Neal Stephenson Returns with "Anathem"

Lev Grossman writes to tell us that Neal Stephenson, author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, has another novel due for release in September. The catalogue copy gives us a small glimpse at what may be in store: "Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians--sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable 'saecular' world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown."

Comments

I've stopped reading...

[Otter]

I loved his earlier books, read a third of the way into Quicksilver, found it unreadable and gave up, glanced at the next one and thought it looked even worse, and stopped paying attention at all.

Has he gone back to writing enjoyable books or are they still self-indulgent treatises that he's too important to allow editing of? (Judging from ScuttleMonkey's "...author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon...", the latter seems more likely.)

Re:I've stopped reading...

[gardyloo]

Snow Crash vaulted into the "OK" category with the single line "after that it's just a chase scene". Everything else was rich, velvety, cholesterol-laden icing on the cake.

Interesting

[Paranatural]

I've actually noticed how the people who are or at least consider themselves the 'intellectual elite', (And yes, this includes slashdotters, for the most part) tend to insulate themselves away from the more mundane world, even while sometimes bemoaning their own insulation.

I'd never thought of putting it into an actual story with a more structured actual separation.

Should be a good read. He can be rather better at predicting how people react to changes in technology rather than how most people think we'd react. (I.E. Relationship role changes and the way we interact fundamentally changed rather than just slightly bent.)

Re:Interesting

[Lemmy Caution]

Many elites are other peoples' masses. Slashdot-types (or at least a caricatured stereotype of them that might have some kernel of truth to it) might think of themselves as a kind of cerebral elite for certain types of technical-scientific abilities. For people with a strong background in the arts and literature, Slashdot tastes are very much of the masses, often naive and vulgar. Athletic types see the distinction between the elite and the masses in different terms, as well.

Stephenson, among others, clearly plays to the the geek version of what makes elitism. I find him one of those authors whose generally mediocre work is peppered with intriguing ideas and even flashes of clever writing. He is a geek writing for geeks, satisfying their desire to have their own view of the world confirmed. I put Orson Scott Card in that category, too.

There are alternatives to that: writers who unsettle and shake up frameworks of thought. Among my favorite of them, in SF at least, are Thomas Disch and Samuel Delaney.

Re:Interesting

[Lemmy Caution]

When I see that other people have outgrown tastes that I have, my attitude is a cautious curiosity. My wife has an incredible education in two fields: food, and painting. When I see a vaguely contemptuous look flash across her face for one of my preferences in those domains, I try not to get defensive, but to learn to appreciate the elements that she can identify as lacking in them, and to learn to understand what's better. At the same time, I don't readily abandon my pleasures, either, nor does she. (Her taste in books is weak, and her idea of a philosophy text is Alain de Botton. I've introduced her to stronger philosophers, without expecting her to drop de Botton too quickly.)

Growing up involved giving up certain pleasures in the discovery of other ones - more nuanced, complicated and difficult ones, at times. For most things, most of us are on the "low scale." We can accept it without resenting it or defending it. I think a lot of the problem with culture is the insistence that there is no such thing as "high" and "low," that all tastes are just as good - it's usually an insistence that people only make for their "low" tastes. In other words, you won't be able to convince a geek that Windows is just as good as Unix, but they'll insist that Stephenson is just as good as, say, Samuel Beckett. Conversely, a literati will express the same kind of convenient mix of egalitarianism / anti-egalitarianism.

Re:Interesting

[Lemmy Caution]

Well, he might not be Shakespeare, but try reading, say, Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, and then tell me he's mediocre. When you're better than 90% of the tripe out there, sci-fi included, you've wandered away a little bit from "mediocre".

Fair enough. And to be honest, at times I've liked Stephenson - usually for short bursts at a time. His writing is often a pastiche of clever ideas and descriptions held together by - well, not really held together by anything at all. I think he's be more effective if he didn't even try to write novels, but wrote books of connected, somewhat related vignettes.

Still, life is short. I'm going to read, what, maybe one one-hundred-thousandths of all the literature that's ever been written? . . .and I'm a pretty active reader. The "top 10%" is still way too indiscriminate. Surely, there's a higher bar than being better than Tom Clancy.

Excellent; he's one of my favourite authors

[Rosy At Random]

Yes, he's a self-indulgent geek. And damnit, I love that. So am I.

Reading his books, you can't help but feel that he's constantly nudging and winking at you, sharing the joke and deligt of writing as it were. I can see why some people would hate that, or not have the patience to wade through it, but I can't get enough of it.

In that, he reminds me of Roger Zelazny. Lately, though, I find Charles Stross to feel rather similar.

"Raz and his cohorts"

[unity100]

why is that they set up the hero as having cohorts, armies, minions all the time ? its growing rather old.

the forced need of self gratification by grandeur. too unrealistic when repeated that often and in every context.

