I finished the book and put up a longer review of Anathem
When I got home from going San Francisco and the Caymans this Sunday I had a pleasant surprise. I had a nice advanced reader’s copy of “Anathem”, the upcoming novel by Neal Stephenson*. I’d heard reports that it was either post-apocalyptic or a space opera, but neither seems an apt description 100 pages in. So far it seems to be another new genre: Long Now Fiction. You’ve got a monastic (“mathic”) order where different sects sequester themselves away from the ever changing world outside for periods of a year, a decade, a century or a millennium.

There’s an awful lot of worldbuilding words to keep track of, which is a bit annoying, and it is starting off slow. That’s fine, though. Stephenson’s books generally don’t move like other books that have a slow rising action to a climax. Stephenson’s books tend to be first immersion in a world for a few 100 pages, then a radical spiraling climax that is vertically asymptotic against the presence of the end of the book. It’ll get exciting soon enough.

The book isn’t due out till September 30th, and assuming that I’ll finish the massive thing by then, do let me know if you’d like it next.

*Apparently I’m quite the lucky duck.  I got this through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and was one of the 25 recipients out of the 1375 requesters.