Anathem
2008
- monasteries
- philosophy
- science fiction & fantasy
- fiction
- science fiction
- life on other planets
- mathematics
- disasters
- long now manual for civilization
- fiction, historical
The story
Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable — yet strangely inverted — world.Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside — the Extramuros — for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates — at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros — a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose — as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that w
What it’s like
Dense, ornate prose that alternates between cloistered calm and sudden jolts of speculative wonder, with the texture of a hand-annotated manuscript: long digressive passages on mathematics and philosophy, invented vocabulary that gradually becomes familiar, and a voice that is wry and bookish rather than breathless. The sensory world is built through ritual and architecture, stone corridors, bells marking time, scholarly argument over long meals and candlelit rooms, then opened up by wide, sun-struck landscapes and the strangeness of a world beyond the walls. Its pace is unhurried for most of its length, with the momentum gathering in a final act of rising stakes. Vibe: contemplative, intellectually playful, faintly melancholy. It suits a long rainy weekend, slow reading with a notebook at hand, or a stretch of quiet evenings where the reader wants to be immersed in a self-contained world of ideas. Violence occurs in historical and climactic episodes and is handled with some weight, though it is not the book's emphasis. For readers who enjoy monastic settings, philosophical debate, and big-idea science fiction that rewards patience.
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