From: "Michael Nelson" <mike.nelson at seahunt.org>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>, <wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: XKCD on "Anathem" ??
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:23:05 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Walsh [mailto:mjw at press.jhu.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 9:53 AM
> To: WSFA members; wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [WSFA] XKCD on "Anathem" ??
>
> http://xkcd.com/483/
>
> At 980 pages ain't no way I'm reading this in time for Hugo
> voting.  Nope, = no way.  Life is too short.
>
> At one point I thought the best way to stop the proliferation
> of Big Fat = Genre Novels was the force people to use a quill pen.
>
> But then I thought of Dickens, Trollope, and Gibbons.
>
> "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always,
> scribble, = scribble, scribble, eh?"
>
> (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of
> The Decline = and Fall of the Roman Empire.)

Anathem starts to get good after about 300 pages.  Rip out another 200 or so
pages of "Oh, look at what a clever writer I am" crap mixed in with the
actual story-telling and you're left with a fairly good novel.