Anotherthem book review

Hey,

Last night, buried beneath two cats, I hammered through to the end of Anathem by Neal Stevenson. mikecap has been at me to read this for awhile and it's gotten pretty good press.

And they're all pretty much right. This is a good book. At 900 pages it really needs to be and Stevenson keeps things moving right along.

Here's the basic skinny: On a world called Arbre, theoretical scientists have been consigned to monastical orders kept separate from the rest of society. This is done in part to prevent the distractions of the outer world from affecting their studies, but mostly because in the past the scientists have built things (devices to create artificial elements, advanced genetic engineering and so on) that are ill-understood and terrifying to the rest of the world.

So the scientists live in pretty low-tech style thinking their great thoughts. Their world is further broken up into subgroups that isolate themselves for a set period of time. The Unitarians are sequestered from society for a full year, Dectarians for 10, Centians for 100 and millennials for 1000. On a regular schedule however, the gates to their compounds open and the various groups are let out. Stories like this about sequestered groups of thinkers (The Name of the Rose, The Glass Bead Game) are kind of a sweet spot for me so I got sucked in pretty quickly.

The story opens when Erasmas, a young Dectarian, is let out of the monastery for the first time in 10 years. He wanders around a secular world very much like our own (and Stephenson takes any number of jabs at modern living). When he returns, he discovers that the monastery's observatory has been shut down to everyone. Other odd disruptions in day-to-day life start building up, culminating in the ouster of his mentor, Fraa Orolo. Pretty soon Erasmas himself is out in the wider world trying to piece together what's going on.

Much like Promethea is a primer on Hermetic magic disguised as a comic book, Anathem is a primer on higher-level/theoretical math/physics disguised as a science fiction novel. Given the quasi-religious nature of science, much of the book is filled with long dialogs where the characters investigate some scientific/mathematical/philosophical question. While this could become really tiresome, really fast, it's handled very well here. At the back of the book are some extended footnotes where some teaching moments in the story that get skipped over are explained in full. It'd have been fun to see a few more of them, which should indicate how good the writing is.

The book strays a bit from hard-SF into sci-fi woo-woo land a couple of times, but as the book progresses towards more and more theoretical, it's not too terrible. I will also say that the last quarter of the book involves a sneak attack so brilliant and original that I sort of don't want people to read this book so I can steal the idea for an RPG and have people think I'm awesome.

So yeah, Anathem is well worth the reading time and now that it's in paperback, your enjoyment-to-price ratio is going to be pretty high.

later
Tom

Anotherthem book review

Hey,

Last night, buried beneath two cats, I hammered through to the end of Anathem by Neal Stevenson. mikecap has been at me to read this for awhile and it's gotten pretty good press.

And they're all pretty much right. This is a good book. At 900 pages it really needs to be and Stevenson keeps things moving right along.

Here's the basic skinny: On a world called Arbre, theoretical scientists have been consigned to monastical orders kept separate from the rest of society. This is done in part to prevent the distractions of the outer world from affecting their studies, but mostly because in the past the scientists have built things (devices to create artificial elements, advanced genetic engineering and so on) that are ill-understood and terrifying to the rest of the world.

So the scientists live in pretty low-tech style thinking their great thoughts. Their world is further broken up into subgroups that isolate themselves for a set period of time. The Unitarians are sequestered from society for a full year, Dectarians for 10, Centians for 100 and millennials for 1000. On a regular schedule however, the gates to their compounds open and the various groups are let out. Stories like this about sequestered groups of thinkers (The Name of the Rose, The Glass Bead Game) are kind of a sweet spot for me so I got sucked in pretty quickly.

The story opens when Erasmas, a young Dectarian, is let out of the monastery for the first time in 10 years. He wanders around a secular world very much like our own (and Stephenson takes any number of jabs at modern living). When he returns, he discovers that the monastery's observatory has been shut down to everyone. Other odd disruptions in day-to-day life start building up, culminating in the ouster of his mentor, Fraa Orolo. Pretty soon Erasmas himself is out in the wider world trying to piece together what's going on.

Much like Promethea is a primer on Hermetic magic disguised as a comic book, Anathem is a primer on higher-level/theoretical math/physics disguised as a science fiction novel. Given the quasi-religious nature of science, much of the book is filled with long dialogs where the characters investigate some scientific/mathematical/philosophical question. While this could become really tiresome, really fast, it's handled very well here. At the back of the book are some extended footnotes where some teaching moments in the story that get skipped over are explained in full. It'd have been fun to see a few more of them, which should indicate how good the writing is.

