Anathem

Neal Stephenson

Oct 2009 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this eBook

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, Anathem is perhaps the most brilliant literary invention to date from the incomparable Neal Stephenson, who rocked the world with Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and The Baroque Cycle. Now he imagines an alternate universe where scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians live in seclusion behind ancient monastery walls until they are called back into the world to deal with a crisis of astronomical proportions.

 

Anathem won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the reviews for have been dazzling: “Brilliant” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel), “Daring” (Boston Globe), “Immensely entertaining” (New York Times Book Review), “A tour de force” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), while Time magazine proclaims, “The great novel of ideas…has morphed into science fiction, and Neal Stephenson is its foremost practitioner.”

Ratings and reviews

If the final two-thirds of Anathem were as immersive and wildly creative as the first third, Anathem would be a near-perfect book. They were not (a seemingly endless slog through an arctic wasteland left me cold), but even a less-than-perfect Stephenson is a very good read, and the concepts at play are engrossing (if only a misspent youth had paid more attention to philosophy). Highly recommended -- a wonderful piece of speculative fiction

" Anathem" is a far cry from Stephenson's other stories. It is an intellectual, cerebral book that is linear in plot, and pivots entirely on internal comprehension of ideas and concepts given as the book progresses. If you have the paper version of the book, you have the luxury of studying the glossary more or less exhaustively before diving in. If, like me, you downloaded your copy, be prepared to leaf back and forth through some of the heavier exposition to ensure your comprehension of the concepts.

This bill had a good storyline and was interesting after I got far enough into it, but the made up vocabulary and slow procession made it hard to get past the setup.

About the author

Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning...Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.