6 ms·

My favorite Stephenson's novel is Anathem with superb world building (as usual) but also a pretty good story and ending. But it's also a book whose world (spec

My favorite Stephenson's novel is Anathem with superb world building (as usual) but also a pretty good story and ending. But it's also a book whose world (specifically the avout society) attracts me. I've grown up in a Catholic setting, but "converted" to atheism/agnosticism pretty early. But even with its many failings, there are certain aspects of religions which seem worth preserving - the focus on community, the rituals, a particular rule framework, meditation (prayers) and introspection. The book presents a (on a certain level) pretty attractive model of society which combines the practical religious patterns with a full rationalism. I kind of understand why such "atheist religion" is unlikely to get off in the real world, but it's still something I would wish for.

bradleyjg 4y ago
Anathem is also my favorite, fairly easily. I’m not surprised there are Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Diamond Age, or Baroque Cycle favorite-rs but I am when I come across someone that thought Seveneves or Dodge was his best.
- stuven 4y ago
  I've only read Seveneves to the end and was blown away (and simultaneously a bit disappointed if that makes sense?). I've started Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash but they didn't interest me as much.
- smogcutter 4y ago
  Same! I love Diamond Age and to a lesser extent Cryptonomicon, but for my money Seveneves found him leaning into his worst instincts. At his best, Stephenson’s love of oddball, hyper-focused engineers leads him into in-depth explorations of niche fields & communities. In Seveneves though it manifested as boring Heinlein-esque heroic Mary Sue libertarian engineers who are never wrong, while every other character is somewhere on a spectrum of stupid to nefarious.
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
  I absolutely loved Seveneves; easily my second favorite. The first part was too long and the second too short, however, and it's obviously not as good as Anathem ;)
  - Arainach 4y ago
    >The first part was too long and the second too short ....and no one ever mentions the third part because it was so long and poor that the book would be better without it. Seveneves wasn't bad, but part 3 dropped it well down my list of favorites, maybe below Zodiac. For context, an informal off-the-cuff ranking of his books for me: Anathem (epic world building, I love the philosophy and the theory) Cryptonomicon (I've always been interested in WWII, Cryptography, and Computers) Baroque Cycle (taught me a lot of history I didn't know and somehow made finance interesting) Diamond Age Snow Crash Reamde (not the most technical, but one of his best paced and a good thriller) Zodiac (also a nicely paced thriller) Fall (I don't hate this like some people do, but would love to see the real world from the beginning developed further) Seveneves (I love the science and hate the pacing and all of the third act) Rise and Fall of DODO (this felt like a slog to me and by the end I was forcing myself to read just to get through it). The Big U (I don't think this is as bad as Stephenson himself does but it's nothing amazing) Mongoliad (not my thing) I pre-ordered a signed copy of Termination Shock, read the first few chapters, got distracted, and have never cared enough to go back. I suppose I should finish it but it didn't grab me fast like some of them have.
    - zxexz 4y ago
      I’m always amazed at how polarizing part 3 of Seveneves is for people. I loved the whole book, but part 3 was among my favorite of any NS book. My only complaint is that it wasn’t longer.
      - fnbr 4y ago
        Yes, I completely agree. I’d love a sequel that’s just the third part. Or a sequel that’s just the second part.
      - 4y ago
- samrolken 4y ago
  I thought Fall Or Dodge In Hell was pretty good, probably just because I don't know anybody else who has tried to answer the question... what would it be like to be reincarnated in that way?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
oliwary 4y ago
I agree! There is something very beautiful about people having the time to just think and learn, without access to distracting technology or practical concerns. I wonder what would happen if this was a real pathway in society. I also wonder what were to happen if driven individuals would take sabbaticals in places like this - what kind of ideas would they come up with? Superb book in any case, may pick it up again.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
Agreed. I think there is definitely a certain kind of person who attaches to the idea of academic monks (myself included). Especially the slower pace of life and limited pop culture influences. I remember a few years ago someone on the Anathem subreddit tried to live "cloistered" for a year- not totally isolated, but intentionally avoiding media throughout the year, then they listened to a few albums and watched the best regarded movies.
jacquesm 4y ago
If anything the Avout are the scientists.
- teddyh 4y ago
  They don’t have labs and don’t do any experiments. Theoretical scientists, at best.
mylons 4y ago
