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Neal Stephenson made a name for himself as a cyberpunk soothsayer, writing best-selling speculative fiction about virtual reality and nano-computing in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. His knack for lucidly handling complex concepts reached new heights in Cryptonomicon ­– a novel that manages to combine supergeek encryption experts, Nazi history, and turning machines into a coherent plot – and is on full display once again in Anathem, his new doorstop set on the Earth-like planet, Arbre.

For a select group on Arbre, the pursuit of knowledge has pushed beyond academia, becoming a religion unto itself. These überacademics, the Avout, were herded into cloistered monasteries by a ‘secular’ power (known as the Warden of Heaven) after their work and the technology it bred became dangerous to the planet’s inhabitants. When a young Avout, Raz, begins to investigate his mentor’s sudden ejection from the monastery, he uncovers a plot by the seculars to conceal a mysterious satellite orbiting Arbre. Raz is soon trudging up mountains, smuggling himself over the taiga of Arbre’s north pole, and ultimately launching into space in an effort to save the planet from Death Star–esque annihilation.

The action of the story is only window dressing, however, for the battles of ideas waged among the characters. Stephenson weaves competing philosophies – thinly veiled takes on Plato, Descartes, Husserl, and a generous smattering of others – into a series of witty, incisive debates that investigate how people come to understand their universe. Stephenson’s intellectual and scientific meanderings may not always keep you on the edge of your seat, but they will definitely make you wonder if your seat exists in the first place. Brendon Volpe