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Tattered Cover Book Store


Last Updated: 7/21/2009

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City: Denver
State: Colorado
Country: US
Signup Date: 10/16/2006
November 10, 2009 - Tuesday 

Category: Writing and Poetry
Hello booklovers,
   I don't know about all of you, but lately my life has been hectic! Which is why it's been awhile since I've had a chance to push science fiction books. That's right, if you don't read sci-fi, you nevertheless should read Neal Stephenson.
   Well not just anything by him, but some of his stuff is good for those not inclined to read sci-fi. I think his works will always be classified as sci-fi partly because of the success of Snow Crash and Diamond Age, both fantastically good novels heavily steeped in sci-fi themes. In fact if you do like sci-fi and haven't read both those books, go out and get them ASAP.
   Two of his books that I would like to recommend today, Cryptonomicon and Anathem. Cryptonomicon is a novel that has two story lines running through it. One is in the South Pacific during the end of WWII, following a group of POWs being held by the Japanese and forced to build secret tunnels to hide their gold before retreating from advancing Allied forces. The other story line is during present day and follows a group of fortune hunters looking for this gold. There aren't really any major sci-fi themes in this work. Cryptology and computing is as 'sci-fi' as it gets, and I think those are themes that are important to us all, even if we don't realize it. One of the most interesting themes is the idea of privacy rights and distribution and protection of information.
  Anathem (just released in paperback!) is a story about a group of monastic scholars who have sequestered themselves from the rest of the world as a repository of knowledge and learning. Then a threat to their entire world draws the scholars out from behind their walls as they help deal with it. I don't want to give away what the threat is as the characters don't know at first either and Stephenson is masterful at revealing things to the characters and reader at the same time. I will say that this book is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in years, more so than many philosophy texts I read in
college, while being exciting at the same time. This one has a bit more in the way of sci-fi themes but not to the extent that it should distract anyone. The themes used compliment the ideas in the story instead of substituting as the ideas themselves.
  Both these books are long but Stephenson ambitiously and
successfully tackles big ideas with some of the best character
development of anyone writing fiction these days, and he's fun--easily one of my top ten favorite authors. He deserves a wide readership, even more than the huge number of devoted fans he already has.

Until next time, Chuck
10:05 PM
 
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