Neal Stephenson

Anathem

Arts & Letters, Best Entries, Neal Stephenson / /

I finished Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Anathem, a few weeks back. Overall, I enjoyed it heartily. I don’t think it’s his best work (a distinction that still belongs to Cryptonomicon or maybe Snow Crash), but it’s way above anything I’ve read recently. It’s a dense novel filled with interesting and complex ideas, but I had no problem keeping up once I got started. This is no small feat in a book that is around 900 pages long.

On the other hand, my somewhat recent discussion with Alex regarding the ills of Cryptonomicon has lead me to believe that perhaps the reason I like Neal Stephenson’s novels so much is that he tunes into the same geeky frequencies I do. I think Shamus hit the nail on the head with this statement:

In fact, I have yet to introduce anyone to the book and have them like it. I’m slowly coming to the realization that Cryptonomicon is not a book for normal people. Flaws aside, there are wonderful parts to this book. The problem is, you have to really love math, history, and programming to derive enjoyment from them. You have to be odd in just the right way to love the book. Otherwise the thing is a bunch of wanking.

Similarly, Anathem is not a book for normal people. If you have any interest in Philosophy and/or Quantum Physics, this is the book for you. Otherwise, you might find it a bit dry… but you don’t need to be in love with those subjects to enjoy the book. You just need to find it interesting. I, for one, don’t know much about Quantum Physics at all, and I haven’t read any (real) Philosophy since college, and I didn’t have any problems. In fact, I was pretty much glued to the book the whole time. One of the reasons I could tell I loved this book was that I wasn’t really aware of what page I was on until I neared the end (at which point dealing with the physicality of the book itself make it pretty obvious how much was left).

Minor spoilers ahead, though I try to keep this to a minimum.

The story takes place on another planet named Arbre and is told in first person by a young man named Erasmus. Right away, this yields the interesting effect of negating the multi-threaded stories of most of Stephenson’s other novels and providing a somewhat more linear progression of the story (at least, until you get towards the end of the novel, when the linearity becomes dubious… but I digress). Erasmus, who is called Raz by his friends, is an Avout – someone who has taken certain vows to concentrate on studies of science, history and philosophy. The Avout are cloistered in areas called Concents, which is kind of like a monastary except the focus of the Avout is centered around scholarship and not religion. Concents are isolated from the rest of the world (the area beyond a Concent’s walls is referred to as Extramuros or the Saecular World), but there are certain periods in which the gates open and the Avout mix with the Saecular world (these periods are called Apert). Each concent is split up into smaller Maths, which are categorized by the number of years which lapse between each Apert.

Each type of Math has interesting characteristics. Unarian maths have Apert every year, and are apparently a common way to achieve higher education before getting a job in the Saecular world (kinda like college or maybe grad-school). Decenarian maths have Apert once every ten years. Raz and most of the characters in the story are “tenners.” Centenarian maths have Apert once every century (and are referred to as hundreders) and Millenarian maths have Apert once every thousand years (and are called thousanders).

I suppose after reading the last two paragraphs, you’ll notice that Stephenson has spent a fair amount of time devising new words and concepts for his alien planet. At first, this seems a bit odd and it might take some getting used to, but after the first 50-100 pages, it’s pretty easy to keep up with all the new history and terminology. There’s a glossary in the back of the book for reference, but I honestly didn’t find that I needed it very often (at least, not the way I did while reading Dune, for instance). Much has been made of Stephenson’s choice in this matter, as well as his choice to set the story on an alien planet that has a history that is roughly analogous to Earth’s history. Indeed, it seems like there is a one-to-one relationship between many historical figures and concepts on Arbre and Earth. Take, for instance, Protas:

Protas, the greatest fid of Thelenes, had climbed to the top of a mountain near Ethras and looked down upon the plain that nourished the city-state and observed the shadows of the clouds, and compared their shapes. He had had his famous upsight that while the shapes of the shadows undeniably answered to those of the clouds, the latter were infinitely more complex and more perfectly realized than the former, which were distorted not only by the loss of a spatial dimension but also by being projected onto terrain that was of irregular shape. Hiking back down, he had extended that upsight by noting that the mountain seemed to have a different shape every time he turned round to look back at it, even though he knew it had one absolute form and that these seeming changes were mere figments of his shifting point of view. From there, he had moved on to his greatest upsight of all, which was that these two observations – the one concerning the clouds, the other concerning the mountain – were themselves both shadows cast into his mind by the same greater, unifying idea. (page 84)

Protas is clearly an analog to Plato (and thus, Thelenes is similar to Socrates) and the concepts described above run parallel to Plato’s concept of the Ideal (even going so far as to talk about shadows and the like, calling to mind Plato’s metaphor of the cave). There are literally dozens of these types of relationships in the book. Adrakhones is analogous to Pythagoras, Gardan’s Steelyard is similar to Occam’s Razor, and so on. Personally, I rather enjoyed picking up on these similarities, but the referential nature of the setting might seem rather indulgent on Stephenson’s part (at least, it might seem so to someone who hasn’t read the book). I even speculated as much while I was reading the book, but as a reader noted in the comments to my post, that’s not all there is to it. It turns out that Stephenson’s choice to set the story on Arbre, a planet that has a history suspiciously similar to Earth, was not an indulgence at all. Indeed, it becomes clear later in the book that these similarities are actually vital to the story being told.

