed ALL the other books written by N.S., especially Reamde and the Baroque Cycle, and I am waiting for Seveneves to arrive by mail. Neal Stevenson is not an author to be read on Kindle. For his books I need paper.

One of the best things about Neal Stephenson's works is that they make me feel just a bit smarter than I probably am. He gets into some pretty heavy mathematical, physics and philosophical areas but he holds your hand through them, explaining in a not too convoluted way. The novels can be enjoyed on a variety of levels, including a traditional adventure or mystery, but if you are willing to do a little work, you can get much more out of them. In my mind Stephenson is a stepping stone between Dan Brown and Umberto Eco.
Anathem introduces us to a world not much unlike our own except for monk-like orders of philosophers who live in varying degrees of isolation from the outside world. Much of the first third of the book is just setting this stage. Stephenson goes to great lengths to make this a fully realized world including a use of vocabulary on par with the Nadsat of A Clockwork Orange.
The central mystery revolves around an artificial object in the sky and what its implications are for the nature of reality, causality and Platonic ideals. We follow a young member of the order as he tries to understand why his mentor was kicked out of the order and why the outside government has summoned him, his friends and top intellectuals out of seclusion.
Another great read by Stephenson if a bit slow at the start, but if you are willing to do the work there is a payoff as everything starts to come together.

When I first began reading Anathem, it seemed like a laborious book to read. There were so many unfamiliar terms, and the narrator rattles them off as if they should be part of your vocabulary. I almost gave up a few times, but I gave the author the benefit of the doubt due to how much I enjoyed Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon. You have to get in the habit of making assumptions about what those terms mean, assumptions that later get adjusted as you continue in the book.

Once you get used to it, the book is an enjoyable read. Be prepared to think. This isn't a casual read.

After reading a few reviews, I reread "A Canticle For Leibowitz" by Walter Miller. I think Miller has been a major influence on Neal Stephenson's writing style (viz. latin quotes and humor) and Anathem has a few similarities, but the books are definitely not the same. The only borrowed ideas are that mankind never appears to learn from its past mistakes and groups of people, "devout" in monasteries or "avout" in concents, have saved valuable information during upheavals in history. Anathem also has it's own language which borrows a similar (but not as complex) idea from "A Clock work Orange" by Anthony Burgess.

The best comparison I can make is "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells and "The Time Ships" by Stephen Baxter. The original book is dated, but the story is great and that is what really matters. Baxter's "sequel" is similar, yet goes off on another tangent. Anathem is a loose sequel to the "Baroque Cycle" and "Cryptonomicon".

Anathem was hard to follow at times and I had to reread several parts to figure out if I missed something, but it was worth it. Stephenson has the habit of going into long-winded explanations, yet they do provide necessary background information. This book covers just about any topic you can think of: space travel, people addicted to checking their cellphones for messages and the internet for email, discussions on math and physics, human behavior, false information on websites, etc. If you have a short attention span and want instant gratification, this is not a book for you...

Anathem is the story of Erasmas, a fraa at the Concent of Saunt Edhar whose life is defined by the mathic Cartasian discipline. Got that?

I always though the phrase `speculative fiction' was simple linguistic camouflage for `chainmail bikinis and laser guns,' but it really seems like the appropriate title for this kind of work. The book follows a young man (Erasmas) who lives in an alternate world populated not by monasteries full of religious devotees, but by "mathic communities" full of people who have devoted their lives to rigorous intellectual pursuits. Erasmas becomes aware (through his teacher, the astronomer Orlo) of a strange object floating in orbit, apparently man-made. This is just the beginning: there are gang fights, desperate flights in the night across glaciers, wild cultural clashes, debates, first contact, orbital adventures, and an assault on an enemy space station ... followed by a peace negotiation with same.

More than any other Stephenson book, this is a novel that wears its ideas on its sleeve. This is so much the case that it can sometimes be difficult to find the story underneath the ten-ton ideas that it's been laden with. And these are big ideas: the book explores cultural isolation, longevity of biblical proportions, alternate dimensions and quantum mechanics, monasticism, and math and philosophy ... LOTS of math and philosophy. Even when people aren't chewing over various profundities in their internal monologues, the setting (primarily three monasteries) and the characters (philosopher-monks) lend themselves to a certain level of talking-head-ness. That's not really a problem for readers who are interested in philosophy, especially given Stephenson's characteristically clever turns of phrase and changes of the action. It's just that the ideas now stand much more in the foreground than they did even in The Baroque Cycle, and they can sometimes obscure the characters and plot. Somewhat missing here are the spectacularly idiosyncratic characters that populate other Stephenson novels. Apart from the Merlin-like Jad and the blunt martial artist Lio, there isn't that much that stands out between the characterizations (even very late in the book, I regularly confused the characters Arsibalt and Jesry, both of whom are important).

From a Christian perspective, this book (apart from a sentence or two at the very end) has virtually none of the objectionable sexual elements contained in his other works. More than the others, though, it develops the theme of atheism; this is unsurprising given its philosophical themes. Stephenson is still pretty polite about theism, especially when compared with other authors, but it's there and it's clear. I find it a little surprising that his solution to the problem of non-material entities (like axiomatic truths) seems to be a refined form of Platonism, but I suppose if you're going to believe in math and not in God, Plato is as good a place as any to go.

Overall, this is not a very good introduction to Stephenson (that would be Diamond Age), but there's definitely some good stuff for those willing to tackle fiction of this intellectual density.

This is a wonderful book by possibly my favorite contemporary author. I'm still working through all of his stuff but I would highly recommend either Cryptonomicon or Seveneves for people who have never read Neal Stephenson before. Once you've gotten through one of those then you can brace yourself for this behemoth. Anathem is kind of like reading a modern version of Plato's Republic set in a cool fantasy/sci-fi world full of endearing characters.

This is the third lengthy novel by Stephenson which I have read. My favorite is still "Cryptonomicon" but this one is quite provocative as well. If you do not like lengthy novels, stay away. One of the reasons for this author being as good as this is because he can carry any idea or topic and entertain for a long read.Stephenson is the best out there for doing that.

This novel takes place in a parallel world to Earth, with monks in convents (called concents) and a secular technological world on their doorsteps. The big thinkers, believes Stephenson, are those who cloister themselves in a monastic facility and who are usually ready to help a world in trouble. At that point, they are conscripted out of the monasteries. If they disobey, they are subject to 'anathema' or an Anathem ritual. The story might take 100 pages or so to get going but I always like the author's slow establishment of settings, full of rich details and character-builds. Stephenson has a way to explain other cosmos and he even has an appendix for that. This read reminds me somewhat of Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" although that was Middle Ages; this is modern times, with a chronology suited to that world. Much of the history of this world, Arbre, parallels that of Earth. There is a large Glossary and, following it, you can see the obvious comparisons to Earth history. This world has some interventions from not just another world but from other parallel cosmos. One monk does some very intriguing detective work in discovering the alien spaceship orbiting above.

And Stephenson has not disappointed the reader with his powerful descriptions and his wit. There is, for example, this line about the power of the vibrations of chant songs of some of the fraas (avouts or devouts): "...the confidence to assert that when your brain is in that state it can think things it could not think otherwise..." Or this phrase on wine: "The stuff was tremendous, like drinking your favourite book...".

On page 419 there are some very interesting comments from the characters Yul and Cord regarding some philosophies, and on page 467-9 there are thoughtful conversations on the 'Kelxes' (another monastery) about the triangle of God, man and sin, apparently a dominant theme in any cosmos where people live. And there is a neat description of lift-off into orbit (although a primitive sort of lift-off) on page 755.

I suppose most readers either love or hate Neal Stephenson's style. I hesitated to give him 5 stars here, because of the length, but his brilliant handling of deep topics warrants it in my view. If you can name a better writer, let me know.

The first 300 pages of Anathem are probably my favorite 300 pages that I've ever read. I love the whole idea of the Concents and the philosophical monastic order. I haven't been so involved with a novel in a really long time. Stephenson is a great storyteller here - the way he present things. The mysteriousness and magnitude of everything.

And then the rest of the novel falls short. Not to say that it's bad, but it just doesn't deliver on what the beginning promised. It's almost as if there are two different novels here - the one about the Concent and their philosophical meanderings, and then the one about this other thing that the rest of the novel comes to be about. And the two really don't have much to do with each other. I was dissapointed that the philosophy didn't continue to have an important part to the plot. And the whole idea of the Concent and how it works ultimately has no bearing on anything. Stephenson takes so much time and care to set up this amazing thing, and then he doesn't do anything with it.

Ultimately, I came away feeling similar to how I have with other of Stephenson's work - that he just throws crap together and hopes something will stick. There's no cohesive whole here. It's funny that with all the philosophizing in this book, you'd think Stephenson would actually be trying to say something, but ultimately he's not saying anything, except that maybe religion is silly.

Still, it's a unique novel that really should be read if you are into stuff like this.

I'll leave it to the many other reviews to cover the story, writing style, and story-telling technique. My glance over the reviews indicates the crowd has done a good job of covering the pluses and minuses of all of these. For my part, I just wanted to add my star-rating to the mix and comment that I too found my interest waning in the last 250 pages of the book. I knew from reading Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) that N.S. likes to fully explore the ideas (e.g. technology, encryption) that his characters are wrestling with in the story. I was prepared to trudge through some "schooling" and "character/plot building"....in fact I had started the book previously but was unable to devote enough time to it to get past 100 pages before it was due back at the library. So I not only pushed through such development work but actually enjoyed many of the lessons (though not as much as I did with Cryptonomicon). Once the story's "flower" started to bloom into a meaningful shape, I was having a hard time putting the book down at bedtime. But eventually I found that the story was becoming too "touchy-feely" and the pace altered so as to feel like it was trying to be wrapped up for fear of going over the 1000 page count. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and felt the time spent was rewarded with more than simple entertainment. If nothing else, my awe of the man Neal Stephenson is ever greater. What an incredible thinker!

