Anathem

[Datepalm]

Yes, I see your point Datepalm about Raz's bias (& you make a good case) - but it still seems to me that this is his cloister bias. Men and women of varying ages and races/ethnicities/ethics are part of the cloister world, so he doesn't have a problem with those differences.

But rude, shallow or self involved people aren't?

Jules Verne does seem to be able to see a difference between Earth and Arbre that he can spot with the naked eye, so to speak. It's also made explicit in the political allegiance of the aliens - planets 1&2 are the bad guys and need to be shepharded to making the right decisions by folks from 'higher up'. 3 (Earth) is split, 4 and 5 (Arbre) are the good cooperative faction.

[Datepalm]

DP,

That was, at least in part, the Procian/Halikaarnian rivalry on display. Remember the audiance shouting af Lodigear to get to the point and stop wasting the Convox's time? That doesn't happen on Fox.

Right, becuase the mathic world is better than that. But this behaviour - which, to me at least - is obviously (nastily) mirroring us, (not them,) which is whats being pilloried. Us.

[Lummel]

Fraa Lodegir isn't a journalist - he's part of the mathic world. It struck me like one of those set piece academic debates with pointless point scoring from the medieval universities paradied by Rabelais.

[Datepalm]

Fraa Lodegir isn't a journalist - he's part of the mathic world. It struck me like one of those set piece academic debates with pointless point scoring from the medieval universities paradied by Rabelais.

Sure, fair enough. He's behaving like a journalist here though, and he's just awful (breaking every mathic rule, earning their scorn) - like how everything else that has some clear modern-earth analogue is awful.

Anyway, whatever. I can agree to disagree about this, but I nevertheless found the book unbelievably smug, and I don't think that it's Raz, at least partly because its a voice very similar to the way 'ordinary' people - suburban proles, liberal social scientists, etc - are described in Cryptonomicon as well. (Lummel, even with that criticism, you should read it. It's a fun book. Except for its treatment of women. Stephenson has improved a bit there.) Theres the same grudging admiration for nutty survivalists too. A bit weird, maybe, but at least they're not loathsomely boring, tv-watching, cell phone carrying plebes! (Admittedly, a villain. But an interesting and charismatic one.)

[Lummel]

But rude, shallow or self involved people aren't?

Ahhhrrrrgggghh! The rapier of your intellect skewers my argument! Yeah you're right rude and shallow etc people are part of the cloistered world too. But then Raz doesn't care much for the above mentioned Fraa Logedir either. I'll bear your point in mind when I reread it...

Jules Verne does seem to be able to see a difference between Earth and Arbre that he can spot with the naked eye, so to speak. It's also made explicit in the political allegiance of the aliens - planets 1&2 are the bad guys and need to be shepharded to making the right decisions by folks from 'higher up'. 3 (Earth) is split, 4 and 5 (Arbre) are the good cooperative faction.

Jules Verne has been listening in to Arbre communications for an unknown amount of time so he's hardly unacquainted with Arbre when he lands - also given his knowledge of the history of the spaceship and it's wanderings he may have rose coloured preconceptions about Arbre that prejudice his views.

Right, becuase the mathic world is better than that. But this behaviour - which, to me at least - is obviously (nastily) mirroring us, (not them,) which is whats being pilloried. Us.

Isn't part of the tradition of Sci-fi to mirror and pillory us? Besides don't we de

[Errant Bard]

Us.

Do you really identify with a characterisation you seem to hate?

[Datepalm]

Isn't part of the tradition of Sci-fi to mirror and pillory us? Besides don't we de

desrve it? Well, yeah. But it's crude and condescending. It's not like I disagree that manipulative journalists or the geography of suburbiaare basically loathsome, and yet I can't tolerate that 'ive got it all figured out' smugness. :dunno: It's a personal reacting, I suppose, more than an objective complains.

EB - Sure. It's familiar. I can try to pretend it's not me, but hey, I get up every morning in my suburban apartment by a drab supermarket, watch tv, go to my boring job, take my pretentious social science courses, mess with my phone and do not build my own ovens nor dedicate my life to higher cosmic mysteries. So it goes.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DP,

I must say that I find the idea of a more simple but more purposeful life appealing. I do see my own hypocrisy in the appeal as well. I am addicted to my "jeejaw".

[Shryke]

I think it's hard to argue that Stephenson is not arguing that the setup on Arbre is, in some way, better when the explicit metaphysics of the universe (multiverse) says it's more perfect.

