February's Post-Apocalyptic Book Discussion: Anathem

THE JANUARY DISCUSSION OF THE FIRST HALF OF ANATHEM WAS CANCELLED--WE WILL JUST HAVE ONE DISCUSSION FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK IN FEBRUARY.

Just as Fay Weldon's Chalcot Crescent strained the definition of post-apocalyptic (trending towards more dystopian), Neal Stephenson's Anathem is not strictly post-apoc either since it leaves more earthly realms for an alternative landscape. A 1000-page philosophical sci-fi novel, we will give it a little more time than usual to gestate.

Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but without the religious elements. Here, the avout—intellectuals living under vows and separated from saecular society, fraa for male avout and suur for female avout—retain only limited access to tools and technology and are watched over by the Inquisition, which answers to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power). The avout are forbidden to communicate with people outside the walls of the concent except during Apert, a 10-day observance held only once every year/decade/century/millenium, depending on the frequency with which a given group of avout is allowed to interact with the Sæcular world. Concents are therefore slow to change, unlike the rest of Arbre, which goes through many cycles of booms and busts.

Paul Boutin wrote in The Wall Street Journal that "the lasting satisfaction of Anathem derives … from Mr. Stephenson's wry contempt for today's just-Google-it mindset. His prose is dense, but his worldview contagious." On Salon.com, Andrew Leonard described the book as "a page turner and a philosophical argument, an adventure novel and an extended existential meditation, a physics lesson, sermon and ripping good yarn."

Michael Dirda of the Washington Post disagreed, remarking that "Anathem will certainly be admired for its intelligence, ambition, control and ingenuity", but describing it as "fundamentally unoriginal", "grandiose, overwrought and pretty damn dull."

You be the judge.