In Neal Stephenson's Anathem, young members of a mathematical community (that looks a lot like a monastic community on earth) simply want to live out their bookish lives in the quiet, calm seclusion of the community.

But when the once-a-decade Apert celebration comes around, they find themselves pulled into the hubbub and confusion of the outside world. They, along with other members of their communities, as well as the separated "extras" must respond to a threat that endangers not only their way of life, but also their entire planet.

This is a long book that asks the reader to compile a view of this world from inside the minds of the characters who live and breathe it. Stephenson helps the process with an introduction and glossaries, but his world building puts the reader into the midst of the world, so that it's possible to really understand what's at stake for the characters.

Not everyone will enjoy this book. Some will find the book as a whole too long and too slow. Some will say the story takes too long to get started. I was aware of these possible complaints even while I was reading it, but I didn't share them. I loved the world he created, with its contrasts between the cerebral mathic communities with their long view of time and technology and the upheaval of the civilizations rising and falling outside the walls.

Too many authors forget that part of what we read for is the experience of being in a different life -- as well as the transformative story that takes place there. Stephenson never omits that experience. And he doesn't -- as some authors do -- seem to feel obliged to make the experience as unpleasant as possible.

The twists and turns of the plot, once the danger becomes apparent, develop a momentum that kept me turning pages more urgently than most plot-driven potboilers.

In the end, the abstract philosophical speculations demand a reevaluation of the presuppositions of the societies both inside and outside the walls.

That is where the world-building pays off. It gives context to look at the questions he raises and the answers the characters develop. The world-building grounds the abstractions in everyday life and help us understand why the characters make the choices they do.

The result is a book that carries forward what I loved about Stephenson's earlier Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book), with its visceral exploration of the deep questions of language, meaning, and mind.

In Anathem, the questions have to do with thought and action, technology and pure math, and what it takes to live the life of the mind. This book will give you some new paradigms to think through.

I just finished Anathem, so I am giving my initial reaction. It has been noted by some other reviewers that the book took about 200 pages to get to the core of the plot. This is true. For me this was not a problem. The "Mathic" world that Stephenson introduces us to is intricate and well constructed. I found the unveiling of the world through its rituals and language to be fascinating.

Unfortunately, I started to lose interest in the book once the core plot became apparent. I can't say the plot was bad, since in comparison to many other sci-fi books it was excellent. It's just that the plot was not one of the best in comparison to Stephenson's other novels.

My main complaint is this: Stephenson built up such an interesting, intricate and DIFFERENT world, that it was a disappointment to see the plot become so conventional. Certainly, details of the world carry through the entire book, and on whole the book is well put together. But, I just felt that with such an interesting world, a less conventional plot would have worked better.

Nevertheless, this book like many other Stephenson novels has a lot of interesting ideas, very interesting language, solid characters and is very well written. It is well worth your time to read. I give it four stars because Stephenson has done better in the past, but this book is still likely the best sci-fi novel that has come out this year. I wouldn't be surprised if it wins a Hugo.

Love the originality! I usually don't like reading 900 page books, after about 300 pages I get restless. Not so with this one. I could have read on even longer. Not counting additional reading material I read about 10 books a month, every month. I crave originality and a world to get lost in and I thank you Neal Stephenson.

The idea of a 'monastery' for scientists, mathmeticians and philosphers is an intriguing one but put that 'monastery' on another planet with it's own history, language and ideas similar to ours but not the same and you have an exponentially intriguing read. I liked how he kept some things a little mysterious which only added to the intrigue. (His parody of those scientists who must have proof of everything via Fraa Lodoghir was great!)

One of the great purposes of sci-fi, for me, is to take ideas and put them in an alien context so that we can view them freshly and objectively and I thought Stephenson accomplished that quite well.

Add some good characters, wit and adventure and off we go to get lost in another world!

The only thing that bogged the book down a little was his constant criticism of religion. It became a little petty. He could have cut some of that out and still made his point.

Anathem is a highly inventive work that, among other things, deals with keeping track of time and history over the eons, when technology and society are decisively changing. The richly developed protagonist also must confront the problems of the multiverse.

To state the obvious, Anathem is a very long novel and here and there parts could probably be condensed. However, the writing is enjoyable and I didn't find that limited digressions detracted from the author's messages.

Anathem lives up to Mr. Stephenson's reputation

Anathem is your basic Non Stop Thrill Ride that You Won't Be Able To Put Down. Adventure, romance, and space ships. The characters are engaging, the story line is constantly evolving until it turns out that the very universe is at stake, it's a jolly good time. The twists at the end involving the Thousanders were my favorite - though I can't say anything because I don't want to spoil it for you.

There are some definite believability issues. That our protagonist - a young nobody monk, basically - somehow becomes wrapped up in this crazy adventure and is crucial to each stage just doesn't seem realistic, and that he actually survives all the ridiculous things that happen to him is even less realistic. If you can get past a few crazy situations where help arrives just in time, it's a thoroughly enjoyable story.

(If you're saying to yourself that it doesn't have to be realistic because it's sci fi then you need to stop reading sci fi. The characters and their actions and motives always have to be believable - ironically it's the science that doesn't really have to be realistic, though everyone appreciates if the author at makes an effort)

I was a fan of Neal Stephenson long before this book. I love Snow Crash, Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. I wish I knew what happened to him after that. Perhaps editors stopped editing him? Perhaps he is paid for the word count now? The book has several good ideas, good characters and tells a great story. Except it tells it over 300 pages more than needed. I kept this book on my table for little over 2 months. At the end it almost became a chore, even though last 200 pages are reasonably lively compared to the rest of the book. I really wanted to know how it ends and the ending takes about a hundred pages by itself before it gradually moved to the last dot. The story just ends. Stories often "just end" in real life but somehow in a book I expect something else. I do not know what, but not what we got.

It's not a real novel. There are no round characters. It's a presentation of certain topics put into a story line to make it more exciting and interesting.

You can tell this from the book's construction - plot advances interrupted by extensive Socratic dialogues. A little like opera - recitative and arias. The reader is drawn into the dialogues by having a plot to connect them. If you don't see this, Stephenson gives it away on pages 622-623, where the protagonist writes: "I couldn't get a grip on the books that had been left for me. My brain was too jangled. I tried to skim the novels. These were easier to follow...."

What are the topics?

1. Platonism and its relation to mathematics.

2. The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Most readers wouldn't even touch boring treatises in these areas. But make it fun and an adventure, and the reader has a great time while learning stuff.

The acknowledgments at the end reference Stephenson's web page, where you can see the extensive research he has done in philosophy, mathematics, and physics. "Calca 2" (page 961), on configuration space, is one of the few places in the book where the mathematics is offered unadorned with story line. His detailed descriptions of everything from a clock mechanism to the inner workings of a spaceship demonstrate his extensive familiarity with science, which of course makes the story so much more believable. He has a great sense of humor - the aliens turn out to be us. And I loved the made-up 7000 year history of the planet Arbre, with the Greek and Latin sounding terminology that was so close to real vocabulary that I fear I'll be using his words in future conversations.

Over 900 pages, but well worth it.

Sorry, but this is bothering me. If Jules' atoms are in essence chemically incompatible with those on other Cosmi (i.e., he can't digest food from Arbe because his enzymes cannot chemically interact with the nutrients) than of course the molecules in the air he breathes from another Cosmi would also be chemically incompatible with his own. So he could not carry out any respiratory metabolism at all (we can assume all the characters need oxygen to convert nutrients into usable energy, and aren't anaerobic organisms) and would die very quickly on Arbe.
I know this seems stupid to point out, but when an author spends pages and pages to describe the logic of the science and math behind items that are at most anecdotal to the plot, this seems like a major error. Also, his analogy of quantum mechanics to a computer program that looks for the shortest path to A and B by examining many possible paths at once is incorrect. Quantum mechanics is not multi-tasking, but is better thought of as a smear of probability prior to settling on an allowed outcome. Much different than how he portrays it.
Not a bad book, and I enjoyed much of the discussions, but as a novel is overlong and short on plot.

As usual, Stephenson's writing style leaves little to be desired- the man is truly an artist with words. The first half of Anathem had me up until 3 in the morning- Stephenson's imagined "mathic" world is fantastic. You'll have to learn quite a few new words, but if you're well read and have a basic understanding of western philosophy, you'll do fine. Erasmus is a fascinating character, and you'll genuinely care about him and his friends. If only the entire book took place in the math!

Without spoiling the plot, the second half of the book is completely different in tone, setting, and pacing. I found this change of pace jarring and longed for more of the mathic world that the first half so elegantly describes, but I'm sure many will disagree. I also felt the ending was a bit drawn out and convoluted, with some ideas thrown in seemingly simply to fill pages.

Despite these flaws, Anathem is a worthy read from one of today's truly gifted writers. If you've got free time to learn the invented jargon of the book, pick it up.

Neal Stephenson after a promising start as a novelist has "jumped the shark". Starting with the three volume *Baroque Cycle*, and culminating with *Anathem*, Stephenson has become self-referential, ponderous, and verbose. And these problems have made his latest book an unreadable bore. I'd recommend people not waste their time with it. Read Zodiac,Snow Crash,The Diamond Age,or Cryptonomicon for a view of Stephenson at his best.