This sort of thing represents a sorta meta-theme of the book. Where Cryptonomicon is filled with little anecdotes and tangents that are somewhat related to the story, Anathem is tighter. Concepts that are seemingly tangential and irrelevant wind up playing an important role later in the book. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly a few tangents or anecdotes that are just that, but despite the 900+ page length of the book, Stephenson does a reasonably good job juggling ideas, most of which end up being important later in the book.

The first couple hundred pages of the novel take place within a Concent, and thus you get a pretty good idea of what life is like for the Avout. It’s always been clear that Stephenson appreciates the opportunity to concentrate on something without having any interruptions. His old website quoted former Microsoft employee Linda Stone’s concept of “continuous partial attention,” which is something most people are familiar with these days. Cell phones, emails, Blackberries/iPhones, TV, and even the internet are all pieces of technology which allow us to split our attention and multi-task, but at the same time, such technology also serves to make it difficult to find a few uninterrupted hours with which to delve into something. Well, in a Concent, the Avout have no such distractions. They lead a somewhat regimented, simple life with few belongings and spend most of their time thinking, talking, building and writing. Much of their time is spent in Socratic dialogue with one another. At first, this seems rather odd, but it’s clear that these people are first rate thinkers. And while philosophical discussions can sometimes be a bit dry, Stephenson does his best to liven up the proceedings. Take, for example, this dialogue between Raz and his mentor, Orolo:

“Describe worrying,” he went on.

“What!?”

“Pretend I’m someone who has never worried. I’m mystified. I don’t get it. Tell me how to worry.”

“Well… I guess the first step is to envision a sequence of events as they might play out in the future.”

“But I do that all the time. And yet I don’t worry.”

“It is a sequence of events with a bad end.”

“So, you’re worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?”

“No,” I said with a nervous chuckle.

“I don’t get it,” Orolo claimed, deadpan. “That is a sequence of events with a bad end.”

“But it’s nonsensical. There are no nerve-gas-farting pink dragons.”

“Fine,” he said, “a blue one, then.” (page 198)

And this goes on for a few pages as well. Incidentally, this is also an example of one of those things that seems like it’s an irrelevant tangent, but returns later in the story.

So the Avout are a patient bunch, willing to put in hundreds of years of study to figure out something you or I might find trivial. I was reminded of the great unglamourous march of technology, only amplified. Take, for instance, these guys:

Bunjo was a Millenarian math built around an empty salt mine two miles underground. Its fraas and suurs worked in shifts, sitting in total darkness waiting to see flashes of light from a vast array of crystalline particle detectors. Every thousand years they published their results. During the First Millenium they were pretty sure they had seen flashes on three separate occasions, but since then they had come up empty. (page 262)

As you might imagine, there is some tension between the Saecular world and the Avout. Indeed, there have been several “sacks” of the various Concents. This happens when the Saecular world gets freaked out by something the Avout are working on and attacks them. However, at the time of the novel, things are relatively calm. Total isolation is not possible, so there are Hierarchs from the Avout who keep in touch with the Saecular world, and thus when the Saecular world comes across a particularly daunting problem or crisis, they can call on the Avout to provide some experts for guidance. Anathem tells the story of one such problem (let’s say they are faced with an external threat), and it leads to an unprecedented gathering of Avout outside of their concents.

I realize that I’ve spent almost 2000 words without describing the story in anything but a vague way, but I’m hesitant to give away too much of the story. However, I will mention that the book is not all philosophical dithering and epic worldbuilding. There are martial artists (who are Avout from a Concent known as the Ringing Vale, which just sounds right), cross-continental survival treks, and even some space travel. All of this is mixed together well, and I while I wouldn’t characterise the novel as an action story, there’s more than enough there to keep things moving. In fact, I don’t want to give the impression that the story takes a back seat at any point during the novel. Most of the world building I’ve mentioned is something that comes through incidentally in the telling of the story. There are certainly “info-dumps” from time to time, but even those are generally told within the framework of the story.

There are quite a few characters in the novel (as you might expect, when you consider its length), but the main ones are reasonably well defined and interesting. Erasmus turns out to be a typical Stephensonian character – a very smart man who is constantly thrust into feuds between geniuses (i.e. a Randy/Daniel Waterhouse type). As such, he is a likeable fellow who is easy to relate to and empathize with. He has several Avout friends, each of whom plays an important role in the story, despite being separated from time to time. There’s even a bit of a romance between Raz and one of the other Avout, though this does proceed somewhat unconventionally. During the course of the story, Raz even makes some Extramuros friends. One being his sister Cord, who seems to be rather bright, especially when it comes to mechanics. Another is Sammann, who is an Ita (basically a tecno-nerd who is always connected to networks, etc…). Raz’s mentor Orolo has been in the Concent for much longer than Raz, and is thus always ten steps ahead of Raz (he’s the one who brought up the nerve-gas-farting pink dragons above).

