{"id":573,"date":"2010-02-10T08:19:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T12:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=573"},"modified":"2010-02-10T08:19:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T12:19:45","slug":"short-anathem-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"Short Anathem review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finished reading Neal Stephenson’s lengthy novel Anathem<\/a>\"\" a short while ago.\u00a0 I’ve never read anything by Stephenson before, but I’ve seen his books at the library and bookstores, and they’ve always looked interesting.\u00a0 This is the first one I actually decided to go ahead and read.<\/p>\n

For someone who’s never read a Stephenson novel before and didn’t know what to expect, it’s pretty brilliant.\u00a0 My mind is still a bit tired from trying to understand it all.\u00a0 I doubt I’ll ever be able to, since I sort of disagree with the directions in which he takes quantum physics (another one of those “it implies the existence of parallel universes!” things, which I guess works in this science fiction setting, but from a real science point of view, I’m not convinced; not that I’m a quantum physics expert of course).\u00a0 But the book is filled with very engaging topics on physics and philosophy, and Stephenson’s prose on the topics is very<\/em> readable.\u00a0 So even if you’re new to the topics he discusses, it’s not like reading a scholarly journal on the topic with weirdo lingo.\u00a0 It might be hard to grasp some of the concepts, but that will be because of the concepts themselves (like parallel universes) and not because of the writing.\u00a0 I honestly think Stephenson could write some pretty awesome<\/em> nonfiction books if he so desired, and easily replace this little Godel, Escher, Bach part of my bookshelf.<\/p>\n

I do have one minor complaint, which includes a bit of a spoiler.\u00a0 So if you’re planning on reading the book, read no further so that I do not taint your opinions.<\/p>\n

I thought the ending was weak.\u00a0 Actually, I Googled around, and it seems this is not an uncommon thought for Stephenson’s work in general.\u00a0 What was the climax?\u00a0 It builds up to it and then we’re in the epilogue.\u00a0 I could write a much more lengthy post about why I think it was weak and what I’d do to improve it, but my mind is too tired for that.\u00a0 And, being a wannabe writer myself, I’ll admit that endings are probably the hardest part to please others with.\u00a0 And, from a reader’s perspective, I’m generally displeased with endings anyway.\u00a0 I think the best ending I know of is the ending to Ender’s Game<\/em>, which I read back in 2007 (and was written back in 1985 I think?).\u00a0 The only other books I thought had acceptable endings were The Man in the High Castle<\/em> by Philip K. Dick and Anvil of the World<\/em> by Kage Baker (who, sadly, just passed away last month).\u00a0 All the other fiction books I’ve read had either weak endings, or “to be continued” endings, which I guess don’t really count, do they?<\/p>\n

Overall, though, Anathem<\/em> is still a brilliant piece, and I will definitely be reading some more Neal Stephenson some time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finished reading Neal Stephenson’s lengthy novel Anathem a short while ago.\u00a0 I’ve never read anything by Stephenson before, but I’ve seen his books at the library and bookstores, and they’ve always looked interesting.\u00a0 This is the first one I actually decided to go ahead and read. For someone who’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[38],"tags":[188,189],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-9f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}