I have long respected Stephenson, his essay or whatever you want to call it "In the beginning was the command line" was one of the fundamental background pieces to my post grad thesis. Not only was it factually accurate and considered, it was extremely well written.

Anathem was a strange, new experience to me. I had not read a lot of speculative fiction and as such I may not be a good judge of how it relates in that context, but as far as it is a piece of writing, it was superb. The bizarre thing is that it drew me in before anything had even happened. There was an event where the main characters and his "teacher" or "mentor" have a discussion and even though nothing had happened yet that in itself made the story interesting and I'm on page 30. And I consider that nothing has happened, and for many books 30 pages ... is well 30 pages. a good 5-10% into the story, the setting has been set and the action is definitely starting to happen, but Anathem is just shy of 1000 pages, and well that makes it ~3%, and nothing has happened.

But despite this lack of events the setting that is being outlined is fantastic, and the world is enticing, and even though what the two characters discuss doesn't really become relevant to about 70% through the book, the conversation or concepts made me think "Go on ...?".

So what follows from there is an epic story, which in some ways is completely predictable, once you sort out the vocabulary, but overall what is touched on is just inpiring. I don't know if all the things / technology / concepts etc are correct or even possible, though at all times the seem vague enough to be, and specific enough to appear plausible.

The one downside to the book I have to say is that it ends too quickly. The story is quite deep and detailed in the beginning, but at the end, probably the last 150 pages, it seems rushed and a lot of the detail appear missing, though given the context of what is happening in the story it is appropriate. Also, after 900 pages I welcomed the brisker pace, but after finishing it was saddened that it was already over.

So, who is the title suited to? It is probably suitable for anyone from teenager to adult who like to read something new. The story is (quite literally) out of this world, and although it is familiar, it is not familiar enough to be something you can just allign with the one we live in. Clearly, this is fantasy (speculative) fiction and not everyone's cup of tea, but it is aproachable by virtually anyone and there is an introduction to the concept of speculative at the beginning.

Neal Stephenson is one of those rare authors where when you finish a book, you don't see the world in the same way again. Anathem is no exception. It's not easy reading, but it's worth the effort. If you're looking to flip pages at breakneck speed and not have to think, look elsewhere. Stephenson's made up language begins to gel after a hundred pages or so. I actually grew fond of learning all the new terms and now at the end of the book, many seem more real than the Earth equivalents. Stephenson has managed to manipulate, blur, and reformulate our views of what is secular, what is religious in a brilliant and original way. The book could be read as a critique of our own culture, but there is no reason to let that distract from the story. I fell in love with the world of Arbre, its maths and it's language. No doubt the book is flawed in the same ways that Cryptonomicon is flawed -long winded, lots of digressions, lots of geek speak. But those are the things I love about his work and it's easy to forgive even when it goes to far.

First of all, as with all Neal Stephenson novels, he takes a fairly long time in the setup, but with lots of action at the end. If you have trouble getting into his books because they are slow paced at first, this book will be no different.

As usual, Stephenson is writing a story around a central topic. In this case, it's the particulars of two advanced scientific theories, one of the physical world and the other of the human mind, and how they interact. But he has also included an interesting backdrop: a monastic version of ancient Grecian-style philosophers in a modern world. Right from the beginning you are introduced to that monastic setting. As the story progresses, you as the reader are educated in the particulars of the scientific theories by a technique of classical philosophers: Dialog.

But don't be fooled, despite the seemingly dry topic matter, this story is still an adventure. Just one that has a deep and well developed background information. Stephenson has clearly spent a lot of time researching the countless details necessary to make a coherent story. Given that advanced theories of our world and our minds aren't inherently coherent at all, this is nothing short of amazing.

It's interesting to watch Neal outgrowing his fans, as attested to by 10% 1-star ratings here. His use of language here is no worse than "A Clockwork Orange" (the book, not the movie), and I for one savor the experience of becoming thus engrossed in the world.

The physics behind and hidden within this book seems somewhat more extensive than works past. Despite Neal's exhortations that he's not a scientist or a mathematician, the quality of his research really shines here; i think most folks will learn more than a little about the way our own real world actually works, and how mathematics describes it. Some folks call this boring. So be it.

Where this book really shines is in Neal's ongoing exploration of the delicate relationship between physics, humans, and metaphysics. What is truth? This is not idle fancy, and has occupied the works of great natural philosophers since well before Leibnitz and Newton (remember those folks?). The approach here is sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic, but it's in inexorable weft and weave nonetheless, in the tradition of Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" (book, not movie) and "Foucault's Pendulum". In the days after i finished the novel (which really didn't take very long), i felt like i was peeling away onion-layers of connections as i walked back through it in my mind.

Neal has always constructed works that have strongly internal consistence, and are full of intellectual minutae woven into conceptually vivid plots. This work is a very mature, more pondersome, and powerful addition to his corpus. In some ways, it continues to haunt me.

Anathem starts slow and hard to read. You'll need to flip to the glossary several times until you absorb its alternative and sometimes humorous terminology. But if you stick with it, you'll find that it deserves all the praise about its sheer creativity. It's social commentary, sci-fi, philosophy, action, and quantum mechanics all rolled together. I agree with those who recommend that you skip it if you only want an adventure story. Likewise, you might not like it if you only want high-brow scientific dialog. The book alternates between the two. A lot. It blew my mind in a good way though.

Early on in this book I regretted my decision to start it. The made up language tried my patience and really added nothing to the story. But the story is what forced me to stick with it, I do however admit to zoning out a bit during the lengthy philosophical debates. Overall I think it's a great book and I won't deduct stars for things that personally annoyed me.

I enjoy Neil Stephenson novels. I loved the Baroque Cycle, a long history novel that made me laugh and gave me the impetus to catch up on real people long gone through quick history look ups. Ananthem is a challenge much like that, but only 1/3 as long. The audacity of putting 3 mathematical proofs into a novel, and working it through as important elements made me smile. This book is not funny as some of his previous works were, but it made you expand your mind. As the true nature of the plot finally took hold in the last 1/4 of the book, I had to say I was impressed. If he had been a little less cryptic earlier on, this book would have been easier to digest. It actually would benefit from a second reading once everything falls into place.
Despite all of the technical issues with this book, it is a worthy read, the characters are odd but engaging, and the millieu created is very immersive. Stephenson deserves a lot of credit for attempting this kind of storytelling, and I hope he tries again, while he applies some lessons learned. It is difficult to wrap your head around this but it is well worth it.

Having read six of Neal Stephenson's novels (still working on "The system of the World" and "The Confusion", I must be counted as a fan. Even knowing of his mercurial style, confounding wit, and ability to get wrapped up in innumerable plot lines, this novel proved a challenge. It takes a long time (' 200 pages), much patience and some studious re-reading to begin to understand what he is writing about, but if you have a firm understanding of Plato's cave, the history of Western civilization and a a wry, ironic sense of humor, this book is well-worth the effort.

True, some of the longer dialogs on the Hylaean Theoric World could have been cut, but then the final chapters would not have made sense. The physics requires a certain suspension of disbelief, but who knows how alternative universes actually function? To get caught up in these matters misses much of the main theme.

Stephenson has clearly written a satire of our contemporary existence, and has used the disguise of alternative fiction to lampoon contemporary society. Religion and academia are turned on their heads, and neither survive intact. Clearly his bias rests with rationality, but when the "speelies" are blaring in the sports bar, the odor of fast food lingers in the mobe, and the Warden of Heaven embodies the wisdom of the Mathic world, one can only experience this as ironic satire.

About half-way through this book, I began to realize that it closest literary cousin was not science fiction, but rather the utopian worlds of Plato's "Republic", Butler's "Erewhon", Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", Huxley's "Brave new World" and perhaps unintentionally - Abbot's "Flatland". While gaining unprecedented freedom by creating a whole separate "world", Stephenson uses that pedestal to move society.

If you pick up this novel, prepare to be challenged. To understand even half of the allusions, you will need a passable knowledge of mythology and Western civilization. It is difficult to approach even on a first level, but can be understood in several contexts. Don't be afraid of re-reading chapters. (They become much clearer the second time!) and watch for anagrams. The most important are fleeting.

I enjoyed this book as much as I did other Stephenson novels like The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. It delves into philosophy more than others, though does it well and at no expense to the action. I especially enjoyed the reference to "Aboutness", an uncredited reference to Searle's Chinese Room. A must-read for anyone who likes Stephenson or speculative Sci-Fi.

A brilliantly imagined world where science is cloistered, mysterious, revered. The scale of the tale starts very small and slowly builds and enlarges till it expands by leaps and bounds to a thrilling conclusion. Much like scientific endeavors do.

Despite the fact that I am a bestselling romance author, I actually don't read romance at all. Chalk that up to a father who pressed science fiction, fantasty, and horror novels on me as a kid/teen. With no qualms whatsoever, I can say that Neal Stephenson's "The Cryptonomicon" is one of my favorite novels of all time. Sure, the book is large enough to kill a grown man with, but I don't mind a lot of reading when the intricately interwoven plot is so beautifully crafted.

Anathem is in no danger of replacing The Cryptonomicon as one of my favorite novels of all time, despite the fact that Anathem exceeds the latter in sheer size and word count.

