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Has anyone read Neil Stephenson's book Anathem? It's gotta be one of my favorites.
May 16 · 6 months ago · 👍 benthor · ❤ 1
☕️ Morgan · 2023-05-16 at 19:45:
Yes, it's a favourite of mine too. In terms of world building it's hard to beat. It's also fun to point to how the Internet equivalent in Anathem has nicely predicted what is probably going to happen thanks to generative AI.
🚀 StanStani · Jun 14 at 02:50:
I have not, but I have read and enjoyed Seveneves.
I had a hard time with Anathem - I think it was just too much for me. I think Stephenson hit bullseye with Cryptonomicon, although his earlier Diamond Age and Snow Crash were pretty amazing. The later stuff - meh - too much name dropping, too many characters, tedious.
Cryptonomicon is great. The Captain Crunch passage is useful for explaining why his books are on the long side :)
Yes! One of my favorite books by him, alongside Zodiac and Diamond Age.
🪐 Rochelimit · Jun 16 at 18:24:
I like Stephenson's stuff, but I've not read Anathem yet, so it's going on my list. :)
@stack, yeah the book definitely starts slowly and dryly. I like the fictionalized history of philosophy that it presents, though it was hard to keep track of the characters (e.g. Saunt Proc (the syntactic (realist) theor) vs Saunt Halikaarn (the semantic (nominalist) theor)).
Anathem has a lot of ideas relevant to Gemini :) including what the web might end up as, and minimal use of high tech.