Another character who doesn’t make an appearance until later on in the story is Fraa Jad. He’s a Millenarian, so if Orolo is always ten steps ahead, Jad is probably a thousand steps ahead. He has a habit of biding his time and dropping a philosophical bomb into a conversation, like this:

Fraa Jad threw his napkin on the table and said: “Consciousness amplifies the weak signals that, like cobwebs spun between trees, web Narratives together. Moreover, it amplifies them selectively and in that way creates feedback loops that steer the Narratives.” (page 701)

If that doesn’t make a lot of sense, that’s because it doesn’t. In the book, the characters surrounding Jad spend a few pages trying to unpack what was said there. That might seem a bit tedious, but it’s actually kinda funny when he does stuff like that, and his ideas actually are driving the plot forward, in a way. One thing Stephenson doesn’t spend much time discussing is the details of how the Millenarians continue to exist. He doesn’t explicitely come out and say it, but the people on Arbre seem to have life spans similar to humans (perhaps a little longer), so it’s a little unclear how things like Millenarian Maths can exist. He does mention that thousanders have managed to survive longer than others, but it’s not clear how or why. If one were so inclined, they could perhaps draw a parallel between the Thousanders in Anathem and the Eruditorium in Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. Indeed, Enoch Root would probably fit right in at a Millenarian Math… but I’m pretty sure I’m just reading way too much into this and that Stephenson wasn’t intentionally trying to draw such a parallel. It’s still an interesting thought though.

Overall, Stephenson has created and sustained a detailed world, and he has done so primarily through telling the story. Indeed, I’m only really touching the surface of what he’s created here, and honestly, so is he. It’s clear that Stephenson could easily have made this into another 3000 page Baroque Cycle style trilogy, delving into the details of the history and culture of Arbre, but despite the long length of the novel, he does keep things relatively tight. The ending of the novel probably won’t do much to convince those who don’t like his endings that he’s turned a new leaf, but I enjoyed it and thought it ranked well within his previous books. There are some who will consider the quasi-loose-ends in the story to be frustrating, but I thought it actually worked out well and was internally consistent with the rest of the story (it’s hard to describe this without going into too much detail). In the end, this is Stephenson’s best work since Cryptonomicon and the best book I’ve read in years. It will probably be enjoyed by anyone who is already a Stephenson fan. Otherwise, I’m positive that there are people out there who are just the right kind of weird that would really enjoy this book. I expect that anyone who is deeply interested in Philosophy or Quantum Physics would have a ball. Personally, I’m not too experienced in either realm, but I still enjoyed the book immensely. Here’s to hoping we don’t have to wait another 4 years for a new Stephenson novel…

Anathem is Referential

5 Comments / Arts & Letters, Neal Stephenson / /

I am surprisingly only about halfway through Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Anathem. Of course, this has nothing to do with the book itself and is more a result of a certain baseball team’s improbable World Series win (Go Phils!), a particularly eventful election season and, of course, watching ridiculous amounts of horror films in preparation for Halloween. Also, since Stephenson only tends to put out books at a rate of about once every 3-4 years, I figure it’s a good thing to savor this one. So far, it’s excellent, and I can’t wait to see where it’s going.

There are a couple of interesting questions that keep popping into my head though, one of which has to do with the referential nature of the setting. The story takes place on an alien planet named Arbre. This planet is remarkably similar to Earth in many ways. The civilization on Arbre is a few thousand years beyond where we are, but again, there are many parallels between Arbre’s history and Earth’s history. Since it’s an alien planet, there are different names for lots of things or historical figures, but it’s often very clear who has inspired various ideas in the book. The book actually has a glossary in the back and peppers various dictionary definitions throughout the book to keep the reader up to speed on various differences between the planets. This can be a bit tricky at first, but after the initial shock, I realized that it was pretty easy to follow and even fun to puzzle out the various connections (in other words, I don’t think the glossary is as necessary in Anathem as it is in a book like Frank Herbert’s Dune, where I found it necessary to frequently reference the glossary). However, I can’t help but wonder, why place the story on an alien planet at all? Why not just set it far enough into the future that you can still hint at the various historical connections and ideas without having to specifically call them out? Perhaps there’s more to it than meets the eye. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier entry about Anathem, decoding all the references is part of the fun of SF.

And indeed, I do get a kick out of reading Stephenson’s description of Hemn Space and thinking to myself, that sounds an awful lot like a Hilbert Space! It was oddly satisfying to recognize some obscure reference like Project Orion just from the description of a cosmological observation made by some of the characters. And there are a ton of these: Protas is a philosopher who is clearly supposed to be analogous to Plato, Adrakhones is like Pythagoras, Gardan’s Steelyard is similar to Occam’s Razor, and so on. When I did a quick search, I found that there were tons of other references that I didn’t even pick up on… One of my favorite references is actually rather trivial, but it makes sense in terms of the story and it gives us SF nerds something to geek out on. (from page 47 of my edition):

“…what is the origin of the Doxan Iconography?”

“A Praxic Age moving pictures serial. An adventure drama about a military spaceship sent to a remote part of the galaxy to prevent hostile aliens from establishing hegemony, and marooned when their hyperdrive is damaged in an ambush. The captain of the ship was passionate, a hothead. His second-in-command was Dox, a theorician, brilliant, but unemotional and cold.”

The series is obviously an analog to Star Trek and Dox is clearly a reference to Spock. If I had more than 5 readers, there’d probably be one who was really into Star Trek and they’d probably be fuming right now because the description above doesn’t match exactly with the real Star Trek (I mean, duh, the Enterprise’s mission was to explore space, not to attack an alien race!). Perhaps Stephenson set the story on Arbre so that he could avoid such nitpicks and get people to focus on the story. Indeed, this wouldn’t be the first time he sought to avoid the nitpicking masses. In Cryptonomicon, Stephenson’s characters ran around using computers with the Finux operating system, an obvious reference to Linux. Stephenson has an FAQ where he explains why he did this:

> Neal, in Cryptonomicon why did you call Windows and MacOS by

> their true names but used the fictitious name ‘Finux’ to refer

> to what is obviously ‘Linux?’ Does this mean that you hate Linux?

