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

A sweeping tale that takes you for an ever increasingly fun ride. The author takes you into another world both familiar and different and meticulously builds its reality and situations. Then shoots you out of a cannon into adventure. As I read some of the other reviews, I see that many readers perceive the first third setup and pacing as too slow; I thought it was an enjoyable building of the world and a fun exploration of it. Savor it! What a feast! There are heady concepts at play here and the author makes it fun and approachable to explore them.

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

One of the best books I've read in a long time. You definitely have to keep up with vocabulary; some of the words a similar but not quite the same. Character development is absolutely amazing. Storyline is fantastic, and will keep you engaged all the way through. Also worth noting, if you're interested in mathematics, you should give this a read. Not to learn, but you will get better enjoyment from some of the concepts.

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.