I gave a few visits to the RoboDeveloper's conference the past few days. It was a modest sized affair, one of the early attempts to make a commercial robot development conference (it's been more common to be academic in the past.) The show floor was modest, with just 3 short aisles, and the program modest as well, but Robocars were an expanding theme.

Once they made rules that political ads had to specify who was sponsoring them, we started seeing a lot of ads that would say they were sponsored by some unknown organization with a good sounding name. You see this from all sides of the equation; everybody picks a name that sounds like they are for truth, justice and the American Way, and anybody against them is against those things.

I'm back from my 3-country tour that started with being guest of honour at Helsinki's "Alternative Party" which introduced me to the Demoscene, something I will write about in some future blog posts. While I have much to say about this trip, and many gigs of photos, I thought I would start with some travel notes.

The latest tome -- and at 900 pages, I mean tome -- from Neal Stephenson (author of Snow Crash, the Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon) is Anathem. I'm going to start with a more general review, then delve into deep spoilers after the jump.

This book is highly recommended, with the caveat that you must have an interest in philosophy and metaphysics to avoid being turned off by a few fairly large sections which involve complex debate on these topics. On the other hand, if you enjoy such exploration, this is the book for you.

Anathem is set on a planet which is not Earth, but is full of parallels to Earth. The culture is much older than ours, but not vastly more advanced because on this world scientists, mathematicians and philosophers live a cloistered life. They live in walled-off communities called Concents, with divisions within which only have contact with the outside world, and with each other, for one 10 day period out of each year, decade, century or millennium.

As such the Avout, as they are called, lead a simple life, mostly free of technology, devoted to higher learning. It's a non-religious parallel to monastic life. In the outside "saeclular" world, people live in a crass, consumer-oriented society both like and unlike ours.

I give the recommendation because he pulls this off really well. Anathem is a masterwork of world-building. You really get to identify with these mathematical monks and understand their life and worldview. He really builds a world that is different but understandable.

One way he does this, which does frustrate the reader at first, is through the creation of a lot of new coined terms. Some terms are used without introduction, some get a dictionary entry to help you into them. The terms are of course in a non-Earth language, but they are constructed from Latin and English roots, so they make sense to your brain. Soon you will find yourself using them.

So, if you like clever, complex worldbuilding and the worlds of science and philosophy, this book, long as it is, is worth it for you. However, I will shortly talk about the ending. Stephenson has a curse -- his world building is superb, and his skill at satisfying endings is not up to it. Anathem actually has a decently satisfying ending in many ways -- better than he has done before. There is both an ending to the plot, and some revelations at the very end which make you rethink all you have read before in the book. This time, I find fault with the consistency of the metaphysics, and mainly because I have explored the same topic myself and found it very difficult to make it work.

It's not too much of a spoiler to say that after we are shown this remarkable monastic world, events transpire to turn it all upside-down. You won't be disappointed, but I can't go further without getting into spoilers. You will also find spoilers in my contributions to the Anathem Wiki. That Wiki may be handy to you after you read the book to understand some of the complex components.