Since Finux was the principal operating system used by the characters in the book, I needed some creative leeway to have the fictitious operating system as used by the characters be different in minor ways from the real operating system called Linux. Otherwise I would receive many complaints from Linux users pointing out errors in my depiction of Linux. This is why Batman works in Gotham City, instead of New York–by putting him in Gotham City, the creators afforded themselves the creative license to put buildings in different places, etc.

So perhaps setting the story on Arbre just affords Stephenson the creative freedom to tell the story as he sees fit, instead of having to shoehorn everything into Earth history and worry about people missing the forest for the trees. In the process, the story becomes more cognitively engaging (in the way most referential art is) because we’re constantly drawing parallels to Earth’s history.

As previously mentioned, this is a somewhat common feature of the science fiction and fantasy genres. It’s one of the reasons SF/F fans enjoy these books so much… Alas, it’s probably also why true SF doesn’t get much of a mainstream following, as I can’t imagine this sort of thing is for everybody. In any case, I’m really enjoying Anathem, and now that my various distractions have calmed down a bit, I’ll probably tear through the rest of the book relatively quickly.

Neal Stephenson’s Endings

3 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

One complaint frequently aimed at Neal Stephenson is that he can’t write an ending. Even the Wikipedia article on Stephenson (which is supposed to be written from a neutral point of view) mentiones that his books have “an abrupt ending with no conventional denouement and many loose ends” and that this pattern holds true for all of Stephenson’s books. A couple of advance reviews of Anathem have been posted, and both of them mention that the ending is abrupt, but an improvement over his other endings. Personally, I’ve never had much of a problem with his endings (minor spoilers ahead):

  • The Big U: Considering that the novel has very little actual plot, the ending fits reasonably well. The book gets a little ridiculous, but as Stephenson himself notes, this is in many ways a juvenile work (it was his first novel, after all). [previous blog posts: Megaversity and The Big U and Journalists]
  • Zodiac: This is a pretty straightforward book with a good ending. The ecological crisis at the heart of the plot is averted through a satisfying set-piece. In a lot of ways, it’s one of Stephenson’s more accessible efforts, including the ending.
  • The Cobweb (as Stephen Bury with J. Frederick George): One of his pseudonymous novels, this one does begin to stretch plausibility towards the climax, but I thought the ending worked well (and really, it’s no more ridiculous than any other techno-thrillers that I’ve read – indeed, I found both Bury novels to be much more entertaining). [previous blog posts: Stephen Bury]
  • Interface (as Stephen Bury with J. Frederick George): Similar to The Cobweb, the ending of this novel, while perhaps straining believablility, was also quite entertaining and worked reasonably well. [previous blog posts: Stephen Bury]
  • Snow Crash: The novel that made him famous and probably his most popular novel to date, this book has a fine ending. Computer virus crisis averted and all is well. [full review]
  • The Diamond Age: And finally we come to a book that I think has a legitimately unsatisfying ending. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I remember it being confusing and very abrupt. A lot of his other stories have abrupt endings, so that alone isn’t the issue. There’s a quick, disorienting jump in time, followed by a rushed revolutionary-style climax. It didn’t quite work for me (and apparently a lot of other folks too). At some point, I will probably reread this book, and maybe it will be less obtuse upon that second reading. In any case, this is one situation where I agree that the ending could use some work (and perhaps it will get a revamping for the upcoming mini-series).
  • Cryptonomicon: Once again, there are parts of this ending which are a little absurd (namely, Andrew Loeb, Jungle Warrior), but I thought the ending was fine. The book is infamous for it’s various tangents, but it’s got a few core threads, all of which seem to be resolved and tied together nicely. I don’t love this ending, but I think a big part of that is that I loved the book so much that I didn’t really want it to end. I [full review]
  • Quicksilver: This is the only other book I think has a substandard ending… but, of course, it’s also the first book in a series… a series which essentially tells one 2,700 page story. Thus, I think this novel can be forgiven for any loose ends or questions it leaves open (as they are amply addressed in the next two volumes).
  • The Confusion: There are times when this book lives up to its title, but the ending is not one of them, and indeed, I loved the ending to this book. This is especially true when considering that the book is the second in a series of three and that the story isn’t anywhere near complete. The ending perfectly sets the stage for the third book in the series. Maybe it’s just because I’m a movie guy and the ending seemed kinda cinematic to me. Jack Shaftoe, freed of slavery and thrust into political intrigue, stands in a boat on the Thames and stares at his nemesis, Isaac Newton, who sits silhouetted atop the Tower of the London mint. I can clearly envision the cinematic shot in my head as Jack says, “Enjoy your perch up there, Mister Newton, because Jack the Coiner has come back to London-town, and he aims to knock you down; the game has begun and may the best man win!” Brilliant stuff.
  • The System of the World: The end of a 2,700 page story is perhaps Stephenson’s least abrupt ending (there’s a whole chapter of epilogue!), and maybe even my favorite of his endings. It’s hard to say, because the story is so long. I guess some folks get annoyed at some loose ends that were not really tied up, but that’s because these three books were part of an even larger story which also includes Cryptonomicon and really hasn’t concluded yet (there is supposedly another book to be written that takes place in the future). Even so, I don’t mind some of the loose ends. What’s the deal with Enoch Root and that special gold? I don’t think I want to know. I like that Stephenson has kept those elements of the story mysterious. Some will call that cheap and manipulative storytelling, but what can I say? I enjoyed it.

