Details about Neal Stephenson’s next novel, Anathem, have been leaking out lately and the novel’s looking better and better all the time. The US and UK cover art have been released, as well as a cursory blurb on Amazon.co.uk.
US Cover:
UK Cover:
This is one of those rare instances when I can’t decide which cover I like better! They’re both gorgeous and hopefully that holds true for the novel as well. Details on the plot are sparse, but Amazon does have this little synopsis, which sounds promising:
Here is another brilliantly original novel from the cult author of “Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon”.Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world, an endless landscape of casinos and megastores that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, dark ages and renaissances, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his friends, mentors, and teachers are summoned forth without warning into the unknown.
Stephenson is the acclaimed author of The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, among other works. Anathem is set to be published in September, 2008.
