ALUMNI BOOKS PROFILES AND REVIEWS

guys, and historical figures ’s new (Alan Turing, Douglas novel, , charts the MacArthur, Isaac Newton, adventures of a group of and Louis XIV, to name hyperintellectual monks out a few). to save their world from an Stephenson’s new extraplanetary menace. novel, Anathem (William Morrow, 2008), is his most ambitious project yet: it seeks to completely reshape the history of scientific and philosophical thought. Set 4,000 years in the future on a planet called Arbre, the novel chronicles the adventures of a cadre of hyperintellectual monks who must save their world from an extraplanetary menace. With , Stephenson (CAS’81) was writing alongside the young upstarts of sci-fi (they call it for a reason), but with Anathem, he is vying for a position among spec-fic’s old guard: Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and Huxley. Stephenson spoke with Bostonia about his work. Devin Hahn

I understand that you started writing about halfway through your undergrad A Voice from the Future /// career. Yeah. I had tried to write some short Speculative fi ction writer stories much earlier, because the conventional wisdom is that the way Neal Stephenson talks about his you get into writing is by starting with little stuff and then working your way new book, his infl uences, and why up to novels. So I tried to write a couple of short stories, and they just didn’t go he can’t write short. By Devin Hahn anywhere. So based on that I thought that maybe being a writer just wasn’t in the cards for me. And then about halfway through college, I was stuck in town over break — no money, nothing Neal Stephenson has been Second Life and World of Warcraft. to do — and I ended up just banging out a dominant voice in the world of Stephenson’s subsequent works a short novel. Not a very good book, but speculative fiction — known as sci-fi/ have dealt with subjects as diverse the point is, I was able to finish a novel fantasy to the uninitiated — since the as ecoterrorism, nanotechnology, even though I was never able to finish 1992 publication of Snow Crash, a novel cryptography, and alchemy and have a short story. They’re different forms. that predicted with eerie accuracy the starred a motley cast of punks, , To this day I’m not particularly good at advent of virtual communities like soldiers, scientists, pizza delivery writing short stories.

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46-49 Alumni Books 1 9/20/08 1:14:48 PM What motivated you to start writing in the Europe, so I can go back If anything, it heightens first place? and look at the way the enjoyment and the Even when I was in elementary school, people behaved in those sense of excitement for I thought it seemed like a good gig historical communities them, because they feel as compared to other things that a person and use that as a basis though they’re exploring a could do for a living. Setting aside to construct the future landscape that’s filled with any highfalutin ideas about art or reality. incredibly beautiful and intellectual content, it’s nice work if surprising results. Look at you can get it. In Anathem’s fictional how the Greeks thought of world, the planet’s thinkers it: they would invoke the Academic settings crop up frequently in — its philosophers, math- Muse at the beginning of a your work. How much of your life have you ematicians, and others work of literature. I think spent in academia? (dubbed the avout) — are they were responding to a It depends on how you look at it, segregated from the rest of the society feature — call it a neurological feature because I come from a long line (the extramuros). How does this division — of how creativity works, which is of preachers and professors. My reflect aspects of twenty-first-century that once you get into the flow-state, it great-grandfather was a professor American society? just sort of happens. You feel as though of classics. One grandfather was a This is an unusual book for me in that you’re a conduit for material that’s physics professor, the other was a the subject matter is the bifurcation flowing into your consciousness from biochemistry professor. My dad and a of society into long- versus short- some place that you don’t understand, bunch of my uncles were professors. attention-span people, for lack of a and you’re just transcribing it. That’s an I grew up in college towns, and all of better way of putting it. I kept seeing experience that artists have reported, my friends’ parents either had Ph.D.s all of these examples in day-to-day life and it’s also an experience that’s been or were working on their Ph.D.s. So in of how people who read books and who reported by mathematicians who say, that sense, I spent my focus on the life of the mind are becom- “I didn’t feel as though I was creating WEB EXTRA entire life up until the ing more and more like the monks of this proof. I was just writing it out. I Watch a age of about twenty- medieval times. That is, they’re more was the stenographer.” video of Neal four in academia. and more separate from the main- Stephenson reading from stream of society. They are to media Many of your novels devote a substantial his latest book You’re clearly com- culture kind of what vampires are to number of pages to explaining things, and read the fortable writing both mirrors. I know that they’re out such as mathematical proofs or obscure full transcript speculative and histori- there — they’re out there by the mil- word origins. Why? of Bostonia’s interview at cal fiction. What chal- lions — but they are invisible to the rest I remember reading books when I was www.bu.edu/ lenges does each kind of of the culture, and they’re talking to a kid — Robert Heinlein novels, let’s bostonia. novel pose? each other on back channels of say — where things would be explained. When I’m doing it, I’m e-mail and books that are like a sepa- In books like that there’s a payload not hugely conscious of there being rate stratum of communication. The of legitimate science info delivered two modes. Once I get the place and world of Anathem reflects that through in a vehicle that’s reasonably fun and the people in my head, the process the speculative fiction lens. engaging to read. And that’s part of why is somehow the same. There are two I sought those books out; it’s part of different ways of getting to that point. Most of Anathem’s characters believe that why I still remember them. So I’m not In a historical novel, you try to gather there are no new ideas, and the novel sug- conscious of doing something out of information about the time and the gests that even original ideas are nothing the ordinary or engaging in some kind place: the buildings, what people wore, but transmissions from another world. of strange literary experiment when I the manners, the sets of attitudes and That seems like a bleak position for a do that, just because I used to see it all mental habits that people would have writer to take. the time in books I read had when they walked into a room. There are very few mathematicians as a kid. In a speculative book, that has to be who believe that they are creating made up. But it’s not totally made up, something in the same way that an With Anathem you may have one-upped because it’s always based on historical artist creates a sculpture. Most of Heinlein in that respect. precedents to some extent. So, for them feel pretty certain that they’re In Anathem I think it’s taken about as example, with Anathem I’ve got a discovering something that’s out far as you could ever take it. Time will speculative future, but it’s based on there. And yet, they’re not depressed tell whether I’m going to get away with monastic communities of medieval by that, they don’t think it’s bleak. it or not.

