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Anathem Kindle Edition

by Neal Stephenson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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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 will determine the future of his world -- as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This audiobook goes the extra mile, giving listeners something the printed page-turner can not. Fans of the cult author will enjoy his vocal cameo appearances when he calmly reads definitions from a non-Earth dictionary at the start of many chapters. Another added bonus is the music between chapters that was composed specifically for this production; working with Stephenson and early drafts of the novel, David Stutz beautifully captures the complex traditional, coded choral music described therein. Moreover, the extras do not obscure the remarkable performance by William Dufris, who reads as if he knows the 900+–page text by heart. The story is told by a monastic scholar, and Dufris—with a twinkle in his proverbial eye and a sense of awe in his voice—is the perfect match. His intelligent rendering of the cast of characters is a delight for the ears. A Morrow hardcover (Reviews, July 28). (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Stephenson has never been an easy writer to pin down, and he has a reputation for not always wearing his erudition lightly. Particularly in his later books—and that now includes Anathem—readers are vetted at the door before being invited into the author’s labyrinthine worlds. The early books were held up alongside the work of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and other cyberpunk gods, though in the last decade Stephenson has carved a niche as one of the most ambitious writers working today in any genre. Anathem is intellectually rigorous and exceedingly complex, even to the point, as the Washington Post avows, of being “grandiose, overwrought and pretty damn dull.” Others complained of too much abstraction. Stephenson’s fans are legion, however, and many will add Anathem to their list of must-read doorstops.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

Review

[R]avishingly brilliant, outrageously ambitious…Stephenson embarks on a mission of world-building, and he is thoroughly successful at it.”

From the Back Cover

For ten years Fraa Erasmas, a young avout, has lived in a cloistered sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside world. 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—and Erasmas will become a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world, as he follows his destiny to the most inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

Anathem is the latest miraculous invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle—a work of astonishing scope, intelligence, and imagination.

About the Author

Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . .Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Anathem

By Neal Stephenson

HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright © 2010 Neal Stephenson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-169494-3
Do your neighbors burn one another alive?” was
how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with
Artisan Flec.
Embarrassment befell me. Embarrassment
is something I can feel in my fl esh, like a hand-
ful of sun- warmed mud clapped on my head.
“Do your shamans walk around on stilts?” Fraa Orolo
asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness,
was at least fi ve centuries old. Then he looked up and added
helpfully, “You might call them pastors or witch doctors.”
The embarrassment had turned runny. It was horrifying
my scalp along a spreading frontier.
“When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifi ce to a
painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?”
Now it was sheeting warm down my face, clogging my
ears and sanding my eyes. I could barely hear Fraa Orolo's
questions: “Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and
cats in some sort of afterlife?”
Orolo had asked me along to serve as amanuensis. It was
an impressive word, so I'd said yes.
He had heard that an artisan from extramuros had been
allowed into the New Library to fi x a rotted rafter that we
could not reach with our ladders; it had only just been no-
ticed, and we didn't have time to erect proper scaffolding
before Apert. Orolo meant to interview that artisan, and he
wanted me to write down what happened.
Through drizzly eyes, I looked at the leaf in front of me.
It was as blank as my brain. I was failing.
But it was more important to take notes of what the arti-
san said. So far, nothing. When the interview had begun,

