(urth) OT: Anathem

Rjyan Kadwallader cexwell at gmail.com
Mon Sep 15 11:54:38 PDT 2008


is it really totally OK to write a fantasy book about a future version of
our planet and call it "Orth"?


On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Mostly I agree with Dirda; however I think I like it considerably better
> than he does.  I admire and approve of Stephenson's project.  I suspect
> Stephenson really was thinking about the Harry Potter crowd when he wrote
> this -- some of whom would be approaching the age of the protagonist, Fraa
> Erasmus, and his friends.  I may be reading too much into the novel, but I
> am convinced that Stephenson was presenting his science-and-math monastery
> (the Mynster) is a counterpoint to the Hogwarts "school for wizards,"
> replacing the realm of wish-fulfillment fantasy with the realm of abstract
> theories and ideas.  (The novel seems to be geared toward a just-post-YA age
> group who were thrilled by the steadily increasing page counts of the Harry
> Potter sequels and thus won't be scared off by this 900+ page monster.)
> Stephenson is trying to uplift the Harry Potter crowd with a taste of
> philosophy and science, and offering some positive alternatives
> to the consumer-driven, intellectually barren,
> fundamentalism-spawning culture they've grown up in.
>
> Unfortunately, he's going to lose many of those Harry Potter readers (as he
> nearly lost me), most likely between pp. 12 and 23, in a long description of
> the Mynster that far outlasts any curiosity you may have developed about the
> place by this point.  It was while slogging through these pages that I kept
> thinking about how Wolfe introduces us to Severian's world and implies all
> sorts of fantastic things about it without interrupting the story to take us
> on a walking tour of the citadel and the Matachin Tower, pointing out
> details left and right.  But that's just the kind of thing Stephenson does
> at several points in *Anathem*, and whereas Wolfe's details are integral
> to the story, Stephenson's are mostly just flavor.
>
> But once I forgave Stephenson for not transcending popular fiction with a
> new *Book of the New Sun*, I started to enjoy *Anathem*.  I have more to
> say about the book, but I'm curious about others' reactions to Anathem.
>
> On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Matthew Keeley <
> matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Anyone read Michael Dirda's review of Anathem in The Washington Post?
>>
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402460.html
>>
>> Dirda compares Anathem with The Book of the New Sun, which he says is much
>> superior.
>>
>> -Matt
>>
>
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