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46-49 Alumni Books 2 9/20/08 1:15:00 PM Fiction standard debate, so common since writing about Fenway in favor of an March 2003, of whether the West has evenhanded approach that respects the The Angel a right to counter threats zealotry of fans while questioning the Carla Neggers (COM’77) before they materialize. authenticity of their famed park. KK Mira Books Instead, he builds a A brutal thirty-year-old crime, case for the idea that Good Guys & Bad Guys: Behind the murderer long ago discovered and prevention is already the the Scenes With the Saints and dead, kicks off this romantic set post–Cold War reality, Scoundrels of American Business in Ireland and Irish South and suggests how preventive action (and Everything in Between) Boston and peopled in might best be managed for achieving Joe Nocera (COM’74) part by the angelic and international security. Katie Koch Portfolio the purely evil. Neggers It’s tempting to pigeonhole is a pro, author of more An Exact Replica of a Figment America’s corporate titans as good than fifty books, ten of of My Imagination guys or bad guys — especially these them New York Times best sellers. She Elizabeth McCracken (CAS’88, GRS’88) days. But that wasn’t Nocera’s intent unveils a series of personal secrets Little, Brown and Company throughout his career as a business on the way to revealing , Writing powerfully about one writer for publications such as Fortune but skillfully keeps two of the best: of the saddest things and the New York Times. Nocera, now she doesn’t say whether supernatural imaginable, the death a Times business columnist, says his forces are at work and, mischievously, of her nearly born baby, job has always been “to draw out the she never tells the Irish tale on which McCracken is sometimes people and stories that fascinated me much of the initial action is based. improbably, bleakly and to show why things Natalie Jacobson McCracken funny. In the French happened the way they hospital where she and her husband did.” In this collection Blackbird, Farewell learn that their boy, forever known by of profiles, articles, and Robert Greer (SDM’73,’74, GRS’89) his in utero name, Pudding, has died columns he’s written Frog Books in the ninth month of pregnancy, a in the last twenty-five It’s the world of Greer’s six bungled translation provides the odd years, Nocera does just that. His previous C. J. Floyd mysteries: comfort of black humor. “I will always subjects range from Apple cofounder Denver’s Five Points community — be a woman whose first child died, and Steve Jobs (the bounce to his step black, respectable, decidedly , I won’t give up either that grievance “betrays a certain youthful cockiness; and upwardly mobile or the bad jokes of everyday life,” she the quarterback of your high school working class. It has its writes. As she chronicles her carefree football team used to walk that way,” share of thugs, and the first pregnancy, her cavernous loss, he writes in a 1986 profile) to one- cast is augmented by and her caution-filled (and ultimately time junk bond king Michael Milken outsiders, mostly white successful) second pregnancy, you (“greedy beyond belief”). In the end, and villainous. C. J.’s understand that she’s fulfilled that vow. Nocera acknowledges, “Journalism is a godson, Damian, backed by other Bari Walsh profession that, by its nature, searches Floyd protégées, sets out to solve the for heroes and goats — good guys and murder of his best friend and longtime Faithful to Fenway: Believing in bad guys — and my journalism is no basketball teammate, and C. J. himself Boston, Baseball, and America’s exception.” Cynthia K. Buccini is only a name occasionally invoked Most Beloved Ballpark until he comes riding to the rescue in Michael Ian Borer (GRS’01,’06) The Presidential Book of Lists: From the final pages. NJM New York University Press Most to Least, Elected to Rejected, If the Red Sox are New England’s Worst to Cursed Nonfiction one true religion, then it’s not a stretch Ian Randal Strock (CAS’89) to view Fenway, the oldest functioning Villard Books Eve of Destruction: The Coming ballpark in America, In a campaign season of firsts — Age of Preventive War as a shrine worthy of come November, we will have our first Thomas M. Nichols (CAS’83) serious study. Still, it’s African-American president or our University of Pennsylvania Press funny to imagine Borer, oldest president to enter office and As other critics ponder the a sociologist and a New our first female vice president — effects of America’s invasion of Iraq on York native (don’t worry, it’s easy to forget that international norms of war, Nichols, he favors the Mets), sizing up Sox there were presidential a United States Naval War College fans as if he were Dr. Livingstone groundbreakers before professor, argues that preventive force peering down his nose at the natives. now. Take Grover didn’t make its debut with Operation Yet he avoids much of the nostalgia Cleveland, still the only Iraqi Freedom. Nichols bypasses the and bravado that pervade popular president to marry while