Look, I love speculative fiction, and Stephenson wisely tells the reader right up-front in a foreword that if you're not the kind of reader who wants to be thrown headlong into another world, with little more than a glossary to guide you, this isn't the book for you. And I truly did enjoy the turned-on-its head world of filled with "cloisters," which house not religious people, but scholars--some which only open their gates to the public every 1,000 years. But this book would have worked much, much better with a heavy editing hand. In other words, one could cut about 200-300 pages of this novel and still retain the essence of the alternate world, and the main character's journey through it. It takes way too long for a real plot to show itself and when it does, the reader anticipates a huge payoff.

You won't get it. The ending, while an interesting exploration of alternate realities and multi-verses, simply doesn't pack enough punch to make the preceding 900 pages worth it.

I've read The Cryptonomicon at least once a year since its publication. The same will not be happening with Anathem. Like Cryptonomicon, it's an ambitious piece of work, but in the end, I'm sad to say that it simply DOESN'T WORK.

When I found this book years ago, it gave me a new perspective on the history of science, the way the mind works and yes, even the entire cosmos. Since then I have re-read it many times. Stephenson does a fantastic job of presenting complicated ideas in an easily digestible, yet ultimately rewarding and edifying way. I would (and do), recommend it enthusiastically to everybody!

One of my all-time favorite books. The first time I finished reading it, I immediately started it over again from the beginning. It was that good. It's been a couple of years now and I decided to read through it again, and it still amazes me how much stuff Neal Stephenson managed to pack into this novel. Its world is vast and truly has depth, and Stephenson doesn't take shortcuts in describing it to us - we encounter it organically, through the mind of the protagonist. Don't worry about the "made-up" words - if you're like me, you'll typically recognize the root of the word from other words you know and be delighted to realize the meaning is really perfectly clear. Each one is like a language riddle, and if you don't have a mind for language, you can always just look in the glossary. Thoroughly enjoyable and worth multiple readings.

On rare occasions when I am reading I get the feeling that I am holding not a book but a window to another time and place. I got that feeling again while reading Anathem.

Stephenson takes us to the planet Arbre where robed intellectuals are shut away from the outside world like monks. These "avout" remain cloistered except for periodic ventures to see what type of mess those living outside have made of things. Or if their mental talents are needed they may be summoned in times of emergency. Well, Houston, they have a problem...

The plot line which follows is excellent but the interesting part of Anathem is the interaction between the very likeable and often funny characters, not just what they do but what they say and how they think. There are philosophical dialogs about consciousness, knowledge and time. The avout are a society of isolated intellects so when they are faced with a problem they don't just act they have a discourse about it. The world visited in Anathem makes you consider things like government, religion, history and reality on a completely different level.

One thing I found is that the foreign words and phrases took some time to learn with the included glossary. When I felt I had a grasp of most of the Orth and Fluccish words at around page 100, I began the book again. The characters and setting were illuminated with new light I had a better grasp of events and felt that window open up.

Neal Stephenson's works illicit complaints that they are very esoteric and difficult to understand. I find that they have multiple layers like an onion that the reader must peel away to discover the tasty meat that lies within. `Anathem' is no different. As `Snowcrash' gave us a peak at Virtual Worlds, and `The Baroque Cycle' rendered a glimpse into the birth of the Scientific Era, this newest work like `Cryptomonicon' before it introduces us to the world of Mathematics albeit from the point of view of the aliens of the Earth like planet Arbre.

Arbre is several hundred years post a nuclear war that nearly destroyed the world. Much like in `A Canticle for Leibowicz' science has become a religion that has been shut in within the walls of monasteries and cloisters. Once every ten years the doors of the monasteries open and the general public is allowed in and the monks are allowed out to mingle and reassure one another that all is well.

Though now Arbre has returned to a 21st Century technological state science is generally frowned upon by the Secular authorities except when someone is needed to solve a problem then they summon someone or a group of people from the mathic Monasteries.

The Mathic Communities themselves try to shade themselves from secular things. Atheism and aesthetics are much esteemed. If someone breaks the rules they can be given an Anathem and kicked out of the Math becoming `dead' to its members hence the title of the book.

In the story a group of young novices under the tutelage of Fraa Orolo an Astronomer set about to find what kind of interplanetary phenomenon he had been investigating when he was suddenly the victim of an Anathem and is kicked out of the monastery. What they discover puts both their order and the entire world of Arbre at risk.

Like his previous works, `Anathem' in addition to being a satisfying adventure is a book that teaches the reader something. In this case it's Geometry, Physics, Philosophy, and Anthropology. Much like Plato's dialogs this book has characters debating the nature of things such as quantum physics or deism. It is not a book that can be read quickly and be enjoyed but if you take your time and savor what has been written you will enjoy yourself and may actually learn something new.

I bought the book, excited to be getting this big fat Neal Stephenson book. I loved his books. I read quite a ways into this and simply ran out of steam. I'm giving it three stars because maybe I was unfair. I JUST gave the book away to a charity. I guess maybe I can buy another copy.

I certainly remember Cryptonomicon as being one enjoyable summer reading blast while at the beach

This is not a easy reading book by any stretch of the imagination - but it surely will do just that - stretch your imagination. What is VERY useful is the included dictionary. Even though I am used to puzzling my own way through all sorts of speculative fiction, the language Stephenson invents includes so many unknowns that it can be intimidating. I almost gave up on this book until I read a review here that mentioned that it had a dictionary. After wading through the introduction to this society and finally getting a handle on what how it is organized, the scope of this book starts to become apparent. Along with the nature of cognition, science vs belief, the inherent dangers of fast paced technological change and quantum physics; Stephenson has created a cast of people you get to know and become attached to. The depth and breadth, the character and plot development make the "work" you put in at the start of this book more than well worth the effort

It's dull. For the first third of the book, nothing happens at all. Somewhere around the 70% mark, it actually gets interesting, and then it's a pretty good yarn through to the end.

But it's also a fascinating text because of the ideas it discusses. It evokes a rich mystical constructionist philosophy out of rigorous math and physics.

I would almost have preferred to read those theories in an essay or even an old-fashioned dialogue, but then I'm already familiar with the foundational principles, so the setting and characters might have been necessary to carry the concepts to a broader audience.

I'm giving the book four stars and a strong recommendation, but that's for the concepts, not the story. A page-turner it ain't.

Anathem has been called hard SF and I would agree with that assessment. The math is quite rigorous and I would be lying if I said I understood much of it. Stephenson uses the math as a way to engage the characters as they make connections to the "real world". Once you get past the math and the unusual vocabulary, the story is fabulous. Somehow you, as the reader, become imbued with the vocabulary and the need to refer frequently to the dictionary lessens. Many have reviewed this book using intelligent language. I'm capable of that, but the true attraction of a book is how you feel when you finish it. I borrowed Anathem from the library, but plan on buying the book and rereading it. Good books draw you in; good stories touch a place in your heart and soul. Many forgettable books have been published since the beginning of moving type, but Anathem is UNforgettable.

The first 2/3rd's of this book is gripping and amazing. It is smart and keeps you reading. But, the inevitable slide to the end just nearly ruins it. I am a big fan of NS, but man, this ending on 'this' book. It's like he lost the notecard that had the real ending on it and just made up the first thing that came to mind.

AnathemAnathem is one of the most interesting novels I have ever listened to, and that's saying something. This tale of monks and nuns (sort of) dedicated to math, physics and philosophy discovering something unusual happening to the sun and their deductions about what is happening in the world outside their cloister is actually quite enjoyable and inspiring.1 Neal Stephenson makes me want to believe in this three-thousand-year-old science-as-religion order, and wish we had one (Buddhists don't count).

I've read all of Neal Stephenson's work, and this might be my favorite, along with Cryptonomicon. He leaves the confines of the sci-fi genre in the dust. The world he creates is part anthropological projection and part social commentary based on brilliant observations of history and human nature. At times his observations and predictions made me laugh out loud as he displays a whimsical contempt for disposable culture and it's dumbing-down effect on us.
But it's also a gripping action thriller. At least for me it was. It takes about 200 pages for anything to actually happen, as he meticulously establishes the world he's built. But once it gets going it's a roller coaster.

However, if you are looking for a joy ride that doesn't require much intellectual effort, this isn't it. This book can't easily be made into a movie, a video game, or a breakfast cereal.

It may require an occasional re-read of several pages to understand a concept. In fact, when you get to the end and discover what has been happening, you may want to re-read several passages (as I did) to fully grasp the story. It's a little bit like "Fight Club" in that when you discover the underlying premise you are tempted to review it with that in mind.

I read Anathem in the summer of 2010, finishing two years ago. I just finished reading The Confusion, by way of Quicksilver, and felt compelled to go back and express what I liked about Anathem.

I started reading Anathem based on the strength of Neal's other books I'd read beforehand. I remember feeling that Anathem was different, in that I was a good ways into the book and I still didn't know what it was going to be about. I kept reading and reading, and wondering what was going to happen. And there came a point where I became less mystified and more impressed, as the book is very clever. By the end I admit I was thoroughly entranced, by the plot, the characters, the discourse, the mystery, and most of all, the ideas.

I won't give anything away, but will say there are some intellectual/philosophical/scientific/religious ideas that come into play and are discussed in the book and in many ways form a centerpiece (but not till the end). But the journey is as enjoyable as the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I could see myself reading it again some day.

Stephenson is certainly one of the more ambitious modern writers, if not the most popular. While in the Baroque Trilogy he largely struggled, with a meandering plot that was beyong the reach of any but the most dedicated reader, here he finds success with a challenging, yet rewarding work of fiction.