The book strays a bit from hard-SF into sci-fi woo-woo land a couple of times, but as the book progresses towards more and more theoretical, it's not too terrible. I will also say that the last quarter of the book involves a sneak attack so brilliant and original that I sort of don't want people to read this book so I can steal the idea for an RPG and have people think I'm awesome.

So yeah, Anathem is well worth the reading time and now that it's in paperback, your enjoyment-to-price ratio is going to be pretty high.

later
Tom

My cats play tiddly-winks...

...with their food bowls.

Actually, it's usually just one food bowl and I suspect that it's just Thorn who gets carried away playing with her kibble and flipping the dish.

So my thought is to find a sold, heavy food dish (ceramic or metal) with a rubber foot to prevent skidding. Then I'll remove the mat the dishes have been sitting on (because the cats tend to ruck it up and pee on it). This won't stop kibble from slopping out onto the floor, but it should reduce the vacuuming kibble time significantly.

The local PetCo had lots of light/flippable cat bowls. There were ceramic bowls for dogs, but I worried the cats would use them as hockey-pucks even if they couldn't flip it. All the metalic bowls (dog or cat) seemed way too light.

I'm going to give the local PetSmart a try next time I buy groceries, but does anyone have other suggestions?

I also need to pick up a toilet paper storage container to...store my toilet paper (or, as the cats like to call it: Mr. Man's FunTime Confetti).

later
Tom

My cats play tiddly-winks...

...with their food bowls.

Actually, it's usually just one food bowl and I suspect that it's just Thorn who gets carried away playing with her kibble and flipping the dish.

So my thought is to find a sold, heavy food dish (ceramic or metal) with a rubber foot to prevent skidding. Then I'll remove the mat the dishes have been sitting on (because the cats tend to ruck it up and pee on it). This won't stop kibble from slopping out onto the floor, but it should reduce the vacuuming kibble time significantly.

The local PetCo had lots of light/flippable cat bowls. There were ceramic bowls for dogs, but I worried the cats would use them as hockey-pucks even if they couldn't flip it. All the metalic bowls (dog or cat) seemed way too light.

I'm going to give the local PetSmart a try next time I buy groceries, but does anyone have other suggestions?

I also need to pick up a toilet paper storage container to...store my toilet paper (or, as the cats like to call it: Mr. Man's FunTime Confetti).

later
Tom

"Neil Armstrong didn't have a double chin..."

Hey,

So here's a question for the space trivia fans out there.

We were discussing how I'll probably never go into space mostly because I wouldn't fit. Also, I probably weigh 1.5 astronauts.

But this got me thinking:

Who is the heaviest person who's ever been to space? Not counting all their life support gear, if you just took them all to a gym and weighed them, who'd be the heaviest?

My guess is that the heaviest astronaut is probably an American and he (almost certainly a he) went up during a shuttle flight. Before the shuttle, you pretty much had to be a test pilot and they exercised the hell out of you. When the shuttle can take up John Glenn, the entry requirements are a bit lower. I suspect that most Russian cosmonauts are still ex-military or in really good shape (I could totally be wrong) and astronauts from other countries are probably extra-fit because they need to look good to the folks at home.

I doubt this is a question we can readily answer without detailed review of mission health records, but there's someone we spent a little more on to shift their mass out of our gravity well.

later
Tom

"Neil Armstrong didn't have a double chin..."

Hey,

So here's a question for the space trivia fans out there.

We were discussing how I'll probably never go into space mostly because I wouldn't fit. Also, I probably weigh 1.5 astronauts.

But this got me thinking:

Who is the heaviest person who's ever been to space? Not counting all their life support gear, if you just took them all to a gym and weighed them, who'd be the heaviest?

My guess is that the heaviest astronaut is probably an American and he (almost certainly a he) went up during a shuttle flight. Before the shuttle, you pretty much had to be a test pilot and they exercised the hell out of you. When the shuttle can take up John Glenn, the entry requirements are a bit lower. I suspect that most Russian cosmonauts are still ex-military or in really good shape (I could totally be wrong) and astronauts from other countries are probably extra-fit because they need to look good to the folks at home.

I doubt this is a question we can readily answer without detailed review of mission health records, but there's someone we spent a little more on to shift their mass out of our gravity well.

later
Tom