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46-49 Alumni Books 3 9/25/08 1:55:11 PM Entering the Fray /// in office, or Andrew Johnson, the The women journalists who fought only president without any formal education (he taught himself to read as to cover Vietnam an adult). Hundreds of examples like these are in Strock’s collection of lists, By Natalie Jacobson McCracken a necessary addition to the libraries of American history buffs and Jeopardy! hopefuls alike. KK

School Shootings: What Every Parent Back in the 1960s, when wanted to give these and Educator Needs to Know to Protect fortunate women report- women their rightful Our Children ers covered local cultural place,” says Joyce Hoff- Joseph A. Lieberman (CFA’69) events and the rest wrote man (COM’73), author Citadel Press about cooking, child rear- of On Their Own: Women This account of school shootings ing, and fashion for what Journalists and the Ameri- over four decades makes vivid an were called women’s sec- can Experience in Vietnam undeniable truth: they are horrifyingly, tions, the first of some (Da Capo Press, 2008). Joyce Hoffman increasingly frequent. Denial is, in seventy American women Writing the book, in (COM’73)

fact, part of the message here — the journalists were officially effect a collection of vivid Jersey Herald Anna Murphey/New ongoing denial of parents, classmates, sanctioned to cover the biographies, took eleven One was killed on schools, even communities, whose war in Vietnam. That in years and more than 100 Marine maneuvers; the watchfulness might have prevented itself was an achieve- interviews. Hoffman trav- others came back and tragedy. Lieberman’s concluding ad- ment. Most newspapers eled twice to Vietnam and continued at least for vice summarizes the lessons implicit and wire services were, conducted interviews in a while as reporters or throughout the book: be aware of the at best, reluctant to Japan, Paris, Prague, and photojournalists. All were warning signs, control send women to the front. Munich. When one re- affected by their Vietnam guns as individual parents Freelancers, required porter would neither talk experiences, Hoffman and as a nation, actively to prove that two news to her nor allow her fam- says. “Like the men, some oppose bullying, teach organizations would buy ily to, Hoffman “spent a of them never got over it. students that when they their work, presented whole week in the waste- Gloria Emerson is prob- report worrisome behav- documentation from such land of Nebraska,” to get ably the best example of ior they are protecting, not betraying, a outlets as Iron Age and a sense of growing up on that; life was never the schoolmate, and hold school shooting Goddard College News. a Nebraska farm in the same for her after her drills as regularly as fire drills. NJM Permission from the mili- forties and fifties. tour as a New York Times tary was even harder to The fifteen women she correspondent.” Serial Killers and Sadistic Murderers: come by; a not-untypical focuses on ranged from Now a member of the Up Close and Personal officer refused to allow ardent “anti-Communist, Old Dominion University Jack Levin (COM’65, GRS’68) one young woman access bomb-them-back-to- faculty and public edi- Prometheus Books to battle because she re- the-Stone-Age” hawks tor of the Virginian-Pilot, Levin, the Brudnick Professor of minded him of his daugh- to traditional midcentury Hoffman hopes to inter- Sociology and Criminology at North- ter. Still, inspired by the reporters who accepted est a documentary - eastern University and a retired FBI words of grandmothers, official U.S. pronounce- maker in a project about profiler, has been studying serial killers mothers, or teachers, the ments and revealed noth- Emerson, who won a for more than twenty-five years and changing role of women, ing of their own opinions National Book Award for has interviewed many, their families, political interests, or to ardent doves, increas- her 1977 book about the friends, and victims. Serial murderers simply their independent ingly distraught over Vietnam War, Winners generally plan carefully and coolly spirit, women reporters American policy. Some and Losers. and kill not for money or revenge, but went to war. became tough-minded, Times change, nudged for power and perhaps Until now, published foul-mouthed, and by such women as these fame. They are most often accounts of that war, battle-soiled; some wore Vietnam correspondents. depressed, controlling almost entirely by men, short skirts and plenty Many female reporters loners. Still, Levin says, have largely ignored of makeup. None, in that are now in Iraq, Hoffman parents, neighbors, and these women or spoken consciousness-raising says. “I’m going to send teachers are to be blamed briefly of, for instance, age, called herself a femi- them each a book. I want only for their failure to seek help for “girl reporters” observing nist. “They were too busy them to know they’re the hundreds of thousands of such battle from a downtown doing other things,” says standing on the shoulders unhappy, but nearly always harmless, Saigon rooftop bar. “I Hoffman. of these women.” p individuals. NJM

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