I won't pretend that the philosophy changed my life, but it presents a variety of subjects from geometry to astrophysics, to the morality of nuclear weapons in an an interesting way. Yes, it starts slowly, taking nearly 300 pages to really get into the plot, but the author creates such an interesting in-depth world that the reader becomes engrossed for the last 600 pages. At time you do feel that he really could use an editor, much like his earlier work, but you still have to admire the ambition of an author who is willing to challenge, not pander to, his audience.

Anathem is the story of another world, similar to ours, in which all pure science is done inside "maths" (monasteries) by the "avout" (monks). Thousands of years ago, the maths were created to protect the avout from outside interference. Since then, maths worldwide have been sacked three times for various reasons. Each time, new rules were put into place to control what could be done inside the maths (i.e., no matter creators, no computers, etc.). By the time Anathem opens, the maths have gone almost a thousand years without any technology whatsoever.

The maths themselves are split into several groups based on how long they go before opening their doors to the outside "extramuros" (non-avout) world. This might be 1, 10, 100, or 1000 years. The Thousanders who populate the 1000 year maths are (obviously) rarely seen or heard from, and no one knows quite what they might be up to.

Stephenson's worldbuilding in Anathem is great. The world itself feels very different from our own, but certain rules from our world obviously hold true in theirs. These range from the creation of the Reticulum (Internet) to the presence of Gardan's Steelyard (Occam's Razor). Arbre, as the world is called, is an extremely interesting place, populated with wonderful characters.

Stephenson's trademark ability to build characters that you relate to and would love to be around is here in full force. Fraa ("Brother") Erasmus, a Tenner (from a 10 year math) is the main character, and by the end of the novel I was sad to see him and his friends go.

The book itself is made up of 13 Parts, but to me there were four main sections: The Setup, The Adventure, The Lecture, and The Final Adventure.

The Setup is an interesting, tough read. It's here that Stephenson introduces most of his characters and the world itself. Because of this, not much actually happens in this section. Instead, Erasmus goes about his mostly mundane life while the reader tries to take in all of the unfamiliar terms (even for familiar concepts), and get a grasp on the history of this world. There are actually two ways to read The Setup. You could just power through it, ignoring the things you don't understand and hoping they come back to you or you get a sense for them as you go on, or you could stop at every new term and look it up in the extensive dictionary and/or timeline to see what it means and what its backstory is. I chose the second approach, which made the first couple hundred pages of Anathem quite slow. However, this becomes fully worth it when you get to the second (and largest) section of the book, The Adventure.

I won't go into what happens in the book's second section, but at this point the novel becomes an exciting, thrilling page-turner. If you've ever read Stephenson, you know what I mean. When he gets it going, he really gets it going.

Unfortunately, once The Adventure ends, it leads straight into The Lecture, the most downright tedious section of any Stephenson book that I have read. This section consists of over a hundred pages of some of the least interesting characters in the story having several "Dialogs" (formal discussions) on metaphysics. Maybe some might find this interesting, but I found it pretty boring. This section of the book is where my reading stalled for over a month.

But don't quit reading! The last section makes up for the detour of The Lecture, with another incredible adventure. An in fact, the contents of The Lecture do become quite important to the end of the novel. I understand why Stephenson put it in there, but I think he could have shortened it to about a third of its actual length.

Thankfully, the last couple hundred pages are another Stephenson page-turner, even more exciting than the first one. Everything comes together beautifully, and the ending is quite satisfying.

Anathem weighs in at 937 pages. This is actually pretty concise for Stephenson, considering that the Baroque Cycle took up almost 3000 pages across three books. But it is a long novel, and not an easy read, at least at the beginning. It is, however, well-worth the effort. There are several scenes, characters, and situations which will stay with me for quite awhile.

I highly recommend Anathem to any Stephenson fans or fans of complex world building. However, for those who have never read Stephenson, I would probably suggest Snow Crash as a better starting point.

Neal Stephenson has written yet another mind-blowing novel, IMHO. I have read just about everything he has written, and this book is one of his best. Somehow he has produced a novel that is an amazing combination of science fiction, speculation, philosophy, mathematics, historical fiction, alternate universes/cosmi (read the book!), and character story. He's even managed to work in a love story or two as well.

A lesser author would have set this book in on Earth. Instead Stephenson has created a world that in many ways is similar to ours, and in the long run, related, with a language that hints at universalities. I found myself reading the glossary he supplies repeatedly, but that wasn't a bad thing.

I could go on with many details. I will say the book took time to get into, but patience is well rewarded. The characters are as fascinating as the world he has created. The story moves along and builds slowly and goes off in directions unexpected yet logical. I will warn you that he pulls some tricks and you are left wondering what is real and what isn't at some points, but it all works within the many many layers of thought and concept he manages to pile into this book.

Some of the storytelling is deceptively simple and straight forward. It is not as dense in the way it is written as the Baroque Cycle, but it is no less complex and fascinating. You WILL at times have to put it down as your mind comes out of an "oh WOW" response and you catch your breath. But you will enjoy it.

So altogether, if you have read any of his other work, you must read this one. Please don't be intimidated by its length. It works just fine to read it in small chunks. Enjoy!

Let's get this out of the way right now: I am a Stephenson fan. Cryptonomicon was wondrous. The trilogy was more of the same. Taken together, they probably represent the best 4,000 pages of fiction I have read in my life.

Snow Crash less so for me, though I seem in the minority on that score. And I'm not much of a fan of Diamond Age because found it seriously flawed. I was looking forward to Anathem not because Stephenson was returning to science fiction, but because it was a new Stephenson book, and that's pretty much all it takes for me.

There is something about the way Stephenson writes that is unlike anyone else I've read. Stephenson has such an obvious love of words and their use and writes with such wit that everything he creates is a joy. Then there's the science, which is a huge part of it all. If I were so inclined, which I am not, I could spend the rest of my days trying to construct the parallels between the philosophies that consume the characters of Anathem and those in our world. I am not a historian of philosophy or science, and so I have to work at each one of them.

The first hundred pages are difficult, period. Stephenson has creates a new vocabulary, and we readers had better learn at least some of it if we expect to understand what's going on. Beyond the new words, we have to learn the way things operate in the world he describes, as well as a whole lot of science. Once past the first 100 pages or so things get easier, the characters become more familiar and less alien, and the story seems to move more quickly.

Anathem is a massive book that gets better as it moves along. Because of its bulk and subject, it is not for everyone, but that's true of Stephenson generally. If you love words, their rhythm, placement cadence and uses, you have to at least admire Stephenson's work, or even love it, as I do.

I'll be rereading Anathem this summer, just because I find it fun. Maybe even try to parse the philosophical and scientific connections between he world Stephenson has connected and ours. I don't expect much success, but the effort will be fun. Needless to say, I strongly recommend this book.

I made it through Anathem on my second try. I'm glad I read it, I really like Stephenson, especially Snow Crash and Diamond Age. Tons of great ideas. One thing, though--and maybe I missed something---what became of those Everything Killers inside the "transponder" pills that Erasmus and his teammates swallowed before they went into space? Maybe I missed it, I was reading pretty fast toward the end. But that's bugging me. Anybody?

This was my first and still favorite Neal Stephenson. One of those rare books that wasn't easily set down and didn't make my head nod when reading at bedtime. Neal shows an amazing imagination in creating this culture in vivid detail and his character development is excellent.

Take The Name of the Rose without the murder mystery. Stir in a lot of Socratic dialogue, mostly concerning the history of the philosophy of science and epistemology. Add half a cup of satire from an outsider's perspective (like Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court). Mix and add a hero quest and a coming of age tale with cool characters. All of the ingredients by themselves are great. Put them together and you get something awesome: Anathem.

The one misgiving I had while reading was the penultimate chapter. It seemed like it was going somewhere. Would Raz and his friends have to disarm the guy that controlled the nukes? Would there be a fight? Would everything blow up? The chapter ends right when some sort of conflict seems inevitable. The final chapter, while providing a finer ending than most of Stephenson's other novels, takes place months later and there's no mention of what happened in the previous chapter. It's magically forgotten. Either Stephenson got tired of writing or a couple of scenes were cut out.

Anathem is a great read overall.

First, this is a Neal Stephenson novel. That automatically means to expect myriads of digressions on topics that are tangential to the plot, and Anathem does not disappoint in this regard. It is rife with tangents of tangents, principally concerning philosophy and mathematics. There are thorough examinations of Plato's Forms, phase space, Goedelian incompleteness, the nature of consciousness, m-theory, and Nietzsche's ideas concerning eternal recurrence. Thus, if one does not enjoy digressions on somewhat abtruse subjects, then one is not likely to enjoy this novel, or most of Stephenson's works.

Second, this is a long Neal Stephenson novel. That means the main plot really doesn't get started until page 200. The build-up is slow, though much closer to Cryptonomicon than to Quicksilver. After a slow build-up, the pace accelerates exponentially until the denoument, and this means that one needs to become increasing attentive, or miss important details. Again, the pacing is very similar to Cryptononicon, but still slightly slower.

Third, this is a novel about math and philosophy. Abstract ideas, especially abstract mathematical ideas, become very important to the plot. Snow Crash has languages, The Diamond Age has nanotechnology, The Baroque Cycle has economics, Anathem has mathematics. It doesn't get too advanced (ie, formal study of mathematics is not a prerequisite), but it is on about the same level as Douglas Hofstadter's incredible GEB. Incidentally, if you enjoy Anathem, give GEB a try. Seriously, another reviewer makes the perfectly apt point that Anathem can be viewed as essentially a novelization of GEB.

