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

This makes me happy

[rbanzai]

I really enjoy his books. The strengths far outweigh the shortcomings for me. I usually feel smarter after reading his stuff, at least for a little while. He has a knack for weaving little interesting facts into his stories and that really appeals to me.

Re:This makes me happy

[gardyloo]

Plus, it's usually up to the reader to provide the last chapter or so. Weave away, reader. It's a brilliant way to write books, because each one ends up being lovingly tailored to the individual reader's mindset.

Re:This makes me happy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha exactly. I was going to ask if this one actually had an ending.
After Diamond Age and Cryptinomican, I half expect any book I read by Stephenson to end in mid-sente

Re:This makes me happy

[gardyloo]

I'm from the old school where a book ought to have a resolution to the climax (and it should come AFTER the climax). Right. I think literary critics call that "cuddling".

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: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:This makes me happy

[mcvos]

Of all his books that I read, Cryptonomicon is the only one that has something of an ending. Not a brilliant climax, perhaps, but definitely some sort of conclusion.

Endings are definitely not Stephenson's strongest point, but the fact that this book at least has one, and every single one of the 1100 pages before that ending being exciting, thrilling, interesting and witty, has made Cryptonomicon my favourite book ever. It knocked Lord of the Rings off its throne, and is a must-read for every nerd who is even the slightest bit interested in computers, math, information warfare, submarines, treasure hunts, WW2, or reading.

The only real downer in the book was the two consecutive descriptions of Manilla, one during WW2, the other in modern times. I'm sure the differences between the two descriptions should have been enlightening, but to me it was just boring twice in a row. The rest of the book is absolutely brilliant, however, and that brilliance far outshines these minor downsides.

Re:This makes me happy

[mcvos]

I'm reading the Diamond Age now. I really didn't like how he ended the Cryptonomicon,so I suppose I should be prepared.

You didn't like Cryptonomicon's ending? Oh boy. It's the most satisfying ending he's ever written. You should have read The Diamond Age and Snow Crash first. Then you'd really have apppreciated Cryptonomicon's ending.

But his books aren't about the ending. They're about the detailed world he's painting, and about the attention to technical detail. The rushed ending is just something you'll have to accept in order to wrap up all the juicy goodness in the rest of the book.

Re:This makes me happy

[mcvos]

Not really. It left us hanging there wondering what was going to happen to all that gold they found.

That is epilogue, and is not always necessary for an ending. Also note that I didn't say it was a brilliant ending, just that it had "something of an ending", which it did.

Add one more line for the Fox TV show:

[Stanistani]

"Hilarity ensues as the naive monks wander into an Orange County mall and are adopted by a gaggle of teenage girls."

Yes.

[ScentCone]

I think it's possible that Neal himself has been sealed in a Monastary for 3,400 years, actually. I don't know how else he could have written the Baroque Cycle, along with the works mentioned, and still have had time to come up for air and produce something new, too. Looking forward to it. Are you watching, George Martin? See? Wriiiite... publish!

Re:Yes.

[ultramk]

Well, when I was at the $250m Sci-Fi Museum in Seattle, (imo, the only good thing to come out of Microsoft, as the place is derided by the locals as "Paul Allen's Basement") one of the most impressive displays (and the place is huge) was the complete hand-written manuscript for the Baroque Cycle, as well as all of the Montblanc fountain pens and refills it took to complete it.

Yes, hand-written. I saw that huge stack of paper, and all the little pen nubs and such, and my wrists starting aching in sympathy.

