Anathem - Neal Stephenson

Anathem

By Neal Stephenson

  • Release Date: 2009-10-06
  • Genre: Science Fiction
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 547 Ratings
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Description

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, Anathem is perhaps the most brilliant literary invention to date from the incomparable Neal Stephenson, who rocked the world with Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and The Baroque Cycle. Now he imagines an alternate universe where scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians live in seclusion behind ancient monastery walls until they are called back into the world to deal with a crisis of astronomical proportions.

Anathem won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the reviews for have been dazzling: “Brilliant” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel), “Daring” (Boston Globe), “Immensely entertaining” (New York Times Book Review), “A tour de force” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), while Time magazine proclaims, “The great novel of ideas…has morphed into science fiction, and Neal Stephenson is its foremost practitioner.”

Reviews

  • Beautifully written

    5
    By endrne
    Gorgeously sense book - perfect for hard sci-fi readers who enjoy a touch of philosophy and history. Love the writing style.

  • Thick dense writing

    2
    By Tim_JW
    I guess I’m not smart enough to read this.

  • Fascinating premise, intricate story

    5
    By lordoforegon
    This is a complex interesting book. Many twists and turns but it wraps up nicely at the end.

  • Engaging

    4
    By Anonyrn
    Science fiction but a lot of basis from today's earth. I enjoyed the book and its characters, and was glad to be able to read it on by "jeejah" since it would have been a hefty book to carry with me.

  • Not my taste

    1
    By iuthi
    Based on the description I thought the book sounded good. My recommendation is to read the sample before buying. It does not get better. Not the style of writing I like.

  • Stephenson delivers brilliance yet again

    5
    By JDTwelve12
    Few writers today can simultaneously entertain, educate, and expand a reader's view of the world quite so well as Neal Stephenson. This work is best suited for those readers seeking a bit more than a pleasant diversion. While fun and engaging, this book also draws the reader's mind to consider metaphysics, causality, and the relationship between human institutions of popular culture, academia, and religion. This comes about incidentally to an delightfully unpredictable adventure -- in much the same way Mr. Stephenson's earlier works carry readers into explorations of economics, cryptography, and nanotechnology. Reading his books is to engage in an epic battle between the instincts to savor and to devour. His stories leave the reader changed for the better, and I have seldom finished one without being immediately tempted to reread it from the beginning.

  • Amazingly thought out and thoughtful

    5
    By hawktail83
    I love this book. It is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. Even though the first 1/3 is tough to get through, it is more than worth it when the book is finished. Everything is tied together and done so well it feels as if Neil Stephenson worked on this book for years. I've read it three times and loved it each time.

  • Not as Good as The Baroque Trilogy

    2
    By Derrick.R.Miller
    An ambitious attempt that falls flat. I can appreciate this book's attempt to capture a sense of life on a planet with an unimaginably long history through the use of language that sounds like it's some distantly evolved version of our own and through the slow revelation of a convulted history, and I can appreciate the attempt to turn string theory and quantum mechanics into the crux of this novel. Unfortunately, these attempts fall flat. It's just not fun spending most of the novel reading entries from a fake dictionary and reading faux-platonic dialogues devoted to theoretical physics. There's just enough plot interspersed between these portions to keep you reading. However, the characters and their relationships feel two-dimensional and wooden. Most of the characters are more caricature than character.

  • WOW

    5
    By DRnoFun
    Great book. I can't recommend Anathem enough. The seamless synthesis of science and philosophy, of thought and machinery is the cornerstone of Anathem.

  • Worst thing that ever happened to me.

    5
    By da51d
    This is the greatest book I have ever read. Neal Stephenson created a world so vast and so detailed that I couldn't concentrate on anything else. I failed two my classes and now I'm on academic probation with my school. Thanks Neal.

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