I check in on favorite authors from time to time to see when their next work is due. Stephenson certainly qualifies as a favorite so it was with glee that I found out that his new book Anathem is due out in September.
Digging around a little bit led me to Kaedrin’s blog, which featured a quote from this Livejournal, which goes a little something like this:
He’s writing a science fiction novel unrelated to Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. It’s set on another planet and has aliens and so on. It’s really about Platonic mathematics, but he needed the aliens and space opera-ish elements to spice it up a little bit, just like the pirates kept people engaged in the Baroque books. He’s nearly finished writing it, and if he doesn’t finish by the end of the calendar year he’ll have to give some money back. If everything proceeds according to schedule, it should be available in stores in about a year.
My response to all of that is “sign me right up.” For full disclosure’s sake, I’ll read pretty much anything the guy writes, but that sounds ready made for me to geek out over.
Am I bummed there’s no Shaftoe or Waterhouse or appearance by Enoch Root? Sure I am (at least on some level.) I didn’t gleefully work my way through through however many pages of Cryptonimicon and the Baroque Cycle (3500?) without coming away with an affection for the inhabitants of that world. Thing is, the above sounds so damn cool I just don’t care. Platonic math meets John Carter (or, if you must, Star Wars)?
That’s the stuff.
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