Done: The Song (Anathem) is Over.

An incredibly long-winded sic-fi (I refuse to use speculative fiction). At least 40-60% of the exposition could have been deleted outright if not compressed severely. He owes a lot to Zelazny, Dick, Asimov, Gibson, and Clarke. The alternate world/reality with a mythic/science spin was entertaining to some degree, but too much time was spent explaining pretty much everything. The long description of the alien spacecrafts wiring system for example.  If I wanted a Socratic dialogue on Plato's Ideals then I would have read Plato. The narrative was engaging but not enough to keep me from yawning during the explanations of alternate co-current narratives.

Plate 'o Triangles

Still slogging through Stephenson's tome. Some times I feel as if I have been sentenced like Erasmus to copy the book, and eventually I will go mad, or perhaps gather wisdom like Jad. I am 400 pages into Anathem. The story proper began around page 200. Lots of set up, I hope it pays off. There is a lot of Plato, specifically the Timaeus, at least what I can remember from my Philosophy of the Middle Ages class I took as an undergrad. the Ideal world, the world we sense, the world contained by God. I remember drawing diagrams of triangles within triangles for the mid-term in that class. I suppose I could go look it up, but I know I'm not going to do that, instead I'll just rely on my  idea of the ideal of the book (Timaeus) that I can glean from the "speculative" fiction of Anathem. But as the characters in Anathem have said, there are no new ideas. But then there wouldn't be in an infinite number of universes; all ideas would exist if all possible permutations of "worlds" existed. I think the Amber Chronicles played with this idea in a more succinct manner.  I guess I aut to be going now.

Bitchin'

Considering I have only read around 25 pages, these comments should be taken with massive qualifiers.

I wonder at the “speculative” fiction claim. Isn’t all fiction speculative? Is there some kind of pejorative connotations associated with sci-fi or fantasy (both of which I see this text being), which the author does not want to be associated with?  

I also question books when they come with a condescending introductory explanation for those readers who are not accustomed/willing/capable of “puzzling out works on your own.”  Does the writer, from the start, assume his readers are ignorant and lazy?  Or perhaps he is so enmeshed in his speculative world that he thinks “Earth readers” (? who else?) cannot fathom the arcane language of Orth? Is there a purpose behind the other world’s language taking such a prominent position in the telling of the story? I hope so, since so much space in the text is devoted to using the discourse of this world. Perhaps he is intentionally using the screen of language to hide behind to instill in the reader a sense of ignorance, or levels of knowing, or inability to see or know as well as others, which seems to be one of the themes emerging from the first few pages what with all the places to hide and move and screens through which they are all looking and seeing each other. 

I know I am impatient and arrogant, but I am not sure I am willing to move through the mechanics of this book in order to see the movements of the clockwork so that I will know “how to read it” (p.20); so I can understand the “spotty recapitulation of our history, reminding us how we’d come to know all that we knew.” (p. 20)

Ok, enough bitching, back to Anathem, perhaps the millennium gate will open and allow me into this text.