|
I am about 300 pages into Anathem right now and when it was a pseudo-monk philosophy lifestyle type thing it was fairly interesting, but when it takes a hard right with the twist I haven't been able to put it down. Cryptonomicon was the same way. Reamde also grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go. Something about Stephenson's writing style just really clicks with me. e: Mustn't forget The Diamond Age. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Feb 28, 2014 |
#
¿
Feb 28, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 19:24 |
|
|
AlphaDog posted:I enjoyed the hell out of Cryptonomicon, Reamde, Snow Crash, and The Big U, and I absolutely loved The Diamond Age. I couldn't get in to Anathem at all, how long does it take before the twist? (Don't spoil the twist if you can help it, I just want to know how far through the book it is). I'm reading it on my Nook so I don't know if the page count is different from a physical book, but they start hinting towards it at around the 200 page mark and by page 300ish it's pretty much out of the bag. This is out of ~770ish pages listed.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2014 01:05
|
|
|
Spoilers Below posted:I take it I should give it another go, perhaps not worrying so much about the language and focusing more on the plot and ideas? It picks up a bit, hopefully? If you divide Anathem up into thirds, the first third is basically a bunch of world building, the second third is easily the 'worst' part of the book (but it's kind of necessary for the plot) but in the last third it gets really, really good. Like I don't want to say why because that would be a spoiler but trust me, all that setup in the first third just comes together beautifully.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2014 05:40
|
|
|
Soggy Muffin posted:Anathem or Zodiak next? Have not read Zodiak (or the Baroque Cycle) yet, but everyone should read Anathem. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2014 20:49
|
|
|
redshirt posted:I just finished Anathem and really enjoyed it. I'm going to re-read it immediately. With the guy being named Jules Verne and them name-dropping Faraday cages, and IIRC someone says Earth offhanded once in the book, so I think so yeah. I think the thing with Jad is that he figured out how to 'access' different Narratives and know what each version of him is doing, but not actually 'travel' between them. So the Jad that randomly picks the right 4-digit code for the valve door is just one Jad of ten thousand also doing it, but we follow that Narrative because it's the one important to the plot. That doesn't explain how Erasmas remembers it in the Narrative that we eventually follow to the end, though (the one where Lodoghir implies that Jad is alive and has altered records to seem dead, but we don't see him again in the book anyway) Anathem was just really interesting. I think I'm going to have to cogitate on it and/or re-read it to really grok it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2014 03:18
|
|
|
redshirt posted:Are you referring to Fraa Lodoghir? I'm not sure what's up with him, because since he wasn't with cell 317 he shouldn't be aware of the narratives collapsing, yet he seems to think that Fraa Jad is still alive despite records showing him being dead.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2014 01:16
|
|
|
Ravenfood posted:That implies that there is some mechanism where people are pulling information from other Narratives and using in them in different ones. This is outright stated earlier in the book as the reason for/nature of consciousness. The only difference is that Fraa Jad (and presumably other Thousanders) have developed a praxis/method for consciously accessing/manipulating different Narratives as opposed to everyone else who simply do it unconsciously. I think you bring up a good point in that it's possible that Jad was exploring those other Narratives specifically so that the crew of the Daban Urnud would unconsciously pick up on those other possibilities and thus be motivated to negotiate in at least one Narrative. It's never explicitly said in the book but it seems to follow from the implications of hat we are told. The real dangling plot point for me is Fraa Lodoghir seeming to know about Jad's ability/know that Jad was using it despite him being on Arbre at the time and (from what I understand) he should have been tied to a single Narrative since he wasn't out of contact like the boarding party, and as such he should have been subject to any changes made - or more precisely, whatever eventual state the Narrative settled on would have 'always' been that way for him.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2014 22:03
|
|
|
The thing that really gets me about Anathem is that if you take the Narrative structure as presented, then that means that everything we 'see' happen actually happens in SOME Narrative, somewhere. There is a Narrative out there where Jad picked the right random code, some Urnudans shotgunned him and Erasmas, and the EKs went off and sterilized the Daban Urnud. There's a Narrative where the Urnudans used their World Killer bomb. The only reason the Narrative we follow to the end of the book ends on a good note is because several other Narratives were 'sacrificed' in order to make it happen.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2014 22:43
|
|
|
Snak posted:He doesn't have to do this. He just has to move himself and his companions into a narrative where the others are willing to negotiate. It's exactly like moving into the narrative where the combination that he entered was the correct one. Except Jad explicitly tells Erasmas that this isn't possible. The Jad that punched in the combination was a different Jad than the one who talked to the Urnudan dude - same person, different Narratives, each accessing the mind of other Jads in other Narratives. The Erasmas in the Narrative where Jad got the code right died from the EK in his gut going off. The Erasmas witnessing Jad's talk with the Urnudan guy was a different Erasmas, who had access to the memories of the dead Erasmas from the other Narrative, and the Erasmas from the end of the book is yet another Erasmas with access to the memories of both of the first two. VVV: OK yeah, we're basically saying the same thing. 
WarLocke fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Mar 15, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2014 22:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 19:24 |
|
|
The Sumerian stuff in Snow Crash never came across as 'serious' to me. In a book with Mafia pizza delivery services, a crazy Eskimo who kills with ice knives and keeps a nuke in his motorcycle's sidecar, and skateboards with anti-personnel vibration bomb things on them, treating the Sumerian language meta-meme thing seriously is a sort of silliness in itself.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2016 00:23
|
|