If you liked Cryptonomicon or The Baroque Cycle, then give Anathem a chance. If you don't enjoy digressions or hate abstract subjects, particularly math and philosophy, then you will not enjoy this. If you're unfamiliar with Stephenson's long novel style, and unfamiliar with the stylistically similar works of Thomas Pynchon or Don Delillo or Umberto Eco, then I would advise reading Cryptonomicon before Anathem, because it is easier to follow and is a good introduction to Stephenson's style.

Overall, I loved Anathem. Then again, my undergrad degrees are in math, computer science, and physics, and I'm now working on a phD in math, so I may be biased.

This book was an awesome read, it had many elements of science fiction packed into 900 pages, and to me that was the best part. It wasnt the characters so much as it was the ideas they presented to the reader in the form of 'Dialogs'. Now most of the ideas that are in this book I feel as if most Science fiction fans or nerdy types would know most if not all that come up through the course of the novel, but I think for some people that are un-familiar with only a few of these ideas or none at all will be completely turned off by them being discussed.

As im sure other reviewers have said, this book isnt for everyone, and I believe a big reason can be seen above, but also Stephenson takes a lot of time and energy to build up this world of his, and to me it was fantastic. To some it will be overkill in the extreme, so if youre looking for a good world building thought exercise this is it, if you have no interest in that at all this may not be your next read. For me the length to which the author goes to frame this world in the readers mind, just made it all that much more real and immersive to the point where I wanted to jump back in and keep reading.

There was action too for those who enjoy that but only every few hundred pages did something really exciting or action packed happen.

Over all I really liked this book and had an enjoyable experience because it was so immersive to be in this world Stephenson had built and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a well thought out hard science fiction with lots of heady material. Prepare to have your mind worked out.

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge Neal Stephenson fan. I have read Snow Crash, the Diamand Age, Cryptonomicon, and Quicksilver. I am also currently reading In The Beginning Was The Command Line. I may be a little biased so I am writing this review with two groups in mind: (1)those like me who are already huge fans and (2) those who have never read Stephenson before.

First things first. No matter which of the above categories you fall under, if you are a part of the now generation and subscribe to their philosophy then you will hate this book. By that I mean if you are into instant gratification and do not understand that nothing worth anything comes easy then do not purchase this book. This book is a lot of work and the payoff is great if you are willing to put in that work.

So what is this book about? Many previous reviewers have talked about Erasmus and his adventure but this book is not about him. He is just the narrator of a greater theme. What this book presents is a flipside word in which the deeply religious are not in seclusion but the deeply scientific are. The deep thinkers are cut off from the rest of the world. This setup ultimately leads to the question of faith vs. science and what is the better way to truth. It also asks if it has to be one or the other or does each have their value. So if these questions intrigue you then this book is for you and it will take over 900 pages to fully get the answers so be prepared for that.

If you like to think and/or you are already a Neal Stephenson fan then pick up Anathem now. You will not be disappointed.

Neal Stephenson, what a brilliant guy. He has depth and insight (upsight?) and a welcome curiosity about the human situation and the universe. No, wait, "cosmos".

And what a vocabulary, as well as a sharp wit. All things that keep me reading (or attempting to read) his books. Heck, where the English language will not suffice for the offworld context, not to worry. Mr. Stephenson is no slouch at coining terms of his own or, better yet, tweaking existing terms in a most clever manner. Yes, I had to keep refering back to the glossary. Likely, many of his most ingenious twists went right over my head.

In Anathem we have Orolo cast as Socrates with the protaganist as Glaucon. The allegory of the cave moves into the multiverse. Oops, polyverse. No, "polycosm". Pretty heavy stuff.

I could never be on Stephenson's level in a million years, so I enjoy trying to comprehend him. I doubt that as a philosopher or scientist or historian that many other sci-fi writers or writers period are on his level either, so kudos to him.

But for all of that, he is not hugely compelling as a storyteller. Despite the humor and intelligence, there is too much dry discourse that does not move the plot ahead. There is too much detail that does not even move the philosopy or the science ahead. And often, the writing somehow lacks warmth. Attempts to include romance into the tale, or other human passions, just fall flat.

I am a big boy and I don't have to have a "page turner" or something that will spellbind me in the first paragraph in order to proceed. But in Anathem, after 500 pages, the plot still often crawls at a snail's pace, or the pace backs off just as it had started to gain momemtum.

"When we first became aware that they were in orbit around Arbre, we assumed that something was going to happen soon. But it has been maddeningly slow" (p.623). No kidding!!

Dialog/dialogue is great, but if one is going to pen (literally it appears, as Neal writes with a Parker) a thousand pages, it has got to move fairly well. Anathem, for all that is valuable and occasionally wonderful in it, does not move well.

Enjoy this book if you know Stephenson, love philosophy, historical comparison, and glimpses of eternity. Don't try it if you are not patient and tedium tolerant.

Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" is a long, heavy slog through overwrought philosophical arguments that pad a dull story line and a plot that climaxes with a thud.

I loved "Snow Crash" and appreciated the amount of detail he added to it. Those details actually supported forward movement of the story and contributed to the reader's imagination of the world. "Anathem" in contrast contains such superfluous detail - 80% unnecessary - that it reads more like an art director's notebook for a film version of what would be a C-grade sci-fi flic at best.

Had the writer utilized a competent editor with a judicious eye and deft hand, 350+ pages could have been trimmed with no loss to the story's background so that the scenes and plot would make sense.

I am a persistent reader, so 400 pages into it I decided to stick with it and see how the aliens story line played out.

Once the protagonist and his peers head to space to join up with the aliens, the writing turns abysmal. Like comically bad. French words are rewritten phonetically into English and (apparently) meant to be clever creations by the author. When the primary alien revealed his name as Jules Vern something-or-other, I nearly through the book across the room in frustration. Yes, it goes downhill that badly.

All the philosophy and science just weigh it down. Even though those elements are not hard to follow, they come across as pseudo-intellectual posturing, not quality fiction writing.

Suffice to say, unless you need a solid door stop in your home, avoid this tome. It's just not worth it.

It's a little hard for me to objectively review Anathem. I'm all googly over Neal Stephenson and have waited a painful eternity for this book. Which I like and recommend, by the way. This book has exciting ideas, an engaging world concept, passably sympathetic protagonist and fun new words. It also has more protracted and less well concealed nerdly digressions into hard math and science concepts than previous offerings. I find it a bit discourteous to the casual nerd reader (myself) who isn't prepared to abandon the story fo 40 or 50 pages at a time while something technical and esoteric is pursued, thinly disguised as (endless) dinner conversaion. Nevertheless: 4 solid stars for a good yarn by my favorite author. Happy reading!

ANATHEM, Neal Stephenson's new novel, centers on a young man named Fraa Erasmas, a monk, of sorts, residing within the walls of the Concent of Saunt Edhar. There, he and his fellow residents/students devote their lives to the understanding of math, science, cosmology, metaphysics and more. Everything must have reason and be provable, or it is invalid. In such a place, the residents are segregated, to a degree, and in some instances none can know what the others know.

Fraa Orolo, Erasmas's mentor, finds himself "Thrown Back," or cast out of the concent for a violation. Erasmas, Lio, Ala, Jesry and a handful of others begin a secret quest to discover what it was Orolo was working on that got him Thrown Back. When they discover that he has located what appeared to be an alien ship orbiting the planet, it is not too long before they, and others, are called upon and shipped out of the concent as well, destined to meet at another location for a special gathering.

Erasmas, however, is intent on finding Orolo. Splitting off from the main contingent, he begins a quest to locate Orolo and bring him back to the meeting. There, the gathering of the avout will determine the proper course for dealing with this alien arrival...if they don't destroy each other first. Or if the aliens don't launch their attack before a decision can be made.

Yes, ANATHEM is science fiction. The events take place on a planet known as Arbre. Even so, it bears many striking similarities to Earth. While it can be somewhat disconcerting, a number of things are given new names, but descriptions eventually lead you to understand what they are. Of course the presence of an alien spaceship qualifies it as a science fiction tale, yet, at its core, the book is more about thought than, well, enjoyment.

At any given moment, Stephenson sits back and spends an inordinate amount of time regaling you with his brilliance. And let's be honest, he is brilliant. Even so, paragraph upon paragraph of intellectual infighting amongst scholars, page upon page of metatheoric argument and scientific regurgitation make the reading of ANATHEM a true slog. The book begins slowly, introducing you to Saunt Edhar and its setup, and the introduction of Erasmas and a few of his companions. And the clock. And how the clock works. And why the clock works that way. And who designed the clock. And who decided it would work the way it works. And what scientific formulae were used in such a decision. This depth of explanation, while creating a fully immense world, can weigh far too heavily on the mind of the person trying to read it.

Within ANATHEM, there is a book called, ironically enough, The Book. It is a tome of punishment. The punished are forced to read and copy and understand the chapters they have been assigned and will then be quizzed on those chapters. Each chapter of The Book is increasingly more difficult, and at one point they become so preposterously difficult that the reader is ultimately driven to insanity. Reading ANATHEM can have a similar effect.

Not wholly unworthy, ANATHEM will assuredly find a following. But on the whole, it pales in comparison to Stephenson's previous gems, such as SNOW CRASH, CRYPTONOMICON and The Baroque Cycle.

--- Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard

This book was beyond good. I was so sad when I finished it (the first time) after letting it sink in for a few minutes I opened it up and read it again. I have probably read this four or five times. Most of Stephenson's books are complex and idea laden enough that they are well worth subsequent readings, but Anathem is in its own league for combining characters you inhabit with a ripping yarn that incidentally blows your mind.

This was an excellent book that kept me reading and wanting to know more. It had a wonderful pastoral beginning which introduces to the world without having to explain too much. The new words that Stephenson invents are used to name objects in the character's world may appear strange, but are often derived from if not other English, German, or French words, which made them very quick to become familiar with. These new words also contribute to the sense of being in a completely different world.

The strongest aspect of Anathem was the characters. The narrator is a complex, likable character whose one discreet sex scene is fantastic - you are cheering them on - it's love. Having been made distraught by the sex scenes in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, here I was relieved to find a very different story.

My favourite character of all was Fraa Lodoghir because his character was fascinating and strange. Perhaps that's why he seemed so real.

Overall a highly enjoyable book, and one that concludes in a way that makes me want to reread it, now that I understand the character's motivations. I would like to finish by adding that the book brought me to tears on two occasions. This has not happened for a long time.

i would say not as balls to the walls enjoyable as "snow crash" and it takes a little while before things start firming up but once it does, you all of a sudden have a VERY rich world, made all the richer for the alien terminology (you'll be racking your brains for a while figuring out "earth analogs" and it becomes a fun game after a while) and a familiar but distinct history.

does indeed play off the motifs and themes in "a canticle for leibowitz" but stuffs in the mindf@#$ factor of the "2001: a space odyssey" movie, stirs in "rendezvous with rama" for taste, adds half a cup of "a brief history of time" and then throws in kung fu for luck.

and it's all still in the established style of neal stephenson: telling a fun story and then every so often stopping it cold to lay out interesting ideas, often in the form of an aristotelian dialog or something.

in another's hands, his stories and his exposition could very well end up being extremely pedantic and cold but NS keeps everything working by keeping the beating heart of humanity at the core of his work. no matter how epic the ideas, you are still involved with people you recognize and end up caring about.

it's funny, in my mind, i see lio as being a similar mental image as goto dengo from "cryptonomicon" and i see orolo and a priest in "a canticle for liebowitz" as ian holm!

the whole thing builds to a thrilling, breathless space finale that i can totally imagine being played out in cinema as a tense but MOS sequence almost where the only sound is one of mic'd breathing.

and an ending that is as self admittedly pro forma fiction as it is satisfying.

p.s. if you are inspired to learn more about ORBITAL MECHANICS from the space part of the book, [...] is a great free simulator! i'm already learning more about the stuff that stephenson introduced to me!

The greatest strength of this novel is in its setting, and in particular Stephenson's ability to put us into the mind of its protagonist. In this sense, I am reminded of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". Although the monastic setting has a different focus in that book, in both cases we as the reader are thrust into an environment where people have been trained for their entire lives to look at the world in a certain mind-set. Particularly in the portions of this book set within the Maths, Stephenson is able to convey this differing point of view, and allow us to look at the world through its member's eyes. It is those chapters that are the strongest portions of this novel.

Unfortunately, I did not find the overall story as strong as some of his earlier works. In particular, some of the very last portions reminded me of watching a certain sort of gymnastics routine: while at the end I applauded at the author's agility and acrobatics in stretching the storyline to its absolute limit, in the end it seemed at times more like an exercise than a work of art. The rating above is an average of the 5 stars for the setting and the 3 stars for the plot.

Stephenson does a brilliant job of creating an alien yet familiar world -- which proves to be vital to the central idea of the book -- in this philo-scientific masterpiece. Setting up the world unfortunate takes a great deal of effort near the beginning, which can put off casual readers or those not willing to fully immerse themselves in the world. While reading I found myself thinking in Arbran terms (praxis, HTW, mathic) whilst going about my day to day life.

Very engaging and gives the reader much food for thought. If you're well read in philosophy, you'll have fun figuring out which Arbran philosophers are tied to which Earth philosophers...

ive read all the other reviews and there isnt much i can say in the way of anything new. i guess that makes me a anathem lorrite hahaha. but i suggest putting a book mark at the glossary section in the back and flipping to it when ever you get confused by a word. by the time you get to chapter 3 or 4 you will be pretty much on top of all the vocab. also there are some detailed and heavy concepts that do get confusing but i dont think anyone should get hung up on it. if you can get a general idea of what is trying to be said youll do fine with the rest of it, its not like you are getting the book thrown at you and need to grasp the proofs to the point of having to pass a quiz by the hierarchs

Shockingly good!

Anathem is an epic achievement in world building, full of wonderful, coherent detail combined with references to real theories and concepts mapped into the language and conceptual framework of Stephenson's Universe. There are rich rewards here for observant readers well versed in popular science and mathematics. Be warned though that some may find the first 100 pages or so a bit of a struggle on first reading, but the investment pays off significantly as you find yourself sucked into Stephenson's well crafted Universe. If you liked the idea of the exquisitely engineered Clock Of The Long Now, then you will definitely find something to love in this story.

I've just finished and now can't wait to reread the first section with my new appreciation and understanding of the world so lovingly described in Anathem.

I am not a fan of most contemporary science fiction, but this book is something altogether different. Stephenson ranks with J.R.R. Tolkein, Ursala Le Guin and Frank Herbert in the ability to construct a convincingly believable alternate reality complete with its own culture and history.

The basic concept is a hypothetical alternative planet with a civilization curiously parallel to our own, strange but familiar, like Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass.

The plot itself is based on the ancient literary device of the Hero's Quest (e.g. the Odyssey) but the book is actually an artfully disguised exposition of the major ideas and debates of western philosophy, from Plato down through some current speculations of cognitive science and theoretical cosmology. Readers with a fairly good knowledge of western philosophy will especially enjoy decoding the pseudonyms under which the names and schools of thought are gradually revealed through the book.

Stephenson makes the reader work a bit; there is a learning curve during which the reader has to absorb a small vocabulary of invented names and terms, for which an indispensable twenty page glossary is included. The book's 918 page length is formidable, but the reading goes surprisingly quickly once you have grasped the vocabulary and glimpsed where Stephenson is headed.

Finally, the story is cleverly self-referential: it is a narrative about a parallel reality to our own in which the characters engage in an increasingly complex speculative dialogue about the nature of realities parallel to their own. A work of impressively creative genius. Highly recommended.

Reading the first few chapters of this were a struggle - what was happening, what is this all about, where's the plot - that paid off handsomely. It's like some other Neal Stephenson books in that the rest of the book is really not what you would expect from the beginning.

It's hard to say much without spoiling the plot. In short, it's the protagonist's voyage of self (and cultural) discovery, and an interesting commentary about how ephemeral society can be. It reflects the author's involvement in the 'Long Now' movement, [..], and even manages to throw in some hardcore cosmology and a bit of orbital dynamics.

Well worth the read, I would put this on a par with most of Neal Stephenson's other works. Character development is way ahead of Alastair Reynolds, while the complexity (and occasional dry, dark humor) should keep fans of Iain Banks happy.

I've read through several negative reviews of Anathem and can't say that I'm surprised that people found the book slow, egocentric, uninteresting, etc. I have to heartily deviate from their assessment- to me this book was very eye opening and inspiring.

I did not find myself "slogging" through this book as others may have but I can see how someone could find it tiresome. The reader of Anathem has to be willing to accept and make an effort to understand the world (and language!) that Stephenson has created in this brilliant novel. The definitions supplied for the words created can cause for moments of reflection upon the instances when they have come up throughout the story, and you have to be patient to accept this.

While the story takes place on a planet similar to Earth, Arbe, it contains vastly different cultures and customs. Some readers will find interpreting this world exhausting or boring but others will find themselves pulled in excited for more details.

For any speculative buyer of this book I would recommend maybe reading a few chapters in the store first before you buy it or browsing over some reviews here on the store. If you do get this book I recommend you dive right in and take your time enjoying it, because it may feel like it will take forever to get to the end- but sooner or later it ends.

This is the first book that I have turned back to the first page and began reading again immediately after finishing.

Anathem has often been called Stephenson's best novel, and while the final half of the novel is as close to a page turner as you will get in a 900 page book, it is sunk by a not terribly engaging opening. This is my third Stephenson following Cryptonomicon, which I adored, and Reamde, which was seriously disappointing. I rate this one somewhere in between. The world building is interesting, especially if you have had exposure to some of the thinkers/theories he is playing with, but largely it consists of changing the names of things and long Socratic dialogues. The secondary characters suffered as a result, none of whom really emerged as more than one-dimensional until the closing third of the novel. It could also have readily shed 200-300 pages of what seemed like nothing more than repetition of the same theories/dialogues with new characters as we went. Don't get me wrong, fun stuff does begin to happen, and once that starts the book reads very quickly and it is extremely engaging, but much of the philosophical setup gets left by the wayside or matters only incidentally, and in exchange we get some great hard SF. If you are a fan of Stephenson, you can't really go wrong with this. If you have not yet read any Stephenson, I would start elsewhere.

Anathem definitely ranks among Stephenson's best work. In fact, it may be my favorite novel by him. It is chock full of ideas and philosophy, more so than any of his other novels. It is also extremely gripping. I could barely put it down until I finished it. As some reviewers have noted, it is a little slow to get going, as the first couple of hundred pages do more to introduce you to the world he's created than move the plot along (though all of the early discussions become relevant later). And as some have noted, the world is very earth-like, but there is actually a reason for this. It isn't just a looking-glass version of our own world (though it is obviously that, too.) Extremely well-written, erudite, and engaging are three e-words (well, phrases) I'd use to describe this book. Stephenson makes me feel like I'm much smarter than I really am.