In the end, I think it’s unfair to say that Stephenson is bad at writing endings. I wouldn’t say they’re his strength either, but for the most part he does a fine job. They can be abrupt at times and maybe even a little absurd (especially the Stephen Bury books), but neither of those things is necessarily bad, especially when you consider how great Stephenson is at crafting incredibly detailed and wonderfully realized settings, characters and stories. Sure, there are sometimes loose threads, but endings are, by their very nature, arbitrary. There’s always more story to tell.

Stephenson himself has addressed the perception of bad endings:

I always write the endings that I want to, and am as satisfied with my endings as I am with any other aspect of my writing. I just have an opinion about what constitutes a good ending that is at variance with some of my readers.

Gretta Cook also talked about Stephenson’s response to the question during a talk at Google:

He dislikes pat endings that explain everything and tie everything up with a neat little bow; in real life, there are no convenient termination points.

Indeed.

In other Stephenson news, there’s a great article in Wired about some of the themes that drove Stephenson to write Anathem.

More Anathem Details

2 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Not sure when this happened, but there’s a new video on Amazon’s Anathem page that features a 4 minute interview with Stephenson, who explains a few things about his new book. Most notably and despite Stephenson’s best efforts, it appears that the book has developed it’s own vocabulary and will feature a glossary (similar to Dune, though I get the impression that his planet won’t have quite as much in the glossary). I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but my initial impression is that it’s a good thing. The story is supposed to be set on an alien planet, so it makes sense that there would be concepts and vocabulary that would require explanation. One of the things that always bothered me about alien planets in fiction (particularly in TV and movies) is just how homogenous they are. When you look at the history of our planet you see a ton of variety surrounding life, society, culture, etc… and you rarely see any of that kind of depth in SF stories. Again, this is more evident in TV and film, where you see things like a multitude of humanoid races (not that humanoid aliens can’t exist, it’s just that humans developed and evolved to survive in a distinct environment – to assume that most aliens would develop in almost the exact same way (except with some strange bulges in their forehead) is ludicrous – and besides, we know humanoids, humanoids are boring, give us something new and interesting, like the <a href="Alien“>Alien) or overly simplistic environments like “the ice planet of Hoth” (Star Wars seems particularly willing to simplify planets by endowing them with a single ecological system that covers the entire planet). Books seem to be a little better suited to establishing a fictional world anyway, so I’m hoping that Stephenson will be able to do so effectively.

I’ve actually been reading a lot of SF recently (which I guess you can tell, from the recent SF content that’s been posted on the blog recently) and will probably be posting a recap of several recent reads, but one book that really caught my attention with it’s depiction of a non-humanoid alien race was Vernor Vinge’s excellent A Fire Upon the Deep. There are actually several interesting alien races in the book, but the primary one is called the Tines, which basically take the form of packs of dog-like beings. I don’t want to spoil the book, but the way Vinge handles the Tines is fascinating. In some ways, they’re very similar to humans, but in other ways, they are dramatically different, and Vinge does a good job extrapolating from those differences. I can’t tell yet if Stephenson’s novel will feature humanoid aliens or not (are they even aliens?), but he does mention that their history of ideas runs roughly parallel to our own. Again, I’m not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, I don’t want aliens that are exactly the same as us, but on the other hand, there needs to be some similarities or else we won’t be able to relate (nor would it be realistic to expect Stephenson to conceive of something like that). Indeed, Vinge’s Tines had a roughly parallel history of ideas as well, except that they were stuck in a medieval state that, for physical reasons, they could not transcend (until aliens land on their planet, of course).

Anyway, there also appears to be a PDF of Anathem‘s first chapter available, though I have not read it yet (and probably won’t until the book comes out). No word about whether or not we’ll get an accompanying CD with the book (like the advanced copies had). Sorry to keep blabbing about Anathem, but I’m obviously excited for this novel.

Genres and SF

2 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Neal Stephenson recently gave a talk called The Fork: Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture at Gresham College. It’s an interesting talk, and one of the things he talks about is how genres have evolved over time. Fifty years ago, there were a lot of fairly well delineated genres. He gives some examples like Romance, Westerns, and Crime. Westerns have basically disappeared. It’s still a genre, but anything produced in that genre happens in some exceptional way (I think the genre survives because it has a rich history; otherwise it would have disappeared completely). Romance has more or less merged with all the other genres. Sure, bookstores still have unabashed romance sections, but you don’t see much of those stories elsewhere in movies or television. Instead, you see romance merged in with just about every other genre. Most movies feature some romantic element these days. There are exceptions, of course, and there are sub-genres that are more romantic than not (i.e. romantic comedies), but for the most part romance on its own is pretty rare in movies. In a way, romance has become so ubiquitous that it ceases to be its own genre. Similarly, crime stories have become so commonplace that it’s barely retained itself as a grenre. This is especially the case in television, and I can guarantee that there are at least 3 or 4 separate episodes of Law & Order and/or CSI playing on television right now, as I write this entry. Stephenson goes into more detail for all of these genres, and it is quite interesting.

