Anathem

Anathem is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2008. Its major themes include the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism.

The novel is set on the fictional planet Arbre. Thousands of years before the events of the story, the planet's intellectuals entered concents, monastic communities, in order to protect their work from the collapse of society, and the avout are the intellectuals separated from the secular world. They are banned from possessing or operating most advanced technology and are supervised by an Inquisition that answers to the outside authorities. The outside world it has withdrawn from is still there, and the Inquisition is the mechanism that keeps the two in contact.

That arrangement means the book's adventure begins inside an institution whose rules are the point. Stephenson had already written at length on the history of science and finance, and Anathem applies the same method to a world whose intellectual history is not the reader's. The vocabulary is invented but consistent, and the rules about technology are what make the concent's inhabitants dependent on the outside world they have withdrawn from.