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Stephenson, Neal. Anathem. New York: Harper Collins, 2008.
I absolutely loved this book. Let me also say, the fact that this book did not win the Hugo Award is all the proof that anyone - even the most dyed-in-the-wool old-school SF fan - needs to know that the Hugo Awards are completely and totally irrelevant (except when they aren't).
Having said all that, let me also make it clear that, as much as I love Stephenson, I am well aware that he is not without serious problems, some of which will be addressed later in this post. I have not yet read the techno-Orientalist fest that is The Diamond Age, and you couldn't pay me to touch The Mongoliad with a ten-foot pole. I really loved The Baroque Trilogy, though.
So, Anathem. The book follows about a year in the life of the young avout Erasmas, who is a Ten-Year member of an outpost of the order in his world that concentrates all its thinkers into one governed body consisting of people who take vows to emerge once a year, once every ten years, once every thousand years, or once ever millennium. Erasmas' tale begins in the year 3689 in which this Rule was re-established, but by the end of his tale, everything in his world, and also beyond it, has changed.
There's not much I can say specifically about this book outside of a spoiler cut, but let me say what I can. First of all, I am developing a theory that the very best science fiction makes you reconsider the world around you as you are reading it, and this is the first book in a while that I've read that does that (another one being Mira Grant's Feed, also a Hugo nominee). The intellectuals of Arbre live in convents away from the world and don't miss what they don't have, and their uncaring attitude towards the fluctuations of the Sæcular Power made me reconsider my own stance toward all of that. It's closer than one might think; indeed, I realized as I read that if someone offered me what we might term Cartas' Choice - the intellectual life away from the world, or a non-intellectual life within it - I would make that deal. I've already made that deal in some ways, and no, I don't regret it. And the fact that Arbre is so advanced, in some respects, technologically and intellectually, must be attributable to the fact that its intellectuals are free to spend all their time thinking. And because the book does reflect our world in those respects, it does make you think really hard not only about the relations between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, but also about certain uncomfortable technological truths, such as the fact that digital formats decay but vellum and parchment and papyrus last for millennia, and also for the fact that with the LHC and similar devices we are actually coming up against the hard limits of what we can actually prove with devices. Barring a paradigm-altering advance in propulsion technology (i.e. FTL travel), we will eventually find ourselves up on crags like the Thousander avout, waiting for a very slow series of data to come back to us via telescopes.
I realized, as I got to the end of the book, that part of the point of all the philosophical dialogues was to teach readers how to understand the plot developments and eventual denouement, and Stephenson, as usual, does a masterful job - I've never read anyone who's better at explaining complicated scientific, theoretical, and philosophical ideas. In particular, this book depends on some fairly advanced quantum mechanics, including the idea of the multiverse (or as they say in this book, the polycosm), and…it's brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. The other thing is that as far as I can tell, none of the quantum mechanics and philosophy in Stevenson's concepts are wrong, even if most of them are derived from untested theories. ( SF and the life of the mind (spoilers) )
( Critiques )
( Nobody can quite get over Star Trek )
I suspect I have made it sound as if the plot is somewhat secondary, but one of the marvels of this novel is how primary its plot is, and how much the plot advances by ideas being worked out and worked on. I also marvel consistently at Stephenson's ability to introduce seemingly innocuous throwaway details that then turn out to be central to the plot. It's The Name of the Rose crossed with Gene Wolfe, in some ways, and it's amazing.
I was going to end it here, and then I started reading the Acknowledgements (which have book-ruining spoilers, so don't read them if you haven't finished the book), and then I realized that I wanted to talk about some of the actual ideas of the book, too.
In the first place, the idea that the human brain uses quantum effects to do some of what it does - Stephenson remarks that "this has been so controversial that I have found it impossible to have a dispassionate conversation about it with any learned person" - I don't actually find all that terribly controversial, or at least, not implausible as a theory. What makes me suspicious of the idea is that it seems to give humans and our brains a very significant edge over every other species in a way that seems very anthropocentric. Still, in the absence of further evidence, it does make for an interesting idea.
The convergence between mathematics, physics, logic, and philosophy that began in the 20thC is exciting to me as someone who is interested in ideas and in understanding what we know about the world, but also means that I am beyond the core competencies of my education thus far and must rely on the work of others to explain a lot of the things that Stephenson mentions in his acknowledgments. Let me just say that I find the idea of computational metaphysics to be highly intriguing, and that I don't actually have any objection to the mathematical Platonism espoused in the novel. The problem with Platonism is when it tries to go beyond maths and geometry, in my opinion; for more on this, see The Republic, which for my money is still one of the most terrifying dystopias ever described in writing.
That said, however, I do want to lodge one final objection against the stark depiction of the Procians vs. Halikaarnian split, aka the Rhetors and the Incanters, aka the Continental and the British schools of 20thC philosophy. That the Procians are the social scientists of their world is tipped off by Raz's description of the two groups to Cord thus: "One sort of glib explanation I heard once was that Rhetors could change the past, and were glad to do it, but Incanters could change the future--and were reluctant" (103). The Procians come off very badly throughout the narrative in a way that doesn't entirely surprise me. But. We do have our uses, even though in this world I'd probably be up with Orolo at the starhenge doing cosmography too.
