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Darth

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Darth is Currently Reading

Darth is currently reading

Why Math? (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics)

by R.D. Driver

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Feb 18, 2026 06:49PM

Darth is currently reading

Anathem

by Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author)

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read in March 2018

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Darth said: " Ok. I've owned this book for a long time, but has been extremely intimidating to read. First reason: it is more than 900 pages. Second reason: it has an entire glossary to understand what everything means.

For those thinking of reading the book. I rec Ok. I've owned this book for a long time, but has been extremely intimidating to read. First reason: it is more than 900 pages. Second reason: it has an entire glossary to understand what everything means.

For those thinking of reading the book. I recommend some advice that I found in another review.
- Read some of the glossary before you begin. I started by reading "anathem" and then the terms it refers to and so on. Not everything, just enough to get started. Liberally use the glossary. It quickly proved to be essential.
- Read through the preface with the historic timeline. Keep this handy as well as there are many references to Arbre's (name of the planet) history.

The book is a fantastic read with very fulfilling explanations of relativity, different cultures, and characters. It's my new favorite Sci-fi book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

### SPOILERS ALERT ###

### SPOILERS ALERT ###

Ok, here's my plot summary:

The story begins with a 20 year old boy (Erasmus) who has lived in a monk-like reservation for just under 10 years. This is a place for *theoricists* or *philosophers* who are able to be isolated and mostly distraction free for pretty much as long as they desire (1, 10, 100, or 1000 years at a time). At the end of these periods of time, a 10-day holiday ensues in which these cut-off philosophers are able to mingle with outsiders and vice versa. This is a special opportunity for knowledge, technology, and news to be shared between the philosophers and outsiders.

Then, Erasmus' teacher Orolo gets expelled. Shortly afterwards, many others including Erasmus are informed that they must depart to another reservation. Erasmus decides to track down Orolo. To find him, he has to travel over the north pole through a thick winter. Eventually, he finds Orolo on a volcanic island. Great, then a spaceship lands with a dead alien inside. The military arrives. Now, a giant rod from space does a meteor attack on the volcano forcing everyone to flee on the flying military transportation. Orolo sacrifices himself to ensure the dead alien body is safely carried away.

Now, everyone is in the reservation they've been called to, Tredagharh (spelling?). This is during a special celebration called a Convox, in which philosophers from various reservations from around the planet gather. They are doing as much "thinking/research" into the aliens as they can. Each day, there is a special dinner in which the elite class speak about these aliens and special relativity. The younger ones listen to the interesting conversation while making and serving dinner. Great, then 1 of the "elite" is actually an alien, the husband of the dead female alien from earlier.

Now Erasmus, the alien, and several other characters from the story are sent to space in special suits that are basically space-ships wrapped around a body. They hallucinate the entire time, until they finally arrive at the space ship. Things blow, everyone wakes up in a room on the space ship and find out that another character was never alive at all, they all hallucinated the entire time. Then the main characters find themselves starting a new era on the volcanic island in which philophers are no longer separated from the outsiders.

Oh yeah, there are also space ships that are created to time travel but actually travel across dimensions, aliens who figured this out, a group of philosophers who can do it with only their brains, and hallucinating is actually the ability to travel across universes (called Narratives). ...more "

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(page 193 of 998)
— Feb 25, 2026 08:08PM

Mar 07, 2018 10:45AM · see review