Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

This weekend, I finished a really interesting book recommended by my friend Ian, called Anathem by Neal Stephenson. For those who know his work but not the name, Neal Stephenson wrote Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon. Throughout all his work, there's a deep love of the internal lore of his worlds and a profound knack for taking something really, really complicated and making it really, really funny.

Basically, Anathem is about a monastic scholar in an alternate universe, who lives in the kind of sacred thinktank Socrates might have devised. When an unidentified spacecraft appears in an unusual orbit, Erasmus uses it as an opportunity to explore the nature of human consciousness through Socratic Dialogues while the rest of the world quakes in fear.

On the one hand, it's an unusual take on First Contact, and possibly the most reasonable. On the other hand, it serves up an examination of human evolution with more scrutiny than anything since 2001: A Space Odyssey, and does it with hindsight into quantum science and string theory.

If that doesn't sound interesting to you, then the structure of this book will probably frustrate you - these are the kinds of things the characters are interested in. If you're reading this and thinking to yourself "Socratic Monks, Aliens, and Quantum theory? Hmm...", then allow me to further titillate you by suggesting that these monks are masters of the fighting arts, and that those same monks will be blasted off into space.

Then brace yourself for one of the most innovative, provocative, and mind-bending science-fiction stories of the last several years. Indeed, this is science fiction in the true sense. Neal Stephenson knows his quantum theory, and is writing fiction that answers the "givens" of our most praxic age.

If you're into the classics, cutting-edge science, aestheticism, architecture, mysteries both ancient and contemporary, or rigorous intelligent conversation, then Anathem is certainly for you. If you consider science-fiction to be more of a setting than a genre, then skip it. There's only one ray gun, the lasers are the wrong color, and the killer fighting monks don't really come in until later. At least, not until they've been properly contemplated.

Personally, I loved it.