Neal Stephenson, Anathem
Someone finally taught Stephenson what a proper ending looks like. The main thrust of the story comes to a fairly satisfying conclusion, even as the characters and their arcs continue. This works for me. I'm not ready to forgive him for Cryptonomicon yet but I'll certainly look with less skepticism on his next book.
Anyway. Anathem is a hard book to talk about, because it's not really what you think of when you think of fiction. It's set in an alternate world where the brilliant thinkers, scientists, philosophers, have all hidden away in monasteries dedicated to the worship of reason and the study of, well, of everything really. These monks are so devoted to their studies that they seal themselves off from the outside world for a year, or a decade, or a century, or (the especially crazy ones) a millenium, so they can proceed untroubled by the rise and fall of the secular world beyond their walls. The story starts out following one young monk through a few months in the monastery, and then Something Happens, and suddenly there's plot and adventure and all that good stuff.
Which is periodically interrupted by long stretches of Platonic discourse with the numbers filed off.
Not, I hasten to add, that I think that's a bad thing. There was only once where I felt like it was "all very interesting but where's the plot" (during the Messal chapter, which is structured as a series of dinner conversations at which the narrator is a servant). And it may have been those philosophical digressions I felt the lack of during the almost terminally dull section in the middle of the book when the narrator is journeying across the North Pole. They're just. . . odd and unexpected. I can see where other people would get fed up rather quickly with the wink-wink nudge-nudge mixture of Greek philosophy in a medieval "math" (monastery) with all the names changed up slightly. Me, I enjoy reading about the process of finding things out. I also enjoy an elegant geometry proof now and then.
(Speaking of names changed up slightly, "math" is merely the tip of the iceberg in the book's tendency to call a rabbit a smeerp (WARNING: TVTropes link). This is more like calling a rabbit a lapin (or, I suppose, a norska) since nearly all the words are based on familiar Latin/Greek/English roots, or at least sounds. I mostly enjoyed the sense of "oh, that's what that means!" but by the time Jules Verne Durand's dialect showed up I'd gotten thoroughly annoyed by the process.)
So: the philosophy is good but maybe not to everyone's taste. The prose keeps it moving, the plot is passable and compelling enough to keep one reading (new wrinkles are introduced pretty consistently, so that just when you think you've got a grip on what's happening it turns out to be something else again), the characters work.
The worldbuilding. . . has what look to me like some holes. The ability of the mathic world to exist more or less free from interference from the Saecular Power (whatever happens to be the government at the time) seems idealized to just this side of laughable. Even accounting for the three Sacks in the past 3700 years, it's difficult for me to accept that the Saecular Power-- or some upstart-- wouldn't be putting the monks to work developing more ways to keep and hold that power. And mathic sex passes well beyond the realm of the laughable: the boys and girls are raised more or less together but romantic/sexual liaisons are prohibited, in an effective way, until they turn eighteen. I understand the Catholic Church has tried something similar, with somewhat mixed results.
Not to mention the presence of roughly four female characters, all of whom hold tertiary roles. Oh, Neal Stephenson, if you're going to go to the trouble of claiming that mathic society is gender-balanced, could you at least do the same in the dramatis personae?
At this point I'm nitpicking. I enjoyed the book an awful lot (I must have, to have been lugging it around for a month or so). Bottom line: if you liked The Republic but thought it would have been more fun written as the Book of the New Sun, this is probably one for you.
(See also Adam Roberts's somewhat more negative review, which has done the world an invaluable service by providing us with the words "fatasy" and "worldbling.")
Someone finally taught Stephenson what a proper ending looks like. The main thrust of the story comes to a fairly satisfying conclusion, even as the characters and their arcs continue. This works for me. I'm not ready to forgive him for Cryptonomicon yet but I'll certainly look with less skepticism on his next book.
Anyway. Anathem is a hard book to talk about, because it's not really what you think of when you think of fiction. It's set in an alternate world where the brilliant thinkers, scientists, philosophers, have all hidden away in monasteries dedicated to the worship of reason and the study of, well, of everything really. These monks are so devoted to their studies that they seal themselves off from the outside world for a year, or a decade, or a century, or (the especially crazy ones) a millenium, so they can proceed untroubled by the rise and fall of the secular world beyond their walls. The story starts out following one young monk through a few months in the monastery, and then Something Happens, and suddenly there's plot and adventure and all that good stuff.
Which is periodically interrupted by long stretches of Platonic discourse with the numbers filed off.
Not, I hasten to add, that I think that's a bad thing. There was only once where I felt like it was "all very interesting but where's the plot" (during the Messal chapter, which is structured as a series of dinner conversations at which the narrator is a servant). And it may have been those philosophical digressions I felt the lack of during the almost terminally dull section in the middle of the book when the narrator is journeying across the North Pole. They're just. . . odd and unexpected. I can see where other people would get fed up rather quickly with the wink-wink nudge-nudge mixture of Greek philosophy in a medieval "math" (monastery) with all the names changed up slightly. Me, I enjoy reading about the process of finding things out. I also enjoy an elegant geometry proof now and then.