i had no idea what i was going to read, but deeply enjoyed snowcrash and just picked another stephenson book to read. what a bizarre and interesting world, but at the same time.. not that bizarre given actual monastic life across various religions in our world.
havblue 4y ago
I definitely liked Anathem, but the structure of it seemed odd. Like half the book was world building then the plot happened really fast and it was over. The idea that scholars are extremely concerned about being intellectually corrupted by the outside world and having an intricate methodology to prevent it is definitely a novel concept though.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  That’s all if his books! They have such setup and then a transition to mediocre d&d campaign
- enasterosophes 4y ago
  I think you missed the part about how the avout were put into maths because they were blamed for scary tech and generally considered weird. To saeculars, maths are as much prisons and mental asylums as they are universities and monasteries. That's why avout have all those rules about not being permitted any technology except the robe, the cord and the sphere, and they are subject to auditing.
drc500free 4y ago
Interesting how different Judaism and Catholicism are in this way. My family lost forty people in the concentration camps, and there was simply no way we could reconcile a belief in god with that. But I also grew up with a strong Jewish identity, and still practice many of the rituals. I was probably in college before I really understood that other religious practices truly BELIEVED the stuff they were talking about, in a way that most Jews I knew didn't. It was like being really into Harry Potter, and one day finding out that everyone who was really into LOTR truly believed that Frodo was a real person who had gone on a journey with a magical ring. And that THEY were confused how you could talk so much about these fan theories and what is/isn't Harry Potter canon if you didn't deeply believe that there was a magical wizarding school hidden somewhere around Manchester. When my Catholic friends would lose their faith, they pretty much stopped calling themselves Catholic. At most they might call themselves "lapsed," but they always made it very clear that they no longer considered it part of their identity and they didn't go to church. My friends with more fundamentalist upbringings became aggressively anti-religious, like the militant vegans of the religious world. I think some of the reason Judaism sticks is that an individual relationship with God isn't a central tenet. The individual's primary relationship is with the community, it's the community that has a relationship/covenant with God. A lot of the practice and ethics are about how a person best contributes to a harmonious group. It also certainly helps that we keep changing languages - first Hebrew which I don't speak, then Aramaic which I also don't speak, then Yiddish which I also don't speak - so it's easy to go through the rituals without being smacked in the face with direct appeals to an almighty power. And Judaism is a "religion" somewhat more in the way that belief in Greek gods was a "religion," a part of life and culture that blends with more secular life and culture.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  I think you’re underestimating the number of cultural Catholics and other Christians.
  - drc500free 4y ago
    I’m quite sure I am. I also find that most people I’ve talked to about this underestimate how many Jews are atheists.
colordrops 4y ago
A secular buddhism/meditation revolution is currently happening in the west, with many neuroscientists and other academics involved in the mix. It kind of matches what you are describing. I'd recommend starting with Michael Taft's "Deconstructing Yourself" podcast, in which he interviews many of the most prominent western representatives of meditative traditions and human potential movements, most secular. He also is the chair of a meditation center in San Francisco called The Alembic that opened recently.
enasterosophes 4y ago
What I enjoyed about this book is it helped me "get" Platonism. Somehow, Neal Stephenson made Platonism seem cool and interesting. People focusing on the mathematical monks are missing the point that Arbre is intended to exemplify a more Platonically idealized of our world. Not all in good ways, but also in bad ways. When technology goes bad in Arbre, it goes worse than in our world. When there are divisions in Arbre society, those divisions are sharper than in our world. Mathematics is more powerful, but it is also more separated from Praxis. The maths aren't just monasteries for mathematicians; they instead represent the Platonic form of "The Institution", and as such incorporate elements of monasteries, prisons, universities, asylums, and barracks. Arbre's version of Platonism is itself divided into two camps that in our world are dimly reflected as "religion" and "abstraction"; in Arbre the division between these is larger-than-life. The Monad ever devolving into a Dyad.
indlebe 4y ago
For anyone who enjoys future world-building that dives deep into religious and political systems, I recommend Ada Palmer's Terra Ignotta series. She's an Associate Professor of Early Modern European History and the College at Chicago University, and creates a future (set in 2425-ish) using rich historical cultural references that is also not terribly improbable.