Neal Stephenson asks a lot from readers of his latest thousand-page novel, Anathem. He asks that we adapt to his made-up terminology quickly, and stay with him as he expands our new vocabulary quickly. I expect many readers will tire of this quickly, and become frustrated. The glossary helps. Using that terminology, he creates an Earth-like world he calls Arbre, and proceeds to inhabit that world with groups of people that we must come to know and understand. On top of that, he presents science in ways that will engage some readers, and alienate others. Beyond all that, he has his characters engage in philosophical exercises that keep even the most engaged readers alert in trying to remain focused. The reward for readers who take on this challenge is immersion into a world that stimulates thinking about our human condition and the decisions we make to resolve our frustrations. The vast size of the book allows Stephenson plenty of space in which he can develop characters, which he does well here, and to explore ideas, which he also does with great skill. My understanding evolved as I continued to read, and I came away from Anathem with the pleasure of having conquered a complicated novel and with respect for the author who pulled all the threads together with great skill. Had Stephenson been able to achieve this using three or four hundred fewer pages, I would have added another star or two to my rating.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

I'm 3/4 of the way through this book and haven't read anything that is not integral to the story or uninteresting.

Two weeks ago, someone gave it to me using the 'you'll really like this' maneuver, which doesn't really work often on anyone - myself included. After 80 pages of struggling to adapt to this world, it just happened. I found myself floating over this new world, following a thread that kept me going 'just one more page' late into the night. I've lost alot of sleep and given up all of my freetime so that I can follow this narrative.

I enjoy thought experiments, metaphysical discussions (metatheorics) and I've been fascinated by the idea of the millenium clock for about a decade now. I'm not a big science fiction or fantasy fan, (actually hate most spec fiction) but this fits as my second great unexpected discovery from this genre.

The thought experiments are integral to the story. It's not as difficult or intense as some would suggest. The author assumes that you don't read thought experiments on a day to day basis. You learn, and the story builds on what you learn. If you don't want to digest these, then you are going to miss much of the weight of the story. If you want to dismiss them as unnecessary fluff, then you shouldn't be reading the book.

Having recently completed this book, I find myself in complete agreement with the reviewers who have compared this book to the satirical works of Butler and Swift. With the caveat that all of the best science fiction is ultimately a comment on our current conditions, I see Anathem as the latest entry in a tradition of social satire best embodied by Gulliver's Travels and Erewhon and more recently by the works of Kurt Vonnegut, a writer whose works were also nominally classified as "science fiction." In its scope and complexity, it also bears some similarity to the work of Pynchon and De Lillo. Ultimately, Anathem (obviously) is a book of ideas, but it explores them in a carefully crafted world that is a looking glass version of our own. To do so, he creates his own argot, where TV shows are "speelies" and PDAs are "jeejahs." Why do that? In my opinion, it is a device to help distance his world from our own, while maintaining the close parallels that underlie his commentary.

So, what are the targets of his satire? Academic learning would certainly be one, with the mathic world as a reductio ad absurdum of the image of the ivory tower. Religiosity is another obvious target, as are the abstruse topics of academic discourse. The superficiality of popular culture would be another.

And how does Anathem work as Sci-Fi? So-so, I would say. Stephenson takes on weighty issues such as polycosmic travel, perception and cognition, all of which have been treated before in fiction. His exposition of Platonism (couched as Hylean theorics) is brilliant, but his notion of the differences in elements is a weak aspect of the story. If, as he would have it, fundamental constants in other cosmoi are different than those in our own, how do the atoms of visitors from those cosmoi remain stable in a cosmos with different physical laws? The idea that the chemistry is incompatible, but not the physics, strikes me as untenable. And the millenial praxis looks too much like a deus ex machina for my taste.

Finally, Stephenson has been criticized for not ending his stories particularly well. Personally, I don't care that much, as the enjoyment of his storytelling is in the ride, not in the resolution. Nevertheless, this story too ends in a rather neat, if not abrupt way, but with a wink toward those criticisms.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and if I didn't learn as much from it as from some of his earlier books, it still stimulated the brain more than most works of fiction do.

This is a hard book to review.

It is one of the most spectacular works of science fiction that I have ever read. There is a richness of detail and thought enough for 50 normal books.

It revolves around an alternate earth divided into a secular culture, kind of like most western societies today, and "maths", isolated monasteries where the scientists live in (mostly) voluntary seclusion. But into this stable world comes an attack from space, and then it gets very complicated...

The book is really long and even for those of us with some level of patience, it can get BORING. I read about 90% of it (skipping to the end) and I don't know if I will ever get the energy to go back over it.

It has perhaps the best, the most accurate, depiction of what a real space battle would be like. (Warning: it involves a lot of waiting around).

It has perhaps the single best description in a work of science fiction of a really workable interstellar spacecraft. We could build one now, really...

I'm done here.

While I loved the characters and the world of Arbre as depicted in Anathem, and while it got me interested in reading more about quantum physics, I found the book to be lacking overall. There were many scenes in the novel that became flat-out boring, especially when Stephenson was giving the reader "lessons" in the science involved in the story. The last 100 pages or so really felt like a very weak ending, and the characters and situations I came to care for became little more than symbols to me. I understand the critical praise that Anathem has received, but it just wasn't a winner in my mind.

I like most of Stephenson's books but this is now my new favorite. Interesting to read and hard to talk about with out giving anything away. Don't read the jacket, don't read the reviews, don't read the prologue - but READ THIS BOOK.

It's the journey, not the destination My main gripe is that once again the end seems a bit rushed, not really in line with the quality of the rest of the book. Maybe I was just already missing it.

Fantastic - top 10 favorite books!

Favorite single book, period. I have reread many times and find more, perhaps even more than the author intended, each time.

On a world whose history has run somewhat parallel to Earth, mathematicians are secluded like monks and nuns, separated into walled cities where they live simplistic lives. They read, develop ideas, study theories, and shun most technology. These fraas and suurs are seen as mysterious and possibly dangerous by the general public outside of the walls. When an event of significance to the entire world occurs, though, these avout may be their world's only hope for salvation.

I really liked the characters in this book and the highly detailed description of the day-to-day life of Fraa Erasmus. The world in which he lived was fascinating and engaging.

However, I got lost in some of the deeper philosophy of this book, and was especially thrown off by Orolo's ideas of different narratives existing at the same time. Consequently, I had a difficult time figuring out what I was supposed to think about the end of this book, in which Erasmus seemed to be operating in more than one narrative at the same time. I found this to be an unsatisfying end to a book I had really enjoyed much of the way through.

I've seen a lot of folks say that this is a difficult read. I've got degrees in mathematics and am now in a physics grad program so maybe I'm used to harder stuff. With that qualification I thought this novel was amazing!!

The language is great, I love that you have to figure out many of the meanings from context, that you are forced to think on your own. I love the parallelism between the alternate world and our own and the fact that this is not a coincidence. I love the coherent and accurate discussion of mathematics and physics. I love the physical consequences of platonism!

I found that I skimmed rather little of this book. It read a little slowly, but not in a dragging sense, rather in a sense of reading it carefully lest you miss something.

I suppose all of that and the fact that these are academics living monastically (I would so do that!) which resulted in my deep appreciation for this book which is novel, exciting and intelligent.

Do not read this as your first Neal Stephenson book......He has many great books, this is not one. Anthem is an ego exercise by Mr. Stephenson. A bit like self satisfaction in public. 90% of the 900+ pages are just a boring nonsensical, hard to follow waste of time. This book could have easily been half the length. If you don't like the first 150 pages where Mr. Stephenson forces you to learn a new vocabulary for no real reason, put the book down and look elsewhere for a better read. It drags you on trying to translate the new vocabulary until the last 20% of the book where something happens, something poorly described, but something finally happens. Instantly there is an ending.....Nothing like his more popular works. I am hard pressed to understand how anyone would give this 5 stars. This is a 1 star exercise in frustration. It took me two weeks to read less than a thousand pages, and most of the time the plot was hidden references I understood, but did not know why he was using them. A hard read with an empty ending. Read Snow Crash, or Cryptonomicon. Those are good books. Anathen was a swing and a miss. If there were a zero star rating, this one might rate zero.

I read and LOVED Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. I finished Anathem, but because I did, I really don't know if I'll ever read another one of his books after this one.

Sure, it's not supposed to be Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon, but it wasn't at the level of either of those either.

I'm a Neal Stephenson fan - I think most of the positive reviews of this book that you will read come from other Neal Stephenson fans. There is a reason for that - you have to like the style to trust him enough to keep going through the indoctrination.

Look at the reviews - the positive ones are well written, bombastic and they all tell you it's worth it. Take a hint. Snow Crash had enough mind candy to keep a wide audience interested. Cryptonomicon was the book that hooked me and I'll now buy anything the man writes until he stops. But I started and stopped it twice before finally working through it when I had time. If you're a 'voracious' reader and expect to knock this one out in a week on your way to the book that Uncle Joe recommended, you'll miss, to my mind, the real joy of experiencing crafted sentences and detailed scenes that he paints for you. His works are best when you really give yourself to the experience.

So if you're ready to take some browbeating not as the contrived fiction that it sometimes seems to be but rather as almost a rite of passage to full immersion, then give it a try. If you need an easy read or expect quick and constant entertainment...keep searching.