[4] n e a l stephenson
he had been dragging an insuffi ciently sharp thing over a
fl at rock. Now he was just staring at Orolo.
“Has anyone you know ever been ritually mutilated be-
cause they were seen reading a book?”
Artisan Flec closed his mouth for the fi rst time in quite a
while. I could tell that the next time he opened it, he'd have
something to say. I scratched at the edge of the leaf just to
prove that my quill had not dried up. Fraa Orolo had gone
quiet, and was looking at the artisan as if he were a new-
found nebula in the eyepiece of a telescope.
Artisan Flec asked, “Why don't you just speel in?”
“Speel in,” Fraa Orolo repeated to me, a few times, as I
was writing it down.
I spoke in bursts because I was trying to write and talk
at the same time: “When I came— that is, before I was
Collected— we—I mean, they— had a thing called a
speely . . . We didn't say 'speel in'— we said 'cruise the
speely.' ” Out of consideration for the artisan, I chose to
speak in Fluccish, and so this staggering drunk of a sen-
tence only sounded half as bad as if I'd said it in Orth. “It
was a sort of—”
“Moving picture,” Orolo guessed. He looked to the ar-
tisan, and switched to Fluccish. “We have guessed that
'to speel in' means to partake of some moving picture
praxis— what you would call technology— that prevails
out there.”
“Moving picture, that's a funny way to say it,” said the
artisan. He stared out a window, as if it were a speely
showing a historical documentary. He quivered with a si-
lent laugh.
“It is Praxic Orth and so it sounds quaint to your ears,”
Fraa Orolo admitted.
“Why don't you just call it by its real name?”
“Speeling in?”
“Yeah.”
“Because when Fraa Erasmas, here, came into the math
ten years ago, it was called 'cruising the speely' and when
I came in almost thirty years ago we called it 'Farspark.'
The avout who live on the other side of yonder wall, who

anathem [5]
celebrate Apert only once every hundred years, would
know it by some other name. I would not be able to talk to
them.”
Artisan Flec had not taken in a word after Farspark.
“Farspark is completely different!” he said. “You can't
watch Farspark content on a speely, you have to up- convert
it and re- parse the format. . . .”
Fraa Orolo was as bored by that as the artisan was by
talk of the Hundreders, and so conversation thudded to a
stop long enough for me to scratch it down. My embarrass-
ment had gone away without my noticing it, as with hic-
cups. Artisan Flec, believing that the conversation was
fi nally over, turned to look at the scaffolding that his men
had erected beneath the bad rafter.
“To answer your question,” Fraa Orolo began.
“What question?”
“The one you posed just a minute ago— if I want to know
what things are like extramuros, why don't I just speel in?”
“Oh,” said the artisan, a little confounded by the length
of Fra Orolo's attention span. I suffer from attention sur-
plus disorder, Fraa Orolo liked to say, as if it were funny.
“First of all,” Fraa Orolo said, “we don't have a speely-
device.”
“Speely- device?”
Waving his hand as if this would dispel clouds of lin-
guistic confusion, Orolo said, “What ever artifact you use
to speel in.”
“If you have an old Farspark resonator, I could bring you
a down- converter that's been sitting in my junk pile—”
“We don't have a Farspark resonator either,” said Fraa
Orolo.
“Why don't you just buy one?”
This gave Orolo pause. I could sense a new set of embar-
rassing questions stacking up in his mind: “do you believe
that we have money? That the reason we are protected by
the Sæcular Power is because we are sitting on a trea sure
hoard? That our Millenarians know how to convert base
metals to gold?” But Fraa Orolo mastered the urge. “Liv-
ing as we do under the
(Continues...)Excerpted from Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Copyright © 2010 Neal Stephenson. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

From AudioFile

In a sanctuary in another universe, scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians are protected from the outside world. The parallels to a cloister are accentuated by the music introducing each chapter, which is reminiscent of Gregorian chant--but different. Similarly, this world is like Earth, and the culture is like Western culture on Earth--but different. A lover of wordplay, Stephenson precedes each chapter with a definition, which he reads. This book is not for the faint of heart, but William Dufris and the rest of the cast make the audiobook a good option. Dufris is stalwart in his engagement with the characters, the plot, and the development of the cosmology. He brings out the characters' personalities and creates a sense of wonder as the complexities unfold. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0015DPXKI
Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; Reissue edition (August 26, 2008)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 26, 2008
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1758 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 1083 pages

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Neal Stephenson

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Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer, known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system.

Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum) Stephenson came from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs "propeller heads". His father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1960 and then to Ames, Iowa in 1966 where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson furthered his studies at Boston University. He first specialized in physics, then switched to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in Geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.

Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic "The Baroque Cycle" (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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Thaddeus G. Blanchette

A review for Stephenson fans who are leery about this book...

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2009

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I feel compelled to write a review of Neal Stephenson's latest work, Anathem, because quite simply it is one of the best, most eye-opening books I've read in the last five years.

