The Fredösphere

Neal Stephenson came last night to Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor to sign copies of his new novel Anathem.  He rocked, but I was especially interested in the crowd, which self-selectively skewed nerdy (of course) but also less unhip than you would expect.  All of the questions from the audience were coherent and succinct; a few of the more intense fans seemed to be bursting with the urge to make long, arcane speeches, but resisted admirably.  The signing line moved more than twice as fast as I estimated, and in general I found the crowd conforming to my personal preferences (for efficiency and public reticence) to a higher degree than any I can remember.  We Neal fans are ... special.

I'm kicking myself for being too reticent. One of the first questioners asked Neal a faith-n-reason question which was a somewhat more concise version of the question I wanted to ask.  The guy was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan, "Opiates are the religion of the people."  Clearly, this is a kindred spirit, yet when I almost literally bumped into him in the store afterwards, I failed to start a conversation.  This lost opportunity drove me to self-loathing far more than my other loss of the evening, when I wasted all my one-on-one time with Neal explaining to him how to spell "Fredösphere" when he signed my copy of his book.

Labels: local, sci-fi