Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

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The first part is true — at least for me, with most things I do. Get them out quickly and maybe regret them a little, later, when I’ve wizened up.

But at least they’re out there… I attended a science-related talk last week and, at the end, one of the speakers’ suggestions (for young people who have graduated or will soon) was to { publish } their ideas, or else those thoughts/creations/etc. may as well be nonexistent. Especially now.

The second part, I’m afraid of.

Finished Anathem last week; maybe too quickly.

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I wonder if anyone could recommend something similar, please?

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NOT THESE:

I’ve been searching for a similar book or author, but only finding references to other Neal Stephenson books (The Diamond Age was amazing; haven’t read Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon yet but didn’t want to get lost in a Stephenson-only literary world), other sci-fi that bears little resemblance (The Foundation Trilogy was interesting but not as memorable, and I don’t actually like William Gibson that much — Neuromancer was OK and had it’s hidden crevasses, but the writing style is totally different and the concept similarities end at future technologies and cyberpunk/space stuff), and the mention that Anathem is sort of a novelization of Godel Escher Bach : Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. I guess I could see how the latter might be true, but until they { digitally publish } that doorstop, I’m not about to carry it around again.

Somehow, after all that, I’ve been led to Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s a funny, quirky, cute book so far… but not satiating.

MORE LIKE THIS
(what Anathem had that I want more of from sci-fi):

• More than an action-adventure yarn set in an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic future with cool technology.
  Apocalypses are boring. Futuristic Technology != Science. Stephenson seems to understand that, and I greatly appreciate that he writes something more like Scientific Fiction — injecting actual science into the narrative. (But the tech is awesome as well: I wouldn’t say no to a bolt, cord, and sphere! …Nor to a decade in a concent, actually, though that’s not really technological.)
• Not only science, but also philosophic, historical, literary, mathematical, and even some sociopolitical references and theories.
  It’s amazing to find a book so densely packed with material to review, learn from, and reflect upon even after the last page. As well, the addition of the scientific and epistemological made it something greater than the usual novel whose inquiries end at the Human: human triumphs, troubles, loves, heroes, villains, life lessons, etc. Sure, those help a story along and keep our primal attention, but Anathem was able to wander just past all that (not too far) and into the realm of the alien — Nature. These were my favorite things about this book and I haven’t found that much outside the realm of Non-Fiction. It was a little like The Quark and the Jaguar in that regard, but with a plot. [As an Amazon reviewer put it: “I’m just glad the man decided to be an author and not a teacher. I’d miss out.”]
• Witty, hilarious, sardonic, cheeky prose.
  Whatever it may lack in subtlety it makes up for with laughs.
• Great, real characters and an absorbing storyline.
  Strange & Norell is fun so far, but I can’t say I give a damn about anybody in that book. I don’t mind putting it down [whereas Anathem constantly rivaled things like sleep and easily won]. GEB:EGB is interesting and I’ll finish it eventually, but it doesn’t carry you the way a story does and, again, I have no trouble putting it down.
• A beautiful world.
  Maybe not always aesthetically pleasing, but there was a lot of fuel for the imagination (More so in The Diamond Age).
  (Unlike Neuromancer — for some reason I find Gibson’s descritive style hard to follow and remember the feeling of not knowing where anything was in relation to anything else while reading it.)
• New, but useful, words.
  Some complain that Stephenson { made up words } while writing Anathem, but a little mixing of languages, prefixes, and suffixes give old words new — and sometimes amusing or better-suited — meanings, connotations, and references.
  Besides that, I’m always glad to read his books on a Kindle because the dictionary is super handy for new, Earth-English vocabulary.

The Meaning of it All
Richard P. Feynman

The next aspect of science is its contents, the things that have been found out. This is the yield. This is the gold. This is the excitement, the pay you get for all the disciplined thinking and hard work. The work is not done for the sake of an application. It is done for the excitement of what is found out. Perhaps most of you know this. But to those of you who do not know it, it is almost impossible for me to convey in a lecture this important aspect, this exciting part, the real reason for science. And without understanding this you miss the whole point. You cannot understand science and its relation to anything else unless you understand and appreciate the great adventure of our time. You do not live in your time unless you understand that this is a tremendous adventure and a wild and exciting thing.

Do you think it is dull? It isn’t. It is most difficult to convey, but perhaps I can give some idea of it. Let me start anywhere, with any idea.

For instance, the ancients believed that the earth was the back of an elephant that stood on a tortoise that swam in a bottomless sea. Of course, what held up the sea was another question. They did not know the answer.

The belief of the ancients was the result of imagination. It was a poetic and beautiful idea. Look at the way we see it today. Is that a dull idea? The world is a spinning ball, and people are held on it on all sides, some of them upside down. And we turn like a spit in front of a great fire. We whirl around the sun. That is more romantic, more exciting. And what holds us? The force of gravitation, which is not only a thing of the earth but is the thing that makes the earth round in the first place, holds the sun together and keeps us running around the sun in our perpetual attempt to stay away. This gravity holds its sway not only on the stars but between the stars; it holds them in the great galaxies for miles and miles in all directions.

This universe has been described by many, but it just goes on, with its edge as unknown as the bottom of the bottomless sea of the other idea—just as mysterious, just as awe-inspiring, and just as incomplete as the poetic pictures that came before.

But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

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Emphases, mine.

If you’re going to read an introductory book to science, read this one.

Course Accompaniment to Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

The Great Flower Ornament,
an ancient Buddhist scripture

from
The Universe in a Single Atom:
The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
by the Dalai Lama

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An earlier post: { The Problem with Convergence }