Now, this qualification comes with some qualifications of its own.

First of all, if you're the average kind of guy with a short attention span, who gets angry when internet discussions get side-tracked by people who're talking about something you don't understand, then this book is not for you. If you've read and enjoyed Neal's other work, but wish he'd just get on with telling the story instead of providing the reader with endless descriptions of, say, the techniques involved in breakfast cereal degustation, then this book's not for you.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy Stephenson's insights into western history, culture and philosophy - especially rational, scientific philosophy - then you'll want this book in your suitcase on your next holiday to wherever it is you go to read Fun Stuff.

I feel compelled to point out that it is not necessary to have a deep background in math or science to read this book, as some reviewers have claimed. Frankly, it was these claims (by people who otherwise enjoyed the book) which put me off of reading Anathem and made ultimately buying it a bit of a shot in the dark for me, even though I'm a rabid Stephenson fan. What I feared were long discourses on, say, numbers theory and the like which I would not be able to follow at all.

I'm happy to say that this is not the case.

I'm a social scientist with a nodding acquaintence with philosophy - enough that I could probably identify one out of every five philosophers that Stephenson uses in the book. And that's not much. I mean, I'm savvy enough that when Stephenson talks about "Gardan's Steelyard", I understand that he's referencing what our world calls "Occam's Razor". I know that the "Protans" are probably stand-ins for our world's "Proteans". But that's really about it: the level of knowledge anyone who had to sleep through a freshman "philosophy of science" course should have. As a social scientist, however, my math skills don't go beyond what was required to get me through my sophmore "Statistics for Sociologists" course and of physics, I know next to nothing, having dropped that as a senior in high school.

But I was still able to read this book quite easily and with great interest. In fact, I think it would serve as a fun primer for one of those freshman-level philosophy of science courses. It's certainly made me want to read more of Stephenson's sources.

So if you've been holding off reading Anathem because you were afraid of the depth of the material, I'd say give it a shot. A simple undergrad university-level education should be more than enough for you to get through this and to enjoy the journey.

One thing I should add, however, which pleasantly surprised me, is Stephenson's continuing maturation as a writer. In Anathem, the "worst" of those long "side tracks" which Stephenson so loves to engage in are sequestered off as seperate appendixes which can be read if, as and when the reader feels up to them. They reward attentive reading, but are dry enough to pose huge stumbling blocks to the story. By shunting them off to the appendixes, Stephenson has made the book much more accessible and enjoyable to the average reader without depriving the rest of us of the übernerdity which we so enjoy in Neal's work.

This was a very good and mature decision of the writer - or his editor - and should be applauded.

Also, this is the first Stephenson book which I've ever read that has a coherent sense of closure - obviously something Neal really worked at bringing about, given the book's last sentence. Normally, this man's books are a bit like roller coasters: one reads them not because of where they lead, but because of the thrills along the way. Anathem, however, comes to a logical and satisfying ending with all loose ends nicely tied up except for those upon which reasonable and rational sequels might normally be hung. Again, this strikes me as a definite advance for Stephenson in terms of his writing skills.

All in all, Anathem is a great book - perhaps a real science fiction classic on the level of LeGuin's "Dispossessed" or Asimov's "I, Robot". If you like Neal's work and haven't read it yet, or simply enjoy well-thought out and rigorously researched science fiction, pick it up now!

26 people found this helpful

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Josh Mauthe

It's not for all tastes, but for those into it, it's surprisingly compelling and deeply thoughtful

