I forget when I purchased Anathem by Neal Stephenson and added it to my Kindle library. I’m guessing it was probably in 2013 or so since I had finished reading The Diamond Age by him at that time, and really enjoyed that book. Whenever I bought it though, the book sat, collecting digital dust, in my Kindle library until I was on a eight hour plane flight returning from my trip to Romania and Croatia back in May 2025. If I had not finished the book I was reading, and had I thought ahead to download additional books before being 35,000 feet above the Atlantic, I probably would not have started reading Anathem.
It’s not that Anathem isn’t the type of book I want to read. In fact, it very much belongs to the genre of high-concept science-fiction that I enjoy. It’s just that I had forgotten about it, and there’s a long list of other books I would place ahead of it on my reading list. Still, I bring all this up because there’s a part of me that wishes it was still collecting digital dust.
Set on the world of Arbre, Anathem follows groups of intellectuals, called avout, who separate themselves from secular society and live in Maths, which are essentially monasteries. Stephenson creates an utterly fascinating society, where the avout devote their entire lives to learning. Like monks, they give up worldly wants and possessions in pursuit of science.
The tipping point for creating this kind of society was a near total collapse that took place thousands of years before. Following the collapse, scientists were sequestered from the rest of society, and though I don’t think it’s ever precisely explained why, I think it’s easy to imagine the reason: scientists are necessary for progress, but they also create atomic weapons. I do not believe it’s hard to imagine something similar happening in our own future should such weapons ever be used again.
As Stephenson introduces us to one particular Math, it becomes evident that an alien starship is orbiting and watching Arbre. The book subsequently becomes not only an exploration of a possible first contact scenario, but also an exploration of the many worlds hypothesis; that is, that there might be an infinite variety of universes each with their own distinct Earth.
All of this is fascinating, and the world Stephenson creates is rich in detail. Unfortunately, I found it to be a slog, because just as the author creates a unique world, he also creates unique vocabulary for that world. Not just for scientific concepts or for the Maths and the different orders of the avout, but also for common things, like phones and cars. I can understand the rationale, but I also found myself frequently reading sentences where every word of substance was in the vernacular he created. That makes for very tedious reading.
Contributing to the tediousness is whole chapters are devoted to dialogues between two characters discussing theories like the many worlds hypothesis. This can be interesting, but it means the book can sometimes read more like a scientific treatise than a novel. Mix in the aforementioned problem of unique vocabulary, and there were many times where I put down the book and didn’t pick it up again for several days.
That being said, the ideas and the society in Anathem is truly interesting, and I find myself thinking more about it than I do of most books. That alone would make the book worth recommending to those who are interested in high-concept science-fiction, but unfortunately, the ending is bogus. Everything is thrown out the window, and I can describe the ending only as “magic made it happen,” as one character is magically able to guide events toward a good conclusion by making himself able to jump across dimensions. He is able to do this because. (not a typo)
It is an awful ending to a book that, though often a slog at times, is usually quite thoughtful about connecting theory with practicality. Going forward, though, I have endeavored to download a number of books to my Kindle lest I find myself 35,000 feet over the Atlantic with nothing to read yet again.