It might seem stupid to write in such a time-consuming way, but it seems to work for him. This rung a bell for me: I have a degree in sculpture, and one of the first and most lasting lessons I learned is that your choice of tools shape the final work just as much as your intention does, if not more. The process matters; it effects the end result in subtle, hard-to-identify ways. I did an experiment when I was a student, I carved two marble busts (1/3 life size, I was poor), both of the same model. With one I used only hand tools: chisels, rasps, sandpaper, picks, etc. With the second one, I used only power tools: air hammer, sander, dremel, etc. (yes, that one took about a 5th of the time) I was pretty equally skilled with both kinds of tools, and although I was intending to create the same piece each time, they came out very very different. You can't tell from looking which tools I used to make which bust, but one is far "harder".... more aggressive in the expression, people say it seems arrogant. The other looks wistful, serene, relaxed, playful. Obviously just an anecdote, but it made a big impression on me.

Both from the same model, both from the same initial study I made in plasticene. The process matters.

Re:Yes.

[peacefinder]

I caught a speech he did on the Quicksilver promo tour. To summarize and oversimplify what he said, apparently his hands can type faster than his brain can generate good prose. By switching to handwriting, he slowed his output rate to more closely match his composition rate. IIRC he said that the result was a much more polished first draft.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

The second and third were given to me, but they sat idle on a shelf for 3 months before I realized that I would never be able to find the extra 20 years of free time I would need to get through them. So true. Reading is hard. You can always read the funny pages in the newspaper or watch tv shows. Try Extra! or Entertainment Tonight. They talk about celebrities and stuff and they don't use a lot of big words, so you might like it.

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...

[agentkhaki]

For what it's worth, Quicksilver was easily the driest of the three--it really felt like a history textbook, and I honestly don't blame anyone who gave up on the series (and possibly the author) after trying to make their way through it. I know it took me two tries, and even then it was a struggle. He started picking up steam with the second book though, and the third was quite excellent.

Re:I've stopped reading...

[gardyloo]

Agreed. I really *did* enjoy Quicksilver, with no reservations. But the following two were less dry and more engaging, even though the individual scenes became a bit more violent and disturbing. Scattered throughout all three volumes were various little nuggets of Stephenson humor -- not just the people struggling with concepts we would consider old-hat (in the modern sense of the term, not that prevalent as slang as recently as the 1940s!) -- but modern euphemisms. If I remember correctly, these became more common in the later two volumes.

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]

I'm particularly fond of the fact that his male protagonists are generally depicted in close, lifelong friendships with other men, that women tend to play little roles in their lives, but by Jeebus they're not gay. I haven't seen such repression since Batman and Robin sank so far into the closet, they could see Narnia.

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.

deja vu

[s20451]

That book was great the first time I read it, when it was called A Canticle for Leibowitz.

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.

Re:He saves time

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind this is a guy who, in one novel, actually named the hero and protagonist "Hiro Protagonist".

Re:Atlas Shrugged

[spun]

Christ on a kitten huffing bender, man, what are you on about? I can't even figure out whether you are right-loony, left-loony, libertarian-loony, or just an Ayn Rand fetishist based on this post. How you managed to read ANY of that into this preview of Stephenson's new book, I'll never know.

Look, this is the Internets, you have to be more specific in your insults and more obvious in your humor. ;)

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:Slashvertisement?

[FleaPlus]

I don't get it. What makes this news? Some dude wrote a book. So what? It happens every day.

What am I missing? That's a genuine question.

He's Neal Stephenson. If you want an idea of why Slashdotters enjoy him, check out his (free to read) non-fiction piece In the Beginning was the Command Line.

Re:Slashvertisement?

[peacefinder]

And don't forget to read his highly entertaining Slashdot interview answers, especially number four.

Re:Fantastic

[ultramk]

I strongly disagree. Compare the characters of "The Big U" with any of his more recent works. While entertaining, his early works were more sketches of characters, or walking, talking cliches than fully-realized, 3-dimensional individuals.

Yay!

[fucket]

I was reading "The Baroque Cycle" for so long that when I finished it, there was a noticeable vacuum in my life. I struggled to remember a time when I *wasn't* reading "The Baroque Cycle" and searched in vain for something as dense, interesting and clever to fill my newly idle hours. I hope I speak for many others besides myself when I express hope that the new books compare favorably in both mass and density (and thus volume) to the old.

