NERDS GONE WILD!
Cloistered intellectuals become unlikely heroes in Neal Stephenson’s opus Anathem.originally published by Fully Booked Zine, October 2008
Neal Stephenson’s Anathem is a supreme exercise in world-building. It desires to be an encyclopedia, almanac, and philosophical treatise, wrapped around the skeleton of a three-act sci-fi adventure. Oh, and it’s roughly 900 pages long, not counting the various supplementary resources. It’s grandiose, ambitious, and shamelessly indulgent towards Stephenson’s academic pet themes, investigated earlier by titles like The Baroque Cycle. Yet I’m absolutely fascinated by it!
All you need to know, without giving away crucial plot twists, is this: a fictional world called Arbre has been long divided into two main castes. There’s the Sæcular realm – full of complacent, superstitious plebes, numbed by a steady diet of porn, extreme sports, and organized religion. Then there’s the Avout – a cloistered group of hyper-smart uber-nerds who lead a monastic existence, shunning advanced technology. They practice various complex sciences, via oral tradition and hand-scribed documents. The two groups coexist in a tense equilibrium, until a foreboding threat requires an elite cell of young Avout to Save The Planet. Yes, it’s a stock genre plot. But Stephenson masterfully uses it as a starting point for crafting a believable new civilization.
Indeed, Anathem’s true achievement is creating an entire speculative world by piecing together artifacts from our received culture – everything from Plato to Star Trek – and rendering them strange and unfamiliar. It’s perfectly suited for readers like me, who enjoy figuring out which “real world” analogs correspond to the various ideas and personas.
But all of this would be intellectual parlor games, if it wasn’t built around an engaging narrative. For that, Stephenson draws upon some familiar elements: hooded tricksters, mad scientists, and the fear of prospective alien invasion. Like a skilled literary alchemist, he mostly succeeds at fusing these various approaches, making Anathem a fascinating journey into the world of the mind.