Anathem: Stephenson

[Rez]

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?

 

[GOLLUM]

Nope, I bought it 2 weeks ago now but just had no time to read it yet. I skimmed the first dozen pages or so and it looked quite promising.

 

[Dave]

I'm currently reading it, but it is large and hardback and not the kind of book you can easily read on a train or outdoors, so I'm only about a third of the way through. It deliberately looks and feels like a religious text. Don't be put off by this, or the long introduction detailing the Math and it's Orders. That is all important to the later story, once you understand the characters, and the very detailed world and history he has created in Arbe. You then begin to see that the book covers much the same ground and favourite topics of Stephenson - language, communication, philosophy - and how geometry is something that crosses the boundaries of those things. I'm really enjoying it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026826.400-ianathemi-by-neal-stephenson.html
http://brightcove.newscientist.com/services/link/bcpid1873822884/bctid1915453582

 

[Dave]

So, anyone finished it yet?

I'm almost finished, and its a great read - obviously a lot more to it than I said in that last post - but something has been bugging me and I can't talk about it without spoilers...

Spoiler:-

Spoiler

It is a book about First Contact with a difference. My problem is... How does the alien from Antarch (Earth, I guess) breath the Arbre Oxygen and vice versa?

Stephenson tries to cover over this on page 816, but it is just not possible in my view. If they come from other Cosmi where the fundamental constants are different; with atomic nuclei so different that chemistry is affected; that enzymes don't work, bacteria cannot infect, food passes through the gut undigested; well then in that case, Oxygen could not be respired either.

....What do you think?

Edit: Okay, there is an explanation on page 841. I really should read through to the end of Stephenson's books before commenting. I did the same thing with Enoch Root.

Still, I think Haemoglobin might react more like it does with Carbon Monoxide and they would die rather than suffer hallucinations. Anyway, with all the disconformities and paraconformities between the various alternative realities, I'm having trouble knowing what was real or what was hallucination. I'm not going to know until I finish either.