Anathem

A science fiction tale couched in the language of a novel study of academia, Anathem by Neal Stephenson describes a world in which monk-like academicians ensconce themselves away in “maths” which shut their doors to the world for a day, a year, a decade, a century, or a millennium. 

A marvelous vision on what it means to study something, to understand it, and, thus to see the world from a different perspective.

Anathem is one of my favorite Stephenson novels, full of “big ideas” about post-apocalyptic academia. Like Station Eleven, this post-apocalypse story is not a Mad Max story about the dissolution of the institutions that hold society together returning us to a time where life is “nasty, brutish and short,” but instead, it is about sometime later, when institutions have had time to rebuild. As an academic myself, Stephenson’s story of an alternative academia is an illuminating funhouse mirror into my world, and the strange ways we as a society construct knowledge.

Anathem is remarkable for having a gripping plot and fantastic, epic-fantasy-grade worldbuilding, while uncompromisingly exploring philosophical questions ranging from Platonic Idealism to string theory, to phenomenology, and much else. It’s rare for a novel to be so entertaining without sacrificing its intellectual commitments. At times, it reads like a giant love letter to philosophy. It was a joy for me to find endless references to the history of philosophy and science, often in the guise of alternate-universe versions of the relevant philosophers, with different names and histories, but enough that is familiar to make the informed reader point at the… show more.