Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and Music
My advanced reader’s copy of Neal Stephenson’s new novel, “Anathem,” arrived this afternoon. I was selected on LibraryThing to receive it in order to do a review of it on my blog and on that site. LibraryThing makes ARCs available all the time but this was the first time I’ve been selected to receive a book through their unknown process (probably looking at our libraries and seeing how well they match). Since Stephenson has been a favorite author of mine since I met him in Seattle when Snowcrash came out, this is quite a treat.
Anathem is a hefty tome, I must say. It is 935 pages long, in true Mt. Stephenson fashion. The man must be paid by the word! Many have said this before (including me). I expect that I’ll enjoy every minute of reading it though.
According to leaked information (from the catalog), the synopsis of the novel is:
Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.
Neither Amazon, Harper Collins’ own site, nor the back of the book confirm or deny this but it would seem to be true based on information below. This Livejournal entry by Gretta Cook from last September contains some information from when she met him as well. Concerning the book, it states:
“He’s writing a science fiction novel unrelated to Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. It’s set on another planet and has aliens and so on. It’s really about Platonic mathematics, but he needed the aliens and space opera-ish elements to spice it up a little bit, just like the pirates kept people engaged in the Baroque books.”
The book came with a CD of music, which I must say was surprising. It says it is “IOLET: Music from the World of Anathem.” There are seven tracks:
- Aproximating Pi
- Thousander Chant
- Proof Using Finite Projective Geometry
- Cellular Automata
- Quantum Spin Network
- Sixteen Color Prime Generating Automation
- Deriving the Quadratic Equation
Each of these is between four and eleven and a half minutes long. There is a note with it stating that “In order to conform to the practices of the avout, this disc contains music composed for and performed by voices alone.”
I’ve just listened to several of the songs on this CD and, frankly, this is some weird shit. I say this without reservation. The musical styles are all over the map except that they all only use human voices (and occasionally hands). Some of it is similar to Western, Christian, styles of chanting. Other tracks are more Classical vocal arrangements with singing. The rest of the tracks seem to be heavily influenced by Eastern, Buddhist, styles of chanting, especially Tibetan Buddhism with its use of harmonics and overlaying voices. It varies quite a bit from song to song. Additionally, when there are recognizable words, they are not in English (nor in any language that I recognize). “Celluar Automata” is the weirdest track of this sort with multiple voices weaving in and out, along with some clapping and exclamations in an unknown language. “Thousander Chant” would be at home on some of the collections of Tibetan chanting that I have and whoever is performing it is obviously trained in the throat chanting used by Tibetans and others in Asia.
I think the song titles, at least, gives a partial sense of the thrust of the book and the monastic order within it.
Update: I did notice that the book, at the very beginning, defines the term “Anathem” as:
Anathem: (I) In Proto-Orth, a poetic or musical invocation of Our Mother Hylaea, which since the tme of Adrakhones has been the climax of the daily liturgy (hence the Fluccish word Anthem meaning a song of great emotional resonance, esp. one that inspires listeners to sing along). Note: this sense is archaic, and used only in a ritual context where it is unlikely to be confused with the much more commonly used sense 2. (2) In New Orth, an aut by which an incorrigible fraa or suur is ejected from the math and his or her work sequestered (hence the Fluccish word Anathema meaning intolerable statements or ideas). See Throw-back.
- The Dictionary, 4th edition, A.R. 3000
I would guess, given that this is the title of the book, that the music is included because of the word’s (and probably those of the themes of the book) relationship to song and also to mathematics both. After all, the book is mentioned above as being about “…3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable ’saecular’ world…” I’ll know more once I read the entire tome.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Interesting. It sounds excellent. Shades of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.
I’ve been reading Neal Stephenson too: Snow Crash
June 28th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
This is an intriguing concept. I’m a fan of Stephenson’s work, particularly Quicksilver. I’d love to see more music incorporated into literature in this way. So many great fantasy works, like Lord of the Rings and Elizabeth Haydon’s Rhapsody books, have great songs in them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear the music to go along with the lyrics? I almost always listen to music while reading, so having an album’s worth of music written as a score for the book would be welcome.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
How can I comment on a book I haven’t read? I guess I just did.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:17 am
It’s also interesting to note the similarity between the name of the Novel and word Analemma (from the Latin for the pedestal of a sundial) which is the name given to the pattern which appears in the American cover art. Here’s a link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma.
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Out of curiosity, does it include CD credits? I’d bet Brian Eno appears somewhere in it, to tie in with the Long Now connection to _Anathema_.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm
It does have credits but Brian Eno has nothing to do with the CD. It was done by David Stutz.
August 9th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I just finished reading Anathem this week (also got an advance copy–love working in bookstores!) and I really like it. It is dense as heck with the mathematics, though. The music does help you get into Erasmas’ world and understand his aesthetics. I’m curious to read your review!
August 9th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I have actually been reading a couple of other things but it is on the list for the next week.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:20 am
You got the Librarything ARC? I am so jealous. Enjoy the book, and make sure to put up a review when you're done. I'm dying to know how the book turned out.
As for the soundtrack, I wonder if they will include it with the normal prints of the books as well?
August 25th, 2008 at 6:36 am
I would love to hear some of this music – are there any preview clips on the Web before the CD comes out?
Btw, there is some connection to Brian Eno here – Eno has also created an album which donates its proceeds to the Long Now foundation, as is the case with Stutz's CD…
http://www.longnow.org/shop/prints-cds/bells-cd...
September 21st, 2008 at 12:12 am
You can stream the tracks from Neal's website, here:
http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/music.htm
November 17th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I absolutely loved Cryptonomicon and enjoyed the Trilogy, BUT this Anathem is 100% unreadable. The worst mess in print that I have every come across. I read eight pages and it was an agony.
I hope Neal has gone totally mad. It would be the only excuse possible. Why did the editors not shut this down? Greed? One last burn of his fan base?
November 17th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I'm not sure why you feel so strongly that it was bad. I quite enjoyed the book and I, personally, know a number of others who have enjoyed it as well.
December 5th, 2008 at 7:53 am
I just finished it and also found it quite enjoyable.
I don't understand at all the few negative reviews I've read. It's like they were reading some other novel entirely.
It's not an easy read at times, no. That's in part due to the invented proper nouns. Which is fine to me, it would be weird if an alien world called Hilbert space Hilbert space. So Neil teaches us what "Hemn space" is, giving us a primer on real science and introducing the term. In fact, I seem to remember a Doctor Who episode from the late 70's where Adric asks Nyssa (two aliens, neither one from Earth) if she has tried a "Fourier analysis" on the thing she's working on. This bugged the heck out of me. How the heck does Adric know who Fourier was?
It's also hard to read due to the heavy amount of scientific concepts involved. If you've read books on physics, even ones for the casual reader, that talk about uncertainty, wave function collapse, etc, then you will just "get" what Neil is talking about without a whole lot of trouble. I understood 99.99% of the concepts laid out, and correlated them directly to Earthly science concepts. I wonder how many people will be able to do that.
But this is why I love NS. He does not shy away from using advanced science and technology concepts, and manages not to do too much hand-waving to explain stuff. Of course there is some hand-waving. There must be at least a little I believe – if a book sticks exactly to real science, the story would only be something in the realm of current possibility on Earth. And what fun is that?
To the naysayers and detractors who obviously haven't even finish it (I'm looking at you, page 8) I repeat a great comment on slashdot about this book (paraphrasing): go back and watch your Die Hard speelies, you ignorant sline!