Anathem

[Iskaral Pust]

Small heads-up. http://www.chapters.indigo.ca is selling the hardcover version of Anathem for 5$ from June 12th to June 16th if anyone is interested.

Direct link to the book's page

That's a nice deal, but the $10 for shipping pretty much negates it.

[Caligula_K]

The company is also selling the books instore for $5 (I work at one of the stores), so Canadians who are interested, now's your chance.

[ztemhead]

I'm 240 pages into it (I read slow, and I've been busy) and it's holding my attention so far. More entertaining and thought provoking than Quicksilver for sure.

[Guest Raidne]

We were precisely one step further from the HTW than the setting of the novel.

The previously conquered people in the space ship were LaTerran. La Terre is "the earth" in French. The Laterrans we see in the book are French people from our world, which is one step further from the HTW than the world in which the story is set. I'm guessing you got that though.

Do I need to put that in spoiler code? If so, how do I do that? I have limited editor functionality from IE6 on the new board format.

Yep, I know, I remember that. It was very interesting when we came across it, I thought.

And yeah, it should be in spoiler text. It doesn't work very well for me either, but "spoiler24" in brackets follwed by "/spoiler24" in brackets seems to work.

I just finished reading Gallileo's Dream and it's interesting how he and Stephenson share this obsession with the responsibility of scientists to society - Stephenson shuts them off where they can't be dangerous, whereas Robinson seems to want them to become the powerful themselves.

We're going to need to make a decision about that ourselves sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. Note that nobody tries to get them to accomplish anything through communicating with and persauding the public.

Funny that scientists don't have a Hippocratic Oath, or licensing bodies.

Spoiler

On second thought, I suppose the theors on Arbre probably weren't ever effectively separated if they were able to traverse multiple worldtracks and influence outcomes across narratives.

[Kayasmus]

I finished the book yesterday and am very sad that it actually had to end. I tried to find some reviews on my favourite online blogs, but couldn't and now I have a feeling that not enough people read this amazing book!

[Guest Raidne]

I think there's another thread with a lot of commentary in the lit forum somewhere, if that helps.

Jurble, I agree with that criticism. I can't find a way around that one either.

[Iskaral Pust]

I'm in the middle of a re-read right now and enjoying it just as much. What's lost in suspense is made up for in easier familiarity with the various schools of thought. On the first read I had a harder time keeping straight the relative relationships of schools of thought referred to by unfamiliar names (Procian, Protas, Halikaarn, Edharan, Faanian, Hylaean, etc), probably because I don't have any background in philosophy to assign those names to real world counter-parts. But I haven't had any difficulty with it this time.

[BLU-RAY]

I'm about 60% of the way into this book right now, and I'm loving it. Very cool stuff, I'm actually finding excuses to go to the city, because the hour of reading on the train is so much fun.

[ztemhead]

okay finally done with it. I'm glad I read this thread while in the middle of reading Anathem. I latched on to the idea of intellectual curiosity and following ideas/ arguments all the way through to their logical conclusions, and this made reading the book a bit more enjoyable. It always helps to put things in proper context, and to have a basic understanding of what the author is going for.

I can't say I understood it completely, but I soaked up enough that it embiggened my mind a little. It wasn't book ice cream; more like a book steak dinner complete with veggies and a baked potato. I'd give it a B+

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I'm bouncing this thread because I should finish tonight and I really don't want to dig for it. I'm fascinated so far. I'm going to have to find some books (I've already looked at Neal Stephenson's acknowledgements page) on Platonic realism. It's an intreging subject.

:)

Finished last night before bed. Did everyone read the Calca's? I've only read the first. This was a fascinating book. I should have read it sooner. I'm going to have to pick up some of the books by Godel and other's mentioned in Stephenson's acknowledgement page. It's nice to see Metaphysics (or metatheorics if you prefer) tied to something concrete like multiworld theory in cosmology.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Boing

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Eponine,

This was one of the books I most enjoyed reading this year.

However, my enjoyment peaked well before the ending. The last few chapters described a lot, but they went into incredibly tight detail about small things without introducing a larger idea that held it all together, both technically and character driven. I realize that there was supposed to be a lot of confusion in Erasmus' mind about the reality of his previous experiences, but there's just too much of a lot of other people acting without clear motivation. It bypasses ambiguity and goes right into being a spectator of something he doesn't understand. Sometimes that's fine, but for a episode that's supposed to be the culmination of all the technical and philosophical dialog proceeding, it doesn't really work.

