ALUMNI BOOKS PROFILES AND REVIEWS guys, and historical figures Neal Stephenson’s new (Alan Turing, Douglas novel, Anathem, 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 Snow Crash, Stephenson (CAS’81) was writing alongside the young upstarts of sci-fi (they call it cyberpunk 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, hackers, To this day I’m not particularly good at advent of virtual communities like soldiers, scientists, pizza delivery writing short stories. 46 BOSTONIA Fall 2008 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 science fiction 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. Fall 2008 BOSTONIA 47 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 thriller 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.