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:Shades of the Foundation Trilogy (plus)

[Archangel Michael]

"Pity that S.F. authors seem to go a little nuts when they get old."

It isn't a pity, it is the way of things. A young S.F. can obscure the fact that he is, in fact, nuts by his creativity. The problem with age, is that it tends to bring less creativity and thus unable to hide that which was always there.

Re:Atlas Shrugged

[ultramk]

Oh, sorry. I guess I need some sort of Venn diagram.

Re:Slashvertisement?

[Nefarious Wheel]

What am I missing? That's a genuine question.

Ok, genuine answer here.

I strongly recommend Cryptonimicon as a good start. It's a big novel with two storylines from different historical points converging to a single dramatic and climatic end, with a subtle blend of emotions, tensions and strong, believable obligations. Woven throughout is an intensely technical drama concerning the power of cryptography and the people who had a life and death effect on the world around them because of their knowledge. Possibly the best insight into the ancestors of computing in the WWII era. Hugely scientific, well-drawn characters, mathematical, and a truly gripping read. Dangerously engaging in the way that only a truly great novel can affect your sleep cycles. This book, good sir or madam, is for the geek, and a new novel from him is profoundly Stuff That Matters.

I will be hanging out for the new book, and he's got at least one guaranteed customer.

Re:Slashvertisement?

[david.given]

If you want an idea of why Slashdotters enjoy him, check out his (free to read) non-fiction piece In the Beginning was the Command Line.

Also check out Mother Earth, Mother Board, which is a fast-moving, gripping, action packed, 42000 word essay on... the history and practice of submarine cable laying. Really. It's awesome. Read it. (He used bits of it for the background in Cryptonomicon, so if you've read that you may find it a little familiar.)

Herman Hesse - Glass Bead Game

[meehawl]

Many scifi writers have been riffing on Herman Nesse's Glass Bead Game since he published it in the 1940s. See also: Iain Banks' Player of Games (I asked Banks about this directly and he confirmed that GBG was one of his favourite future history books).

Kindle demo

[alphafoo]

I checked out the demo video for the Kindle on Amazon today. About 15 seconds into it, they zoom into the Kindle to show the text on the screen. It's a page from Stephenson's Diamond Age (A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer). Now, Amazon sells many different books, and they could have zoomed in on a page from any one of them, many of which are better books, better known, or better sellers. But they chose Stephenson's, quite possibly because they are trying to associate the Kindle with the Primer from the story.

Re:Kindle demo

[autophile]

The codename for the Kindle was "Fiona", as was the root password. That indicates that they were very much thinking of Diamond Age.

--Rob

Obligatory comment about Neal's romance scenes

[rubycodez]

Gah, what awful stuff. It was like drinking urine

Hush, don't give Neal any ideas for even more revolting sex/romance scenes.

That's the one thing about his novels, the sex/romance scenes will make a normal person want to toss their cookies, or maybe contemplate joining an order with chastity vows. A list of gems and highlights might include sex orgy with pivot gangbang girl reduced to ashes and eaten to get result of computation, or description of guy deprived of sex or masturbation so long everything from his knees to his nipples becomes (in protagonist's mind) a giant sex organ and then he finally relieves himself when his virgin girlfriend impales herself onto his pole with a single extremely painful leap and he immediately ejaculates "a Canadian imperial gallon" (sic) into her, or the King of France getting his hemorrhoids cut off sans anaesthetic while a woman feigns moaning in orgasm so those outside won't know the king is having surgery, or where a guy with syphilis and a half-burned off penis gets his load blown with the kind help of a sympathetic women who wraps bung around her finger and jabs him in the prostate via the anus (at least we can be spared Neal's idea of foreplay).

I could go on about Stephenson sex/romance but I think the point has been made. Stephenson sex is pain. My apologies to those of you of a more sensitive nature who read this and don't have your therapist on speed-dial.

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: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.