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2024

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Somehow I had gotten into my head that Anathem was a bit of a return to tighter, more adventure-driven storytelling for Neal Stephenson, who had started to embrace massive book lengths and endless (if fascinating!) digressions and discursions by this point in his career. But it didn't take me long to realize that, if anything, this was Stephenson going further than he'd ever gone before, tossing us into an alien world (quite similar to Earth, but definitively not) with 4000 years of history, a slew of new words, religious orders dedicated to the relationship between humanity and Platonic ideals, contemplation about the relationship between quantum physics and alternate realities - and none of that is even the plot of the book. Anathem is about as far from a casual read as you can get; a huge chunk of the book is dedicated to Socratic seminar-style discussions of these complex philosophical ideas about perceptions, where ideas come from, the nature of language, and so forth, and in no way is Stephenson interested in dumbing down these debates for a general audience; these are heady, difficult questions, and they're depicted in complex dialogues that find him making an effort to making them understandable while also doing them justice. That's not to say that those ideas don't tie into the main story of the book, which revolves around a member of a religious order (not in a Christian sense of "religious," mind you; almost more of a world where math and science have become a religion, in some ways) who starts to suspect that intrigue in his order might tie into larger happenings around the world. But Stephenson takes his time unspooling that thread, letting his characters talk and debate for massive lengths of time, counting on the reader to be fascinated by listening to characters speak intelligently about complex fare. By and large, it works; I would never consider Anathem a page-turner, and I definitely can't help but feel that there's a very different book in here where a lot of the philosophical digressions are trimmed and cut, allowing the compelling story to work on its own terms. And yet, I found myself pretty compelled by it all, immersed in its debates about how we see the world and where information comes from, and as I started to see how it connected to Stephenson's larger story, I could see the shape of the book as a whole. The result isn't exactly an easy read, nor is it one for all audiences; it's intensely heady stuff, to the point where some of the wild events of the story (including martial arts-wielding monks, nuclear weapons, court intrigue, parallel universes, and the possibility that there's something in the sky that no one wants anyone to know about) almost takes a backseat to debates about whether ideas come from our brains or if there are universal forces we tie into. I can't say that I loved Anathem, but it's a wholly remarkable book, and one that's not really like anything else I've ever read; I found myself drawn into it, and while I can't help but wish it was cut back a bit, I also found its love of complex ideas and concepts intoxicating and wonderful in an era where we almost always favor the most bland and easy ideas possible.

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Amazon Customer

Amazing story

Reviewed in Canada on March 7, 2023

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I was obsessed with this book for weeks after I finished it. Definitely my favorite Neal Stephenson book.

Alan Willmott

A work of incedible thought

Reviewed in Germany on January 31, 2024

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Stephenson has created an existence different from ours that is markedly similar in parts.

The book takes you through discussions and ideas that are realised on a massive scale.

And it is also a page-turner; go for it!

Carlos Lopez

totalmente Stephenson

Reviewed in Mexico on July 19, 2019

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este debe ser el libro mas denso que he leido de Neal, el inicio un poco pesado, pero poco a poco vas metiendote en este nuevo mundo que creo y no puede soltarlo. Si eres fan de las invenciones de Terry Pratchet y quieres algo en ese estilo pero serio recomiendo ampliamente este libro

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Wilton Barbosa

Genial

Reviewed in Brazil on October 21, 2017

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Como toda distopia, apresenta semelhanças com nossa realidade que não são meras coincidências. Não apenas apresenta uma história do pensamento análoga à nossa, como mostra o quanto os donos do poder tratam de limitar a atuação dos intelectuais na sociedade, seja encerrando-os em suas torres de marfim, seja manipulando a maneira como as pessoas ordinárias os enxergam.

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Jon Morgan

A great story set in a fascinating world

Reviewed in Australia on October 23, 2016

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Simply put, I loved this book. It was full of unexpected twists as the author slowly built a picture of a complex world with similarities and differences to our own, and of the world-changing events now happening in that world.
So, what is the book?
Is it an action thriller?
A religious text?
A mathematical textbook?
A philospher's handbook?
A journey of discovery / coming of age?
An excuse for the author to build many plays on words (both good and bad)?

It contains all those things, but I'm not sure that any of them really define it. Perhaps the "journey of discovery" part appeals to me most, as it helps the author to slowly build up a picture of a world like ours, but at the same time not. I also particularly liked the reimagining of maths and science in a religious setting and competing with other religions. Many think the book is too long, but I'll give the author this: the most random parts of the book, parts that you think "why is this here? Where is it going?" do turn out important to the plot. All in all, a great read.

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Anathem

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