anathem

[kitblonde]

So my initial reaction to Neal Stephenson's Anathem was best summed up by this comic. I've always liked Stephenson's books 'cuz they're science fiction without being too much of a stretch - they fall into that speculative fiction category, which is much more interesting to me than the pure fantasy that a lot of sci-fi does. I'm more interested in

Comments

[cheekybaby]

They have a rich-text editor for LJ cuts now. These kids today. :)

(I don't actually care if you cut the post, it's not that long. I just felt like sharing.)

[kitblonde]

See, my teensy tiny bit of html knowledge makes it so I think it's cheating if I use the editor...but I only know like four things in html and the lj-cut tag never makes the cut (ho ho). It is a paradox of my stupids.
(Not that I think it's cheating if anyone else uses the editor. Just me. I've tried to teach Trav how to hyperlink or post images forty times and it hasn't stuck yet. I am not discouraged.)

[sigma7]

If it falls between utopia and dystopia, I like calling it an untopia. But that's just me.

I think what we'll be doing in 1000 years will be as inexplicable as what we're doing now was to the populace in 1008 AD. Any apocalypses aside, of course.

[kitblonde]

Untopia is good. Atopia? I dunno. My root word fu is weak.
I'd kinda like to think we have a slightly better guess at what our future might be like than we did a thousand years ago, but I think that's just 'cuz we've stopped being afraid of dragons and witches. (Well, most of us, anyway.) But it would be awesome if it turned out that everything advances as much over the next thousand years as it did over the past thousand. I wish I could see what it will be like. Hoverpuppies for all!

[kitblonde]

Trav just finished The Road, so I'm gonna start that after Anathem.
I think Snow Crash is the best jumping off point for Stephenson. Cryptonomicon would probably be my next choice, although Diamond Age is a pretty quick read. Cryptonomicon is a book I'll sometimes just randomly open up to a page and start reading, I love it so much. The Baroque Cycle is a good choice to read after Cryptonomicon, as there are familiar family names and ideas and they kinda support each other. But yeah, any of his stuff comes with a stamp of approval here.