A while ago, I linked to an article that featured a bunch of SF authors attempting to define the science fiction genre. I didn’t talk much about my thoughts at the time, except to say that I favored a more broad definition than most of the authors, and part of the reason I did that was because of Neal Stephenson. He became famous for novels like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, obvious and unabashed science fiction, but his later works have curiously moved into more of a historical fiction. Crytponomicon takes place partially during WWII (with the other plotline being in the present day) and The Baroque Cycle takes place entirely in the 17th and 18th centuries. Both stories feature a lot of science and/or math, but they aren’t your steriotypical SF. There’s nothing futuristic about them, they don’t take place in space, they don’t feature aliens (well, we don’t exactly know what Enoch Root is, so perhaps I’m wrong about that – then again, I don’t think I ever want his character to be explained). Basically, a lot of the more strict definitions of SF would exclude those books. As such, I’ve always been curious to see what Stephenson’s thoughts were, and perhaps unsprisingly, he seems to hold an extremely broad definition of what constitutes SF. He seems to embrace the notion of SF as meaning Science Fiction but also Speculative Fiction, which opens the doors to a lot of seemingly non science fictional things. For instance, he notes the way that science fiction and fantasy are often conflated, and he also seems to include anything influenced by comic books, video games or martial arts films as well. He also quotes Bruce Sterling’s hilarious definition of “thrillers” (which funnily enough, involves science fiction). Is his definition too broad? Perhaps, but I think it’s also a part of his larger point, which is that genres are kinda meshing together.

It’s an interesting talk, and Stephenson goes into a lot more than just genre talk here, including stuff about vegging out and geeking out (which is something he’s written about before) and the way most people seem to have become geeks in one way or another (geekhood no longer seems to be limited to computer enthusiasts).

Anathem Music Update

Arts & Letters, Neal Stephenson / /

Apparently the advanced reader copies of Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem are starting to arrive… along with an unexpected musical accompaniment in the form of a CD. According to Al Billings:

There is a note with it stating that “In order to conform to the practices of the avout, this disc contains music composed for and performed by voices alone.”

I’ve just listened to several of the songs on this CD and, frankly, this is some weird shit. I say this without reservation. The musical styles are all over the map except that they all only use human voices (and occasionally hands). Some of it is similar to Western, Christian, styles of chanting. Other tracks are more Classical vocal arrangements with singing. The rest of the tracks seem to be heavily influenced by Eastern, Buddhist, styles of chanting, especially Tibetan Buddhism with its use of harmonics and overlaying voices. It varies quite a bit from song to song. Additionally, when there are recognizable words, they are not in English (nor in any language that I recognize). “Celluar Automata” is the weirdest track of this sort with multiple voices weaving in and out, along with some clapping and exclamations in an unknown language. “Thousander Chant” would be at home on some of the collections of Tibetan chanting that I have and whoever is performing it is obviously trained in the throat chanting used by Tibetans and others in Asia.

Interesting. I wonder if this is something that will come with the book once it is released… or if it’s just an added bonus for those lucky enough to be selected for an early reviewer book like Al. In any case, Cory Doctorow notes that the music was created by Dave Stutz, a retired Microsoft employee who apparently advocated open source software, but now owns a winery and makes strange music.

And so this Anathem thing gets more and more interesting. September 9 can’t get here fast enough! [Thanks to Tombstone for the links]

Link Dump

Link Dump, Neal Stephenson / /

Time is short, so just a few interesting links that I’ve run accross recently:

  • Wikihistory: So what would happen if time travel was invented a hundred years from now? Why, time travelers would start an internet forum… among other predictable things. Hilarious.
  • True Measure of Code Quality: Heh.
  • Agent to the Stars: John Scalzi’s first novel was originally published online, and it’s still there. I actually haven’t read it yet, but I think this might be the only Scalzi SF book that I haven’t read (and I’ve enjoyed all the others…)
  • I Love You, but You Love Meat: I was bored by this article until I saw this line:

    She and her daughter have “meat parties” when Mr. Benson goes out of town, she said.

    Heh.

  • The Sports Guy Glossary: I’m not a huge sports fan, but I have come to love Bill Simmons. Even when he’s writing about a sport I absolutely hate (i.e. Basketball, unless it’s Villanova basketball, in which case: Go ‘Nova!), I’ll read it. There are some times when it’s all sports, but most of the time he’s making so many pop-culture references that it’s entertaining. This page has lots of his classics, including sporty stuff like the Ewing Theory (to be renamed the Tiki Barber Theory) and stuff almost completely unrelated to sports, like the Guidelines for Underrated Movies.
  • CES 2008 panel on SF influence on technology: The panel features Neal Stephenson, Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway and other neat stuff), Lucy Lawless (she’s a Cylon!), and Walt Mossberg (journalist). Interesting stuff…

That’s all for now…

Subterranean Stephenson

Neal Stephenson / /

Interesting article about geeky dads who worry that their kids won’t become geeks, too, and how they try to instill a sort of geeky work ethic in their kids.

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson once told me something memorable as we were hanging out in his back yard. He pointed to an unfinished kayak under a tarp. He said he was slowly working on it, in part to mentor his kids, even though they did no work on the boat, nor express the least bit of interest in this project. None-the-less he continued puttering on the undertaking while they were home. Stephenson said when he was a kid, his dad was constantly tinkering on some garage project or another, and despite Neal’s complete indifference for any of his dad’s enthusiasms at the time, he was influenced by this embedded tinkering. It was part of the family scene, part of his household, like mealtime style, or the pattern of interactions between siblings. Later on when Neal did attempt to make stuff on his own, the pattern was right at hand. It felt comfortable, easy. Without having to try very hard, he knew how to be a nerd.

