Na "Sunday Book Review" do "New York Times", saído hoje, sob o título "The Planet of the Monks", encontra-se uma recensão da autoria de Dave Itzkoff de "Anathem", o último livro do escritor de ficção científica norte-americano Neal Stephenson, de quem já aqui tenho falado. Em português e publicadas recentemente pela Tinta da China encontram-se nas livrarias duas obras dele que são os três primeiros volumes do chamado "Ciclo Barroco": "Argento Vivo", "O Rei dos Vagabundos" e "Odaliscas".Transcrevo um extracto que nos dá uma ideia da trama da obra, que seria porventura mais de ficção filosófica do que de ficção científica se acaso esse género existisse:
O resto da recensão pode ser lido aqui."In the acknowledgments of ANATHEM (Morrow/HarperCollins, $29.95), Stephenson, the author of such meticulous historical novels as “Cryptonomicon” and “The Baroque Cycle,” gives inspirational credit for his latest work of fiction to a long line of distinguished thinkers, from Thales and Plato to Husserl and Gödel. But it is the spirits of the Greeks that exert the greatest influence on “Anathem”: at its best, the book is a thought experiment in narrative form, a meditation on how far a society can go on pure reason and arguments from first principles.
It is an intricate Socratic puzzle, yet — though you may wish to banish me or pour hemlock down my throat for saying this — I’m not entirely sure it’s a novel.
Set in a world that is similar but not identical to our own, “Anathem” imagines a modern-day monastic order whose members have pledged to live their lives without computers or electronic technology. Having long ago set aside such unanswerable questions as “Does God exist?” these alternative Augustines are free to contemplate issues of math, physics and philosophy; depending on the order they belong to, they are allowed to visit the outside world as much as once a year or as little as once a millennium."
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