Anathem

Subtitle: I still let my geek flag fly.

On a world that is not Earth, in a time that is not now, Neal Stephenson explores the divisions within society, faith, science, and the space in between. Anathem, his newest novel, will be as influential on the future of speculative fiction, as Snow Crash was for the Cyberpunk genre.

This is not a book for the faint of heart. At somewhere over 900 pages, the length is typical of most of Stephenson's novels, however, the challenge is not in the length but in the depth. The first few chapters are slow going. The author gives us a new vocabulary, new relationships, and new concepts to grapple with. There are helpful dictionary excerpts at the chapter heads, with others as placeholders within the text that help nudge the reader along. This language is the first barrier to cross, even as the story speaks of barriers being dropped. Don't be discouraged - if you can cross the divide between Saecular and Avout, you'll find yourself immersed in a world both strange and familiar.

Imagine a world where all scientists, mathematicians, theorists, and philosophers, collectively known as Avout, are secluded in monastic institutions, called concents, scattered all over the world. Each concent is named for a particular Saunt who made great discoveries in his or her field and inspired others to form an Order to advance that particular theory. As paralleled in monastic traditions, they call each other fraa and suur and spend their lives devoted to study in their chosen Order. They leave behind the saecular world (much like American/Western society) and live their lives in austerity, forbidden to access technology, enclosed behind a gate that only opens to the extramuros based on a set period of time. These periodic gate openings, called Aperts, define the maths, which are collections of people under different terms of service to the concent. Unarian gates open every year, Decenarians, every ten, Centenarians every hundred, and Millenarians, every thousand years. Each concent is centered around a clock that keeps time on a millennial scale, and the great gears of the clock are the mechanism that opens each gate of the math on its appointed year. Our narrator is a Decenarian named fraa Erasmus, living at the concent of Saunt Edhar, and we meet him in the days before his Apert, when he will rejoin the Saecular world for ten days after being secluded for a decade.

Are you still with me? Yeah, it took me about three days to read the first three chapters. The book has a handy glossary in the back, which was a big help. After the first few chapters, I got the hang of inferring meaning from context, and realized that most of the words had Latin roots that made sense once I figured it out. I was amazed at Stephenson's word craft. These words make sense, once I figured out that, for example, fraa and suur were based on the Latin frater and soror - brother and sister. Apert was a form of aperture, concent was convent, or perhaps, a shortened form of concentration camp...

The plot is wildly imaginative but perfectly plausible, and pulled me into the world of Arbre just as the protagonist is pulled into a world and a situation he finds equally as strange. Woven in between the Socratic theoretic dialogues is a fantastic adventure that leaves no epic stone unturned. Honor, love, redemption, mystery, martial arts, conspiracy and betrayal are there in spades. Stephenson, in the grand tradition of SF writers, also manages to sharply satirize the western world, and warn us of what possible futures await if we continue down path-X.

This book is dense with theoretical arguments, heavy science and philosophy, and examinations of topics ranging from Plato's allegory of the cave to the farthest reaches of quantum mechanics. Many of the Saunts mentioned in the book correlate with great thinkers we are familiar with, like Plato, Godel, and Descartes. Occam's Razor becomes Gardan's Steelyard, a Faraday cage becomes Bucker's Basket, and so on. I will admit that my eyes glazed over and I skimmed many pages of debates between characters defending their particular corner of scientific turf. It did spark my brain to play "guess the Saunt" from time to time. I tend to experience the same effect after reading any of Stephenson's novels -- my brain was considerably larger when I finally read the last appendix, and closed the cover.

This one is a keeper. I will likely re-read it once my brain has had a chance to settle after being so vigorously stirred. That apert should open in about, oh, ten years.