Anathem by Neal Stephenson

I am very far behind on posting with this coming some nine months after I originally finished this book. It ends up, in some respects, counteracting the entire point of writing books up in the first place. I suppose, though, better late than never.

Like, I'm sure, many others who often feel out of place or uncomfortable in every day life, the idea of a separate portion of society deadicated to intellectual pursuits is extremely attractive. Like life-long college, with equally committed people around you. For that element of this book, reading this served as pure escapism. And, once the story moved outside of the math, I was actually wanting to read an entire book just about the daily life inside of it. If Stephenson wrote just a long, detailed description of the math, I'd read the whole thing.

One of the projects that I really like from inside the math was the modeling of a battle with plants, using different plants to represent various portions of the armies and their interactions. Maybe later in my life, when I want to stay put, I'll do that in my back yard.

Once the story moved outside the math, a few things struck me: (1) Stephenson does an okay job writing female characters, but he always has one awesome female who is really hardcore and cool, but isn't the main character or even central to the action (the only exception being in <i>Snow Crash</i> where the plot is carried quite evenly between Hiro and Y.T.). Here, the hardcore female characters (Erasmas's sister) does get an important role, but it isn't central and is much lie America Shaftoe from <i>Cryptonomican</i>.

(2)I loved the idea of a distibuted launching methodology for space destined materials. I suppose the ISS was similarly constructed, but here the distributed materials were simulteously launched and the payloads (and human carrying ships) were much smaller. Maybe not practical in this day with our launching technology, but a fscinating idea nonetheless.

It was a good book. Very emersive and well paced.

8/10