I just finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Like a lot of books I found it difficult to get into at first but I tried what I sometimes do: start reading about a third of the way in and see if its at all interesting. I found that once it started talking about quantum mechanics and philosophy it got really good so I went back to the beginning and read it all.
Just wondering, does anyone else do that when they can't get into a book?
However, just about straight after I finished reading I suddenly got really confused because the whole plot contradicts itself and makes no fucking sense whatsoever in terms of the theories described.
A lot of it is about Complex Protism, which to my simplistic view seems to be a mix of the Plato Forms and multiple world theories. So, there is a one directional transfer of information between worlds. I'm simplifying it down to the train model Neal uses below.
[Platonic ideal world (Called the HTW in Anathem)] -> ... -> [Arbre (world of Anathem)] -> [Tor] -> [Laterre (Earth)] -> [Forgotten the name at the moment] -> [Urdan] -> ...
So, we can perceive ideas in the Platonic ideal world and so create theories or prove theorems and so on. And what we do affects other worlds in some way.
BUT
The whole plot is that somehow scientists in Arbre managed to send visions to Urdan of a great catastrophe. Then, because the people in Urdan thought that the visions were from the past they decided to travel faster than light and go back in time to stop the catastrophe. To stop paradoxes they got shifted to another universe closer to the Platonic Ideal World, and then they shifted again, and again, and again.
So, one the one hand information can only go in one direction between the worlds. But, the Urdans travel in the opposite direction between the worlds. This is impossible by the theory Neal spends much of the book describing.
Am I missing the point or does the plot actively contradict his own explanation of whats going on?
@ Prak_Anima
I've just finished reading Night Shift by Lilith Saintcrow. Mostly because I hate myself I admit: I have this weird fascination with Mary-Sue modern day/near future fantasy where the heroine has magic powers/is the best in the world at exorcism/killing vampires/being a badass. You know, Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse, that sort of bullshit.
And Night Shift wasn't bad, I guess. For a Stockholm Syndrome suffering, fucked up, woe is me, deal with the devil, weirdly attractive to supernatural males, gutter to... further from the gutter heroine.
Seriously. The main character has this weird history where she used to be a prostitute but was brought off the street by a sociopathic man whose whole existence is killing, and then was systematically abused physically and mentally. She is brainwashed into believing that it is normal, even needed, that she both loves and hates her abuser and that it is normal for a teacher-student relationship to include sex. She then regularly deals with her fucked up life by getting drunk and having random sex.
If the writer was a man I'd accuse it of being misogynistic bullshit.
But maybe the earlier books she's written are better.