bradleyjg 4y ago

Anathem is also my favorite, fairly easily. I’m not surprised there are Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Diamond Age, or Baroque Cycle favorite-rs but I am when I come across someone that thought Seveneves or Dodge was his best.

stuven 4y ago
I've only read Seveneves to the end and was blown away (and simultaneously a bit disappointed if that makes sense?). I've started Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash but they didn't interest me as much.
smogcutter 4y ago
Same! I love Diamond Age and to a lesser extent Cryptonomicon, but for my money Seveneves found him leaning into his worst instincts. At his best, Stephenson’s love of oddball, hyper-focused engineers leads him into in-depth explorations of niche fields & communities. In Seveneves though it manifested as boring Heinlein-esque heroic Mary Sue libertarian engineers who are never wrong, while every other character is somewhere on a spectrum of stupid to nefarious.
noSyncCloud 4y ago
I absolutely loved Seveneves; easily my second favorite. The first part was too long and the second too short, however, and it's obviously not as good as Anathem ;)
- Arainach 4y ago
  >The first part was too long and the second too short ....and no one ever mentions the third part because it was so long and poor that the book would be better without it. Seveneves wasn't bad, but part 3 dropped it well down my list of favorites, maybe below Zodiac. For context, an informal off-the-cuff ranking of his books for me: Anathem (epic world building, I love the philosophy and the theory) Cryptonomicon (I've always been interested in WWII, Cryptography, and Computers) Baroque Cycle (taught me a lot of history I didn't know and somehow made finance interesting) Diamond Age Snow Crash Reamde (not the most technical, but one of his best paced and a good thriller) Zodiac (also a nicely paced thriller) Fall (I don't hate this like some people do, but would love to see the real world from the beginning developed further) Seveneves (I love the science and hate the pacing and all of the third act) Rise and Fall of DODO (this felt like a slog to me and by the end I was forcing myself to read just to get through it). The Big U (I don't think this is as bad as Stephenson himself does but it's nothing amazing) Mongoliad (not my thing) I pre-ordered a signed copy of Termination Shock, read the first few chapters, got distracted, and have never cared enough to go back. I suppose I should finish it but it didn't grab me fast like some of them have.
  - zxexz 4y ago
    I’m always amazed at how polarizing part 3 of Seveneves is for people. I loved the whole book, but part 3 was among my favorite of any NS book. My only complaint is that it wasn’t longer.
    - fnbr 4y ago
      Yes, I completely agree. I’d love a sequel that’s just the third part. Or a sequel that’s just the second part.
    - 4y ago
samrolken 4y ago
I thought Fall Or Dodge In Hell was pretty good, probably just because I don't know anybody else who has tried to answer the question... what would it be like to be reincarnated in that way?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

oliwary 4y ago

I agree! There is something very beautiful about people having the time to just think and learn, without access to distracting technology or practical concerns. I wonder what would happen if this was a real pathway in society. I also wonder what were to happen if driven individuals would take sabbaticals in places like this - what kind of ideas would they come up with? Superb book in any case, may pick it up again.

Rebelgecko 4y ago

Agreed. I think there is definitely a certain kind of person who attaches to the idea of academic monks (myself included). Especially the slower pace of life and limited pop culture influences. I remember a few years ago someone on the Anathem subreddit tried to live "cloistered" for a year- not totally isolated, but intentionally avoiding media throughout the year, then they listened to a few albums and watched the best regarded movies.

jacquesm 4y ago

If anything the Avout are the scientists.

teddyh 4y ago
They don’t have labs and don’t do any experiments. Theoretical scientists, at best.

mylons 4y ago

i had no idea what i was going to read, but deeply enjoyed snowcrash and just picked another stephenson book to read. what a bizarre and interesting world, but at the same time.. not that bizarre given actual monastic life across various religions in our world.