I absolutely loved this book. Let me also say, the fact that this book did not win the Hugo Award is all the proof that anyone - even the most dyed-in-the-wool old-school SF fan - needs to know that the Hugo Awards are completely and totally irrelevant (except when they aren't).
Having said all that, let me also make it clear that, as much as I love Stephenson, I am well aware that he is not without serious problems, some of which will be addressed later in this post. I have not yet read the techno-Orientalist fest that is The Diamond Age, and you couldn't pay me to touch The Mongoliad with a ten-foot pole. I really loved The Baroque Trilogy, though.
So, Anathem. The book follows about a year in the life of the young avout Erasmas, who is a Ten-Year member of an outpost of the order in his world that concentrates all its thinkers into one governed body consisting of people who take vows to emerge once a year, once every ten years, once every thousand years, or once ever millennium. Erasmas' tale begins in the year 3689 in which this Rule was re-established, but by the end of his tale, everything in his world, and also beyond it, has changed.
There's not much I can say specifically about this book outside of a spoiler cut, but let me say what I can. First of all, I am developing a theory that the very best science fiction makes you reconsider the world around you as you are reading it, and this is the first book in a while that I've read that does that (another one being Mira Grant's Feed, also a Hugo nominee). The intellectuals of Arbre live in convents away from the world and don't miss what they don't have, and their uncaring attitude towards the fluctuations of the Sæcular Power made me reconsider my own stance toward all of that. It's closer than one might think; indeed, I realized as I read that if someone offered me what we might term Cartas' Choice - the intellectual life away from the world, or a non-intellectual life within it - I would make that deal. I've already made that deal in some ways, and no, I don't regret it. And the fact that Arbre is so advanced, in some respects, technologically and intellectually, must be attributable to the fact that its intellectuals are free to spend all their time thinking. And because the book does reflect our world in those respects, it does make you think really hard not only about the relations between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, but also about certain uncomfortable technological truths, such as the fact that digital formats decay but vellum and parchment and papyrus last for millennia, and also for the fact that with the LHC and similar devices we are actually coming up against the hard limits of what we can actually prove with devices. Barring a paradigm-altering advance in propulsion technology (i.e. FTL travel), we will eventually find ourselves up on crags like the Thousander avout, waiting for a very slow series of data to come back to us via telescopes.
I realized, as I got to the end of the book, that part of the point of all the philosophical dialogues was to teach readers how to understand the plot developments and eventual denouement, and Stephenson, as usual, does a masterful job - I've never read anyone who's better at explaining complicated scientific, theoretical, and philosophical ideas. In particular, this book depends on some fairly advanced quantum mechanics, including the idea of the multiverse (or as they say in this book, the polycosm), and…it's brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. The other thing is that as far as I can tell, none of the quantum mechanics and philosophy in Stevenson's concepts are wrong, even if most of them are derived from untested theories. ( SF and the life of the mind (spoilers) )
( Critiques )
( Nobody can quite get over Star Trek )
I suspect I have made it sound as if the plot is somewhat secondary, but one of the marvels of this novel is how primary its plot is, and how much the plot advances by ideas being worked out and worked on. I also marvel consistently at Stephenson's ability to introduce seemingly innocuous throwaway details that then turn out to be central to the plot. It's The Name of the Rose crossed with Gene Wolfe, in some ways, and it's amazing.
I was going to end it here, and then I started reading the Acknowledgements (which have book-ruining spoilers, so don't read them if you haven't finished the book), and then I realized that I wanted to talk about some of the actual ideas of the book, too.
In the first place, the idea that the human brain uses quantum effects to do some of what it does - Stephenson remarks that "this has been so controversial that I have found it impossible to have a dispassionate conversation about it with any learned person" - I don't actually find all that terribly controversial, or at least, not implausible as a theory. What makes me suspicious of the idea is that it seems to give humans and our brains a very significant edge over every other species in a way that seems very anthropocentric. Still, in the absence of further evidence, it does make for an interesting idea.
The convergence between mathematics, physics, logic, and philosophy that began in the 20thC is exciting to me as someone who is interested in ideas and in understanding what we know about the world, but also means that I am beyond the core competencies of my education thus far and must rely on the work of others to explain a lot of the things that Stephenson mentions in his acknowledgments. Let me just say that I find the idea of computational metaphysics to be highly intriguing, and that I don't actually have any objection to the mathematical Platonism espoused in the novel. The problem with Platonism is when it tries to go beyond maths and geometry, in my opinion; for more on this, see The Republic, which for my money is still one of the most terrifying dystopias ever described in writing.
That said, however, I do want to lodge one final objection against the stark depiction of the Procians vs. Halikaarnian split, aka the Rhetors and the Incanters, aka the Continental and the British schools of 20thC philosophy. That the Procians are the social scientists of their world is tipped off by Raz's description of the two groups to Cord thus: "One sort of glib explanation I heard once was that Rhetors could change the past, and were glad to do it, but Incanters could change the future--and were reluctant" (103). The Procians come off very badly throughout the narrative in a way that doesn't entirely surprise me. But. We do have our uses, even though in this world I'd probably be up with Orolo at the starhenge doing cosmography too.