Interesting stuff. And speaking of Stephenson, Warren Ellis apparently finished the Baroque Cycle lately:

I have just finished reading The Baroque Cycle of Neal Stephenson, and feel like giving up writing entirely.

I guess he liked it? Further thoughts on his blog:

I finally got to finish reading the last of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. I’d never normally recommend you read a 3000-page work, but the Cycle is just a towering piece of work, and I think you should read it before you die. A hundred pages from the end, I got that terrible longing sadness, the one that comes when you realise you’re near the end of something and you’ĺl never have the joy of reading this in the same way again.

I’ve had that feeling before. I definitely had it while reading the Baroque Cycle, but that was more just because I’d been reading the thing for 2 years. And it had one of Stephenson’s better endings, I think. I had the same feeling while reading Cryptonomicon, except I had it more like three or four hundred pages from the end. Heh. [Warren Ellis links via No Mod Required]

Update: Shamus joins in the discussion Alex and I had about Cryptonomicion.

Anathem

5 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Holy crap! I just found out that Neal Stephenson’s new novel is to be titled Anathem, and according to Amazon, it’s set to be released on September 9, 2008. Also, it’s 928 pages. I don’t know how I missed this, but apparently, some details about the novel leaked last September, in this LJ entry:

He’s writing a science fiction novel unrelated to Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. It’s set on another planet and has aliens and so on. It’s really about Platonic mathematics, but he needed the aliens and space opera-ish elements to spice it up a little bit, just like the pirates kept people engaged in the Baroque books. He’s nearly finished writing it, and if he doesn’t finish by the end of the calendar year he’ll have to give some money back. If everything proceeds according to schedule, it should be available in stores in about a year.

Damn! Looks like my US Civil War era prediction was a bit off, though I do think my prediction is still in place for the next Cryptonomicon/Baroque Cycle style novel will feature at least one portion set in the US Civil War Era. Or something. In any case, I’m psyched. (via this wikio page I found in my referrers)

Update 3.31.08: Lev Grossman, geek blogger for Time magazine, reports on the plot:

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.

Interesting. No mention of other planets or aliens, but a promising plot, I guess.

Thoughts on Cryptonomicon

4 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Alex has some choice words for one of my favorite books, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. In all honesty, I don’t really blame him. It’s not necessarily that I agree with all his comments so much as I can see why some people would be bothered by some of the things in the book. For a 900+ page book, it sure doesn’t seem to have a lot of plot. What it has instead is a whole bunch of tangential stories and anecdotes revolving around what basically amounts to a treasure hunt. There are lots of other subplots. There’s a war story, a couple of romantic threads, lots of technology, some history, and a bunch of other junk thrown in for good measure, but in the end, the plot is about Nazi gold.

What follows might seem a bit defensive, but I want to start with a disclaimer that I just can’t resist discussing Stephenson. As I mentioned before, I don’t blame Alex for not liking various bits and pieces of the book, I just don’t happen to agree about most of them.

Alex says:

I don’t strictly look for a point in the books that I read, but nonetheless I found Cryptonomicon distinctly lacking in the department of points, and I feel like it ate my time.

I can see why someone would say something like that after they finish the book. The ending is mildly lackluster (Alex barely mentions my least favorite part of the book, which is Andrew Loeb, jungle warrior). After the first few hundred pages of the book, I had no idea where Stephenson was going with the story. But hell, I was enjoying myself immensely. I don’t mind my time being “eaten” if I’m enjoying the process. Is there a point to the book? Well, it depends on what you want to get out of it. I saw lots of themes that I found relevant and interesting, and Stephenson touches on many interesting topics. For instance, cryptography plays an important role in both the WWII and modern day portions of the book, but it’s also a thematic element that permeates the entire book. A large portion of the book is about separating signal from noise, whether it be Randy trying to decode Amy Shaftoe or Bobby trying to decipher why the heck his unit is being asked to do all sorts of strange things. Maybe it’s just that I find the world mystifying in the extreme, but I like the way the characters in the book strive to figure out the world. Is that a “point” of the book?

Next:

Amidst all of the whatever going on, there’s some talk of sex. … Anyway, it’s terrible. You want to personify your protagonist’s prostate, Neal Stephenson? Call him “Little Man ‘Tate”? Okay. You want to spend, let me count them … approximately eight pages talking, in character, about a fetish for stockings and a woman who can only orgasm when having sex upon antique furniture? Be my guest, I guess. … Then, when you come to write the narrative sex scenes, all I can say is wow. …

I’ve seen this complaint a few times before, and if you can’t tell by all my ellipses above, Alex has a lot more in his post about it. I personally had no issue with it. I mean, sure, it’s a little weird, but the book is filled with weird stuff. The characters are weird. The stuff they’re doing is weird. Heck, real life is weird. Why single out the sex stuff? And sometimes it has a point. Take the aformentioned “eight pages talking, in character, about a fetish for stockings and a woman who can only orgasm when having sex upon antique furniture.” Why is that important? Because Stephenson is setting up a surveilance technique that will become important later on in the story. In context, those eight pages are important because they’re intensely personal and private to the character who is being surveiled, and yet there are these guys in the next room who are able to invade the perceived privacy and security of being alone, all through extraordinary technological means. The chapter wouldn’t work if the guy was writing out his grocery list. That’s not private. It has to be something personal and perhaps embarrassing for it to make an impact not just on you the reader, but on the characters in the story. So later in the book, when Randy gets into a situation where he’s alone in a jail cell, handling sensitive information, well, it makes sense that he would be a little paranoid about it and goes to extreme lengths to obfuscate what he’s doing. Did Stephenson need to spend 8 pages setting it up? Did he need to write a scene where a character engages in a mathematical discussion of Concentration as a function of Horniness, complete with graphs? Maybe not, but I kinda like that he did. He lets these situations breath, and that’s a big part of why I like his stuff.

