{"id":997,"date":"2008-10-23T21:28:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T03:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=997"},"modified":"2008-10-23T21:30:39","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T03:30:39","slug":"anathem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=997","title":{"rendered":"Anathem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished Neal Stephenson&#8217;s latest.  Mini-review after the break to avoid spoilers.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think that <i>Anathem<\/i> reaches the heights of <i>Cryptonomicon<\/i>, but what does?  It&#8217;s not as complex as <i>The Baroque Cycle<\/i>, but that could be said of complete texts on quantum chromodynamics.  But I found <i>Anathem<\/i> completely engrossing and fascinating, particularly in the way it fleshes out the mathic world that the characters live in.  It slows a bit in the middle (when Erasmus is Feral) or occasionally during the long dialogues.  But the climax of the story makes up for that.<\/p>\n<p>The surprising thing about <i>Anathem<\/i> is that it is, at its core, a basic first contact story.  Most of it would not be out of place in <i>Footfall<\/i>.  But you get so immersed in the mathic world it describes, that the basic storyline blindsides you.  I love it when a story surprises me and <i>Anathem<\/i> did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished Neal Stephenson&#8217;s latest. Mini-review after the break to avoid spoilers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2BzKF-anathem","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}