[Eponine]

I wonder if that challenges the whole Progress to Plato notion - Arbre sent back 'signals' to Uthingy (the first world the Hedron was from) but they weren't good signals. They weren't perfect higher truths of moral celery or cute polygons or whatever, but rather very typically human violence and genocide. (Or is it becuase they weren't natural signals but manipulated ones by the guys who planted dinosaurs in the shopping mall?) And Jules Verne, in passing, does say Arbre seems like a nicer Earth, (and whatever the last planet was) and so on, and implies (to me at least) that its a social-moral thing, not just a question of nicer quality triangles. Raidne and Eponine were discussing it upthread, that this closerness to Platoness translates into, well, a better class of people somehow, (I think) but if Arbre was meant to seem as socially more ideallic that earth, It was too subtle for me to notice.

It seems like the improvement on Arbre as compared to Earth was that religion had been replaced with science/academic study. I have to admit that when I was reading, I took for granted that this was a good thing. It's certainly very appealing to me on a gut level, regardless of the larger social-moral implications. If one accepted that replacing religion with pure reason (whatever that may be) was necessary for a Platonic society (albeit one that Plato would probably consider horrifyingly impious), then Arbre would make sense as an intermediate world - the math had replaced the church, but isn't universal, isn't open to everyone in a practical sense, and had kept the dead weight of ritual and personality worship without eradicating war or violence. It would be a stronger argument if not for the modern university system, which, despite its many flaws, in general doesn't seem less accessible or more frivolous than the maths - as it is, real Earth people can seek knowledge without going through so much mandatory pseudo-religious rigamarole.

[Datepalm]

It seems like the improvement on Arbre as compared to Earth was that religion had been replaced with science/academic study.

Is it? I got the impression that outside of the maths, you've got all the religeous wankery you could possibly want. Cults, reclusive factions, creationists, monastaries, church&state, etc. More than on Earth, even - we probably wouldn't send the Pope to go meet aliens, at the end of the day. (and say what you will for academic ritualism, at least we don't wind giant clocks daily.)

(I do love the idea of the Maths, hundreder, millenarian, etc. Not in a positive 'gosh i'd love to live in a locked sterile ivory tower and think about geometry problems all my life' way, but in the sense of being a really interesting social SF conceit, which I thought wasn't really explored all that much.)

ETA - justonemorething - re Raz and his biases, becuase it's been nagging at me all night. When he meets Sammann in Cord's workshop, it's the first encounter (and he's nice.) The whole business with watching him eat lunch and so on starts with day 10 of Apert, when he gets the books thrown at him, so he's available to sneak up and make the recording during the Voco, etc, etc. In short, I think all the evidence point to the idea that Raz is very much a nice young man who's first instinct on encountering something new is not reflexive mockery and contempt.

[Lummel]

I looked at that first meeting with Samman again - its page 86 of my edition - and I'd say its too much to describe the feelings of either party as nice.

Raz and Jesry realise they are close to an Ita: "We were dumbstruck"

The Ita steps back and glares at them.

Raz and Jesry don't know what to do and step back.

The Ita changes his skull cap to a stove pipe hat while Raz and Jesry pull their hoods up.

I'd say shock and confusion rather than niceness are the dominant reactions here.

With regard to religion in Arbre science and philosophy as opposed on Earth - rationalism seems to have the upper hand although the divine isn't excluded - don't some of the Mathic groups have a notion of God/a divinity. But on Arbre reason and rationality seems to come first whereas on Earth it hasn't been so clear cut. Newton spent years studying the book of Revelations in the New Testament trying to work out when the Earth would end and didn't Einstein belief that God doesn't play dice prevent impact on his thinking about physics for a couple of decades? In that sense Arbre is in the Platonic sense a purer world of reason than Earth.

[Eponine]

Is it? I got the impression that outside of the maths, you've got all the religeous wankery you could possibly want. Cults, reclusive factions, creationists, monastaries, church&state, etc. More than on Earth, even - we probably wouldn't send the Pope to go meet aliens, at the end of the day. (and say what you will for academic ritualism, at least we don't wind giant clocks daily.)

(I do love the idea of the Maths, hundreder, millenarian, etc. Not in a positive 'gosh i'd love to live in a locked sterile ivory tower and think about geometry problems all my life' way, but in the sense of being a really interesting social SF conceit, which I thought wasn't really explored all that much.)

Starting from Raz's perspective inside the math, it's really easy to decide that what goes on in the maths is what's of true importance to the world, and I think that initial perspective colors the rest of the book - we tend to keep sympathizing with the mathic worldview, even after we discover that most people in the world don't all see it that way. However, the opening of the maths every X years does seem to be an important and serious event in the community, so it's not as if they've become totally irrelevant.

