Neal Stephenson is not only among our best novelists, but among the most unusual. His first big-seller was “Snow Crash,” a musing about virtual realities intruding into the real world. “Cryptonomicon,” an intricate tale of codebreaking in World War II, was intertwined with a second, related tale of hacking, startups and data security in the late 20th Century. That geekalicious bestseller was followed by “The Baroque Cycle,” three novels – “Quicksilver,” “The Confusion” and “The System of the World” – that dealt with the impact of the Enlightenment, and the power of money and markets, in upsetting the previous structures of philosophy, religion and state power.
Stephenson’s books are idea-rich, and in the hands of a lesser writer might come across as dull or didactic. He avoids that fate by virtue of superb writing, and a keen eye for geek psychology; his main characters (geeks to the man, or woman) are immediately recognizable either to other geeks, such as myself, or to those who’ve spent a lot of time around geeks. (A scene in “Cryptonomicon” where his character engages in a carefully calibrated procedure to produce optimally delicious Captain Crunch is a classic.) Geeks are a society apart, with its own rules and conventions, and Stephenson is expert on those folkways.
But Stephenson’s latest book, “Anathem,” takes the “society apart” angle to an extreme. “Anathem” takes place on another world entirely. In it, fear of runaway technological and social development has led to the isolation of scientists and other thinkers into monastic settlements that are largely isolated from the outside world. This isolation suits many of those thinkers just fine, and often serves the interests of the “Secular Powers” outside. It’s a case of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” taken further.
Everything seems stable until an anomaly is spotted in the heavens: a spacecraft from elsewhere. The aliens – who turn out to be rather human – come from societies who have not engaged in such isolation. As one character observes, “Turns out that all we’d been doing was losing the arms race to [worlds] that hadn’t imposed any such limits.” Stability seems like strength to those who are strongly invested in the status quo, but the real world is a dynamic place, and failure to change is often a weakness. And the deep thoughts of the isolated thinkers turn out to matter a lot in the end.
All this could have been a very simple morality tale: Science good, repression of science bad. And, in the wake of things like Bill Joy’s call for us to renounce some advanced technologies rather than risk social dislocation, such a morality tale might even have been useful. But Stephenson aims higher.
Stephenson created this world and its inhabitants mostly so that he could explore a wide variety of philosophical and social ideas, with sources ranging from Pythagoras, Thales and Plato all the way to Godel and Danny Hillis.
“Anathem” will wind up another bestseller, which says some interesting things about today’s world, too. Fifty years ago, people were writing a lot of good science fiction, but a book like “Anathem” probably wouldn’t have done well. Culture-warriors often claim that Americans are being dumbed down, but if Stephenson can produce multiple bestsellers as dependent upon readers who know a lot, and can understand a lot, as he does suggests that the mass culture isn’t as dumb as some claim. Which is a relief, because there is one place where reality mirrors Stephenson’s tale: Whatever the future brings, we’ll need to be as smart as we can to deal with it.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at Instapundit.com.
Anathem
by Neal Stephenson
William Morrow