Another complaint:

Something that made sense in Snow Crash, it being an alterna-future where the US had split into nation states, was the use of slightly different names for things. I can therefore be forgiven for being confused when Cryptonomicon used the term “Nipponese” all the time while still being set in our own theoretical timeline. This constant, unexplained reference struck me as an act of amazing grease.

I distinctly remember the reason Stephenson gives for this in the book, though he does so in the WWII portion of the novel. It’s in a footnote around the time when Bobby Shaftoe gets sent back to America and he’s talking to some Colonel about his time in the Phillipines (Look, I found it in Google Book Search at the bottom of page 114). The footnote reads: “Men with experience in Asia use the word ‘Nip.’ The Colonel’s use of ‘Jap’ suggest that his career has been spent in the Atlantic and/or Caribbean.” Now, I suppose that doesn’t explain why, two generations later, a bunch of techno-businessmen would go around refering to Japan as “Nippon,” but from the earlier reference to “Men with experience in Asia,” I’m guessing that Stephenson was trying to imply that, you know, Randy and co. had experience in Asia. Now I can see why someone would think this was a bit weird, but as we’ve already established, that doesn’t bother me.

More criticisms:

Which brings me to my final complaint: all of these disparate characters are supposed to combine for an ultimate goal. Which is, of course, the ultimate goal of … well, whatever it is that they end up with. Fifty years later, the descendants of these characters are remarkably untouched by everything that has happened in the WWII segment of the book. Stephenson may as well have written in wholly different characters for all the effect that these ones had. You’re left wondering, at the final page, precisely why everyone went through all of this …

I’ve already mentioned that I can see why someone would be underwhelmed by the ending, so that complaint doesn’t bother me, but the part about the descendents being untrouched by their grandparents deeds in WWII is a little off in my opinion. Once again, we find the theme of cryptography rearing it’s head: the modern day characters are trying to piece together what happened back in WWII, but it’s not easy. I don’t think it’s unusual at all for a grandson to not know what their grandfather did in the war, if only because I had the relatively recent experience of finding out that my grandfather was a freakin’ tank hunter in Europe (I still don’t know the specifics of this). Anyway, to say that the descendents are untouched by the WWII generation is to miss one of the themes in the book, which is that people of our generation are totally in awe of the WWII generation and feel a little awkward working in our world knowing that our grandparents were literally fending off evil on a worldwide scale. This is something you see all throughout the modern day portions of the book, though not put as baldly (or written as poorly) as that.

And finally:

It’s as I’ve said before: being long is not the same as being epic. Cryptonomicon has many pages, but never once does it feel like a grand adventure.

I really feel like I’m trolling Neal Stephenson, but I’d prefer to think this is not the case. It’s just that somewhere, buried amongst the mountains of digressions, is some interesting material; it’s just a shame that you have to dig through evolutionary badasses, stockings, barely mentioned one-legged crazies, and the apparently insatiable sexual desires of WWII soldiers to get to it.

I certainly agree that being long is not the same as being epic, but I wouldn’t call Cryptonomicon an epic. Sweeping? Yes. Epic? No. Also, I think Alex misses the point. The interesting material isn’t buried amongst the mountains of digressions, the interesting material is the mountains of digressions. Without the digressions, the book isn’t nearly as interesting. In his post, Alex mentions that Snow Crash worked as well as it does because it’s relatively compact. Well, I think Cryptonomicon works as well as it does because it’s distinctly not compact. Different strokes, I guess.

Again, I’m not suggesting that the book is perfect, and I think Alex makes a lot of valid points, but I love it anyway. Even things that used to bother me about it (like Andrew Loeb, jungle warrior) don’t loom as large as they used to. As a commenter at Alex’s site suggests, perhaps having read the Baroque Cycle has given me a little more depth into Cryptonomicon, but I don’t think that’s it (though you do tend to notice many more connections between the characters). If Alex didn’t like Cryptonomicon, he’ll be doubly confounded by Quicksilver. Even I was complaining a bit that those books needed some editing. But then again, I ended up enjoying them and want to read them again someday. In the end, I love almost everything Stephenson has written, and greatly look forward to his next novel.

Oh, and incidentally, the Australian cover art for Cryptonomicon (pictured in Alex’s post) is awful! On the other hand, the Australian cover art for The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (also at Alex’s site) is awesome (I think I like it better than the American art). And to digress even further, I agree with Alex in wondering how on earth the Coen Brothers will adapt that book to the screen (I suppose if anyone could do it…)

Update: Alex responds at the bottom of his post and in the comments here. I may respond later, but it’s late now, and I need to go to bed…

Update 2/27/08: Shamus comments