And then, I guess the fact that the whole HTW thing was proven true made Arbre a "better" world since they gave the people in their maths a safe and respected place to work. If Catholicism were "proven true", one might see Earth as a better place than Arbre, since Arbre's religions seemed pretty disperse and relatively disorganized while Earth would be seen to have have set aside lovely monasteries and cathedrals for the right people and have a lot of people be doing the right rituals. (Although, the whole moving on to better worlds thing seems a bit backwards. If the best, most rational, most intelligent world was at the top, shouldn't the people at the top realized their perfection and gone about maybe trying to elevate the lessor worlds, or at least traveling there to gain more knowledge? As it is, the most advanced world out of the 4-5 whose people we've seen seems like it must have been the first world that built the ship, since they were obviously the first in that group to realize the HTW and become organized enough to put an exploration in practice.)

Sorry this is probably so disjointed, I'm having trouble being coherent this morning.

Anyway, whatever. I can agree to disagree about this, but I nevertheless found the book unbelievably smug, and I don't think that it's Raz, at least partly because its a voice very similar to the way 'ordinary' people - suburban proles, liberal social scientists, etc - are described in Cryptonomicon as well. (Lummel, even with that criticism, you should read it. It's a fun book. Except for its treatment of women. Stephenson has improved a bit there.) Theres the same grudging admiration for nutty survivalists too. A bit weird, maybe, but at least they're not loathsomely boring, tv-watching, cell phone carrying plebes! (Admittedly, a villain. But an interesting and charismatic one.)

It drove me crazy in Snow Crash how programmers were presented as these special snowflakes who were so different from the normals that even their brain structure was different. I just kept thinking - really, have you NEVER met a programmer? (I don't remember how long ago Snow Crash was written, maybe he never had in any modern sense).

[Datepalm]

Starting from Raz's perspective inside the math, it's really easy to decide that what goes on in the maths is what's of true importance to the world, and I think that initial perspective colors the rest of the book - we tend to keep sympathizing with the mathic worldview, even after we discover that most people in the world don't all see it that way. However, the opening of the maths every X years does seem to be an important and serious event in the community, so it's not as if they've become totally irrelevant.

My impression was the opening of the concent was interesting in a sort of touristy way at large (I suppose whatever stuff they'd written over those years was sent off to some library someplace too,* but in terms of the popular idea) people came to gawp at it and it's rare and interesting, but it's not actually important.

Raz and Sammann - the thing is, the way the Ita are described...sneaky and weird and its a taboo to even get a good look at them - I thought Raz was really going out of his way to be decent and actively put aside the taboo, at least to the point of good manners.

*Thats another thing that bothers me, though i'm not sure whether to file it under smugness or the entire point of the book. So much actual science today seems to be done by large networks of scientists, building on each others work, discussing and exchanging ideas, etc, but on Arbre the scientific ideal is to lock scientists up in small groups?

[Lummel]

So much actual science today seems to be done by large networks of scientists, building on each others work, discussing and exchanging ideas, etc, but on Arbre the scientific ideal is to lock scientists up in small groups?

Yes that's interesting isn't it - and it's worse than that because those groups are isolated into the 10s, 100ers and 1000ers and their ability to even be aware of what others might be working on seems to be very limited. On the otherhand I suppose it would produce a certain throughness and conformance to intellectual traditions seems to be pretty important as well.

[Datepalm]

I initially assumed the book was really going to be all about life and society in the different maths, and outside of them, becuase its just such a compelling personal (and social and scientific and speculative) issue, but it was more incidental (slightly thematic) background, I suppose. Stephenson is one of those writers who can fill a book with endless piles of small details that might be the center of a whole novel for someone else.

It does rather put me in mind of xkcd 915 though.

[Eponine]

I initially assumed the book was really going to be all about life and society in the different maths, and outside of them, becuase its just such a compelling personal (and social and scientific and speculative) issue, but it was more incidental (slightly thematic) background, I suppose. Stephenson is one of those writers who can fill a book with endless piles of small details that might be the center of a whole novel for someone else.

Snow Crash would have been 100x better if it had been more about the workings of anarcho-capitalism and less about how awesome "hackers" are.

[Datepalm]

I think my brain just erased that stuff. All I remember from Snow Crash is the running around anarcho-capitalist LA on skateboards and having sword fights with atomic bombs and what have you. Huh, there really was some 'internet'/'hacker'/virtual reality type plot, wasn't there?

[Shryke]

Snow Crash was some fun passages at the beginning and then tons of info-dumping peppered with a 6 page story that goes nowhere.

[Errant Bard]

I earn my life by programming, and I still found Snow Crash's hackers/Metaverse as silly and hilarious as the Mafia pizza makers or the blond ninjas on missile loaded skateboards or the Aleuts with glass knives and nuclear bombs. And it had the added bonus of showing a vision of what a geek thought Internet could look like, granted a good dose of SF juice and time (it was actually not far off the mark) before the web actually existed. It's not, you know, serious.

The only thing dragging in Snow Crash is the sumerian gods thing.

For your anarcho-capitalism needs, maybe Miéville would fit the bill better.