havblue 4y ago

I definitely liked Anathem, but the structure of it seemed odd. Like half the book was world building then the plot happened really fast and it was over. The idea that scholars are extremely concerned about being intellectually corrupted by the outside world and having an intricate methodology to prevent it is definitely a novel concept though.

etrautmann 4y ago
That’s all if his books! They have such setup and then a transition to mediocre d&d campaign
enasterosophes 4y ago
I think you missed the part about how the avout were put into maths because they were blamed for scary tech and generally considered weird. To saeculars, maths are as much prisons and mental asylums as they are universities and monasteries. That's why avout have all those rules about not being permitted any technology except the robe, the cord and the sphere, and they are subject to auditing.

drc500free 4y ago

Interesting how different Judaism and Catholicism are in this way. My family lost forty people in the concentration camps, and there was simply no way we could reconcile a belief in god with that. But I also grew up with a strong Jewish identity, and still practice many of the rituals. I was probably in college before I really understood that other religious practices truly BELIEVED the stuff they were talking about, in a way that most Jews I knew didn't. It was like being really into Harry Potter, and one day finding out that everyone who was really into LOTR truly believed that Frodo was a real person who had gone on a journey with a magical ring. And that THEY were confused how you could talk so much about these fan theories and what is/isn't Harry Potter canon if you didn't deeply believe that there was a magical wizarding school hidden somewhere around Manchester. When my Catholic friends would lose their faith, they pretty much stopped calling themselves Catholic. At most they might call themselves "lapsed," but they always made it very clear that they no longer considered it part of their identity and they didn't go to church. My friends with more fundamentalist upbringings became aggressively anti-religious, like the militant vegans of the religious world. I think some of the reason Judaism sticks is that an individual relationship with God isn't a central tenet. The individual's primary relationship is with the community, it's the community that has a relationship/covenant with God. A lot of the practice and ethics are about how a person best contributes to a harmonious group. It also certainly helps that we keep changing languages - first Hebrew which I don't speak, then Aramaic which I also don't speak, then Yiddish which I also don't speak - so it's easy to go through the rituals without being smacked in the face with direct appeals to an almighty power. And Judaism is a "religion" somewhat more in the way that belief in Greek gods was a "religion," a part of life and culture that blends with more secular life and culture.

zmgsabst 4y ago
I think you’re underestimating the number of cultural Catholics and other Christians.
- drc500free 4y ago
  I’m quite sure I am. I also find that most people I’ve talked to about this underestimate how many Jews are atheists.

colordrops 4y ago

A secular buddhism/meditation revolution is currently happening in the west, with many neuroscientists and other academics involved in the mix. It kind of matches what you are describing. I'd recommend starting with Michael Taft's "Deconstructing Yourself" podcast, in which he interviews many of the most prominent western representatives of meditative traditions and human potential movements, most secular. He also is the chair of a meditation center in San Francisco called The Alembic that opened recently.

enasterosophes 4y ago

What I enjoyed about this book is it helped me "get" Platonism. Somehow, Neal Stephenson made Platonism seem cool and interesting. People focusing on the mathematical monks are missing the point that Arbre is intended to exemplify a more Platonically idealized of our world. Not all in good ways, but also in bad ways. When technology goes bad in Arbre, it goes worse than in our world. When there are divisions in Arbre society, those divisions are sharper than in our world. Mathematics is more powerful, but it is also more separated from Praxis. The maths aren't just monasteries for mathematicians; they instead represent the Platonic form of "The Institution", and as such incorporate elements of monasteries, prisons, universities, asylums, and barracks. Arbre's version of Platonism is itself divided into two camps that in our world are dimly reflected as "religion" and "abstraction"; in Arbre the division between these is larger-than-life. The Monad ever devolving into a Dyad.

indlebe 4y ago

For anyone who enjoys future world-building that dives deep into religious and political systems, I recommend Ada Palmer's Terra Ignotta series. She's an Associate Professor of Early Modern European History and the College at Chicago University, and creates a future (set in 2425-ish) using rich historical cultural references that is also not terribly improbable.