And the ending was really anticlimactic for me. I really disliked the "Ala kept us all together and she's going to feel horrible guilt for putting us all in danger for the rest of her life" subplot, and then everything came together a little too nicely at the end. (I kind of think that Erasmus did too good a job of describing Ala as a total bitch in the beginning, and I never really warm up to people with her personality IRL). I'd have really liked to see a little more ambiguity- the whole previous part with Fraa Jad was about ambiguity and uncertainty, and then a chapter later, everyone lives happily ever after, together. So we go from good, character and plot driven confusion, to standing gaping at the sidelines confusion, to happily ever after.

Edit: I really warmed up to the invented words and had no problems with reading quickly after the first 150 pages (I know that sounds kind of rough, but I enjoyed it reading slowly before that). I now find myself wanting to use certain terms- I said to my boyfriend something about "planing" someone without thinking, and he understood the meaning no problem. I think it's going to become part of my permanent vocabulary.

I was thinking about this. How many worldlines were their where the assault force died or was killed by the Daban Urnude? We saw only one where it appeared Ras was going to die. It makes sense that the worldlines we perceived, given that the story is told through Ras's eyes, were the ones where he was present.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

IP,

We were precisely one step further from the HTW than the setting of the novel.

The previously conquered people in the space ship were LaTerran. La Terre is "the earth" in French. The Laterrans we see in the book are French people from our world, which is one step further from the HTW than the world in which the story is set. I'm guessing you got that though.

Do I need to put that in spoiler code? If so, how do I do that? I have limited editor functionality from IE6 on the new board format.

I don't think so. I believe the order is Urnud, Tros, Earth, Fothos, Arbre. So Earth is the middle HTW world higher up the wick than Urnud and Tros but lower than Fothos and Arbre.

[thx4allthefish]

I never read the book, I listened to the audiobook. Twice. It's read by the author and William Dufries. The author makes for a good narrator, William Dufries is simply brilliant. The audio book version I listened to is unabridged and I find that I understood more of the plot by listening to it than can (obviously)-according to posts in this thread- be accomplished by reading it.

Actually, I am selling the audiobook at amazon.de ... if one of you wants it, I'll skip the price and mail it to you (in return for shipping costs, if that's o.k. with you).

ETA: aaarrrghh, no, I am not a commercial vendor or something, I just re-sell what I bought and no longer need.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

thx,

I've listened to the audiobook as well. I don't think Neal Stephenson did any reading, except for the forward about various Arben words. Everything else, I thought, was professional readers.

[jurble]

Hmm I remember there being another thread, because I remember writing a big long post about how multiple worlds and multiple universes are different.

[Eponine]

Hey wait, we can see old negatives?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Triskele,

Things are much more clear on the second read. I still love this book.

[jurble]

At the end, Fraa Jad is existing in multiple probabilities at once trying to prevent Doomsday. Erasmus is tagging along, but each Erasmus is independent of the others - Fraa Jad has trained for millenia to fuse his conciousness across World-tracks, Erasmas hasn't. Everytime we jump to a new Erasmus, it means the old one has died.

Basically, the Rhetors and the Incanters, mixed and matched futures and pasts to give the best possible results. They took the past where Fraa Jad died, and added it to the future where Fraa Jad and Erasmus saved the day, because that was the best possible outcome they could come up with.

In the world-tracks where this didn't happen, everyone died, so it's irrelevant.

[jurble]

Yeah, basically, they can control quantum probability. They simply choose the probabilities wherein everything goes right for their DNA and their cells - it's basically the White-Luck, think of it that way. Reality exists as a serious of innumerable "choices" by particles. Most of the time, the particles behave in ways that are deterministic because the probabilities of them doing something absurd are so low, we can discount any quantum interference. I think someone actually calculated it once, i read somewhere, this guy was trying to discount the quantum mind theory, but of all the interactions in your brain, quantum interference was adit best like 3% or something. (quantum brain people like to say that quantum interference is so high that, that it basically amounts to unpredictable free-will, since those highly unlikely quantum interactions would be essentially unpredictable because there so many low probability accidents that could possibly happen that you can't account for them all). Anyway, the Rhetors and the Incanters have the ability to somehow pick the probabilities that most favor them, on the quantum level, to the point where their DNA does not accrue damage - all their proteins work perfectly without error in replicating DNA, free radicals don't fly in and tear shit up, or if they do, repair enzymes work perfectly.

Like if an enzyme were to fail in a repair process because its tertiary structure were screwed up due to a probabilistic fluke - the hydrogen bonds were temporarily thrown off for a nanoseconds due to some electrons suddenly deciding they didn't want to be in the most probable place - that shit would get stomped by an Incanter, or a Rhetor.

Theoretically, I guess, an Incanter can keep himself young, while a Rhetor can make himself young again.