Re:Shades of the Foundation Trilogy (plus)

[Digi-John]

I can only hope it doesn't include something like that planet-o-hippies, the Gaians.
The worst would be if he tried to tie the Baroque Cycle, the Cryptonomicon, and Snow Crash all together in this book, like Asimov did at the end of Foundation.
Pity that S.F. authors seem to go a little nuts when they get old.

I stalled out 2 books ago...

[argent]

His earlier books were great, but somewhere in Cryptonomicon he seems to have lost the plot, literally. I had a lot of trouble actually caring about the characters in Cryptonomicon... and I couldn't really care much about the background or plot either... it all seemed to be an excuse for him to write about the places he'd been as a hacker tourist and try and drum up geek cred... and he didn't seem to understand what bits of geek culture were things his allegedly competent protagonist should care about. The Baroque Cycle? I gave up halfway through the second one. It was like reading the "Swiss Family Robinson" version of the Renaissance. You know how "Swiss Family Robinson" was kind of like teenager's wish-fulfillment version of "Robinson Crusoe"? That's how I felt about Quicksilver... too many protagonists had too many convenient 20th century attitudes and too much 20th century understanding of biology and physics.

Re:Fantastic

[ultramk]

Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, was pure genius. ...unfortunately, a lot of the posters here seem to feel the exact opposite.

I have to think that the reason for it is that Neal seems to have three distinct fanbases:
1. The ones who never got over Neuromancer and only like the books where he's channeling Bill Gibson.
2. The ones who appreciate the convoluted storylines and textured histories of Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle.
3. The Venn-diagram overlap of the two, which appears to be tiny.

I'm a #3, but I try not to evangelize.

Re:This makes me happy

[CastrTroy]

I read about 2/3 of Cryptonomicon. Put it down for the summer because I use my bike instead of public transit for travelling to work, and I never picked it back up again. I keep on meaning to finish it, but it's been so long I fear that I'll have to start over from the beginning again. If there really is no ending, I might not bother, as I like my books to have some kind of conclusion.

Re:Obligatory comment about Neal's romance scenes

[Kooshman]

Heaven forbid a book challenge its reader. If you want porn, go get porn, it comes in many flavors.

Stephenson's hallmark is going into great detail, and when he does it right it has value of some kind. Plot, humor, exposition, etc. For example, the girl bursting into flames after sex was part of a whole exploration of computation-- it was an interesting bit of science fiction. The description of Waterhouse's sexual frustrations were amusing. The prostate-fingering set up character details and motivation that lasted to the end of the book. He dealt realistically with both health and political issues in 17th century west Europe, up to and including the mentioned surgery and fake sex.

I find it to be the exact opposite of how sex is treated by most other authors. It's not something stapled on to titillate; rather, it fits in just like all the other details and commentary. That's not to say everyone should like it. As with many of my other personal delights, I make no beefs that most of the population likely won't enjoy Stephenson as I do, and I am not a huge devotee of everything he's written. It seems to me that the singling out Stephenson's descriptions of sex is a reflection of the reader, not the writer, given that it is presented in the same manner as the rest of the book, like it or not.

Re:This makes me happy

[Sheriff Fatman]

I couldn't agree more. I think Stephenson, at his best, has a singular gift for conveying background information, often fairly technical stuff, without interrupting his narrative. Consider the passage in Cryptonomicon where he explains modular arithmetic using the broken spoke on Alan Turing's bicycle, or the gradual explanation of universal Turing machines that's woven into the second half of The Diamond Age.

Sometimes I think he takes it a little far... the first half of The Confusion sometimes felt like it was trying to explain the entire political framework of sixteenth-century France, and not always succeeding (at least, not in my case) - but by and large it's an aspect of his writing I enjoy very much.

(I also think it demonstrates an interesting contrast with another great sci-fi/'cyberpunk' author, William Gibson. Where Stephenson will take several pages explaining some neat gadget or system, Gibson just throws his technological ideas at you and lets you work out for yourself what he's talking about. Count Zero opens with the line "They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair."... and closes 333 pages later without ever telling you what a slamhound is or how you would go about slotting one.)

I wonder if Enoch Root will be in this one...

Re:Slashvertisement?

[EEDAm]

Cryptonimicon is a good book. Hell it's probably even a great book. But a place to start with Stephenson? It's a magnum opus and it's more complicated than his other work. Its also pretty bigazz in size.

If you are 'buying into' an author you've never read before this is going to put more possible stumbling blocks in the way. Both Snowcrash and Diamond Age have cracking stories that I think would be a bit more accessible to Stephenson novices first time out. You're going to want to read all three (and the others) anyway so I'd start out simpler. Alternatively grab anything by him you fancy - I can't help with your Bad Impulse Control.