(Speaking of names changed up slightly, "math" is merely the tip of the iceberg in the book's tendency to call a rabbit a smeerp (WARNING: TVTropes link). This is more like calling a rabbit a lapin (or, I suppose, a norska) since nearly all the words are based on familiar Latin/Greek/English roots, or at least sounds. I mostly enjoyed the sense of "oh, that's what that means!" but by the time Jules Verne Durand's dialect showed up I'd gotten thoroughly annoyed by the process.)
So: the philosophy is good but maybe not to everyone's taste. The prose keeps it moving, the plot is passable and compelling enough to keep one reading (new wrinkles are introduced pretty consistently, so that just when you think you've got a grip on what's happening it turns out to be something else again), the characters work.
The worldbuilding. . . has what look to me like some holes. The ability of the mathic world to exist more or less free from interference from the Saecular Power (whatever happens to be the government at the time) seems idealized to just this side of laughable. Even accounting for the three Sacks in the past 3700 years, it's difficult for me to accept that the Saecular Power-- or some upstart-- wouldn't be putting the monks to work developing more ways to keep and hold that power. And mathic sex passes well beyond the realm of the laughable: the boys and girls are raised more or less together but romantic/sexual liaisons are prohibited, in an effective way, until they turn eighteen. I understand the Catholic Church has tried something similar, with somewhat mixed results.
Not to mention the presence of roughly four female characters, all of whom hold tertiary roles. Oh, Neal Stephenson, if you're going to go to the trouble of claiming that mathic society is gender-balanced, could you at least do the same in the dramatis personae?
At this point I'm nitpicking. I enjoyed the book an awful lot (I must have, to have been lugging it around for a month or so). Bottom line: if you liked The Republic but thought it would have been more fun written as the Book of the New Sun, this is probably one for you.
(See also Adam Roberts's somewhat more negative review, which has done the world an invaluable service by providing us with the words "fatasy" and "worldbling.")
The Diamond Age
Nov. 14th, 2008 11:01 amNeal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
You can tell this is a Neal Stephenson book by how the plot falls apart by the end.
That's not entirely fair. You can really tell it's a Stephenson by the dialogue (Judge Fang's in particular), by the names of things (the House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel, at which Fang and his cohorts devour fried chicken), by the hacker in-jokes (look, it's a bazaar! With a free flow of information! And, are those cathedral bells we hear tolling at the end of the book?). And Diamond Age doesn't fall apart nearly so badly as Cryptonomicon (the book that, 2/3 of the way through, made me swear off future Stephenson books until someone gets him a proper editor).
Like Snow Crash and Crypto, Diamond Age is a fun read, full of witty characters and a plot that collapses under its own weight. Unlike those, Diamond Age is about something bigger than the wild ride. It's an analysis of societal structures, of moral virtues, and of how those virtues are passed to people (children) who don't necessarily choose them. It's about the success and failure of strict societies (Victorian, Confucian) and the need for flexibility.
I was having a great deal of fun with the book up until about halfway through, when the strange distributed hive-mind of the Drummers pops up (and absorbs a main character). At that point. . . something snapped. It wasn't precisely my disbelief suspenders. More that. . . they felt out of place in the techno-rational world Stephenson had created. At that point I stopped being swept along and started reading more critically. Which is kind of crucial for the enjoyment of Stephenson's books, and in particular for believing in and being thrilled by the upheaval and near-transformation of the world at the end of this one.
It's still good stuff; I'd reread it, I'd recommend it to other people. It's just not as good as the first half suggests. (Much like Stephenson's other books.)
You can tell this is a Neal Stephenson book by how the plot falls apart by the end.
That's not entirely fair. You can really tell it's a Stephenson by the dialogue (Judge Fang's in particular), by the names of things (the House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel, at which Fang and his cohorts devour fried chicken), by the hacker in-jokes (look, it's a bazaar! With a free flow of information! And, are those cathedral bells we hear tolling at the end of the book?). And Diamond Age doesn't fall apart nearly so badly as Cryptonomicon (the book that, 2/3 of the way through, made me swear off future Stephenson books until someone gets him a proper editor).
Like Snow Crash and Crypto, Diamond Age is a fun read, full of witty characters and a plot that collapses under its own weight. Unlike those, Diamond Age is about something bigger than the wild ride. It's an analysis of societal structures, of moral virtues, and of how those virtues are passed to people (children) who don't necessarily choose them. It's about the success and failure of strict societies (Victorian, Confucian) and the need for flexibility.
I was having a great deal of fun with the book up until about halfway through, when the strange distributed hive-mind of the Drummers pops up (and absorbs a main character). At that point. . . something snapped. It wasn't precisely my disbelief suspenders. More that. . . they felt out of place in the techno-rational world Stephenson had created. At that point I stopped being swept along and started reading more critically. Which is kind of crucial for the enjoyment of Stephenson's books, and in particular for believing in and being thrilled by the upheaval and near-transformation of the world at the end of this one.
It's still good stuff; I'd reread it, I'd recommend it to other people. It's just not as good as the first half suggests. (Much like Stephenson's other books.)
