Just finished Seveneves -- awesome read!

Fantastic, epic book! There's so many Points of Views in it, and much to think about. Besides the sweeping multifaceted adventure story, there are interesting ideas on human society, genetics, environment, causes of prejudice, a lot of fascinating tech and long-term surviving in space and zero gravity. Stephenson just keeps getting better and better! THank YoU!

wish it had illustrations on each page - had hard time imagining all the contraptions and habitats etc

An excellent read. I wonder, did anyone notice Stephensons nod to Peter Watts end of the world novel Echopraxia? I bet sf writers will consider the Firefall series a seminal favorite from last year, with bits and pieces showing up all over the place:

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there weren't any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1500...

I really enjoyed the book.

I need a technical companion book now, that covers all of the science Neal used to support the story. I'm not looking for a book club social commentary. Just the science.

Any suggestions?

Reading Seveneves was a deeply emotional experience for me. The sense of loss was almost overwhelming at times, yet the overall message carries great hope. I still don't feel like I've come to terms with those contradictions, but I am convinced more than ever that we must become a spacefaring civilization, or all of this is for naught. Take a look at Robert Zubrin's 1999 book, Entering Space for a nonfiction analysis of these issues. It's one thing to accept your own mortality; it's quite another to contemplate the end of every civilization that (as far as we know) has ever existed.

Mitch wrote: "Just finished Seveneves -- awesome read!"
Agreed, Mitch! I'm just at the 'turning point' of the book (last 300 or so pages left) and just loving it. Will definitely add some of Mr. Stephenson's other works to my 2016 reading list.

I listened to the audiobook, how the book is not a movie yet astounds me.
I really hope that one day we have books about the pingers and the diggers!

I've read all of Neal Stephenson's previous novels and enjoyed them all. I'm of the opinion that Cryptonomicon and the three Baroque Cycle prequels were the pinnacle of Stephensonia. With Anathem, he distilled his essence just a couple of times too many for most of his fans, and Reamde seems an over-correction intended to silence those critical reviews. Now, with Seveneves, I think Neal has over-corrected once again: "Reamde was too much of an airport-novel huh? Choke on this then!"

What I loved about Cryptonomicon, my first Stephenson experience, was the AlphaNerdiness, the humour and the blend of intelligent thought and blazing action. It was like nothing I'd ever read before. There were many genuinely hilarious scenes, and the entire book was generously peppered with guffaw-worthy lines. The Baroque Cycle continued these strengths but introduced some epic digressions. Where Cryptonomicon's digressions were enjoyable (e.g. obsession with separation of crunchy cereal flakes and cold milk, Randy's running LOTR geek allegory) in a Tom Wolfesque manner, Baroque digressions edged a step or two closer to the boring factoid precipice.

Anathem, being set somewhere other than here and now or back then, introduced the requirement for world building. Stephenson simply rolled up his sleeves and built that world for 200 pages, losing most of the general reading population in the process. A few diehard StePhans also cried foul. More finesse was needed. A big part of the attraction of otherworldly speculative fiction is discovering the outlandish details as you go, or painting your own detail within the sketchy framework provided by the narrative. Neal tried to sit us down in his classroom before judging us ready to venture outside. He was the irritating medical scientist nerd trying to get Jake Sully's avatar to lie down on the hospital bed. We want to break out of that room and see what our new 10 foot tall carbon fibre boned body with working legs can DO, man! Get out of our way!

Seveneves, more than any of his earlier novels, suffers from unenjoyable digressions. There is no longer a L33T chic geek feel to them, they're just plain physics. They are interesting to some people, including me, but when I pick up a novel, I expect to read a gripping tale about people doing things, not read a physics book on orbital mechanics, rocket science and asteroid mining. Reamde was panned by Stephenson's geekier fans as being too Hollywood action blockbuster. I found it to be exciting, imaginative and fun; and the story has stayed in my memory better than any of his other stories except perhaps The Diamond Age. It seems to me that Stephenson has gone out of his way to "return to his roots" with Seveneves. But he has missed the blend that made Cryptonomicon such a success.

There is almost no humour in this book. The best bits are when Stephenson slips into an informal narrative mode, even addressing the reader directly once or twice, but in previous novels this used to be a fairly consistent theme in his narration. In Seveneves, there are just glimpses of the old Neal Stephenson here are there. In Kath Two / Three, we also see a rehash of the heroine from Reamde: The smart, resourceful and brave young black girl that Neal is obviously in love with.

There are many under developed threads left fallow in Seveneves. Stephenson spends a fair bit of time introducing Doob's family and the trip to the jury rigged launch site. But there is no reason for this in the following events that transpire. I was expecting to read about a grassroots movement among the general population going MacGyver and building their own launch site and assembling their own orbiting ark. Now THAT would have been interesting and in the vein of the hilarious and legendary EMP event in Cryptonomicon. I was expecting to read more about Dinah's family and their adventures during the lead up to and during the hard rain. Why did Stephenson go to the trouble of describing the Agent (that split the moon) if he wasn't going to properly revisit the cause of the whole story later?

The worldbuilding in Seveneves is still a massive chunk that causes almost instant reader constipation. It's just placed two thirds of the way through rather than at the start of the narrative. It doesn't help that this worldbuilding is worldbuilding *about* worldbuilding. (Everybody has to face El Guapos in this life. It just happens that *our* El Guapo is the *real* El Guapo...). Readers to Neal: Credit us with some intelligence and imagination. You can finesse this stuff into your story if you try. We don't mind working to enjoy your scrawlings. Keep things moving better next time, or else!

Some people have said Neal Stephenson doesn't get enough credit for writing exciting action scenes. In Seveneves, particularly the coastal encounter between the remnant of the Seven and the Red Neoander pelaton, I was very conscious of Stephenson moving into "tactical mode". I don't need to know exactly where every player is with respect to every other player and from each player's point of view. It's like Stephenson has got a First Person Shooter "radar" screen in front of him and he's typing up a play-by-play. Compare this to the heart-in-mouth inducement of Patrick Robinson's Kilo Class "Submarine cutting out scene", or Lee Child's punch the air YEAH! Killing Floor "Solitary headbutt settles prison turfwar scene". These guys write action that puts you into the scene and emotionally invested in the outcome, Stephenson writes an app (using Python script?) that tracks character actions, then journals the output to a log file in his manuscript. This is not the beloved Stephenson of old, with gung-ho Bobby Shaftoe cutting loose, or an awesome freelance Thousander bending reality and uncorking 700 pages' worth of seam-popping tension.

If Dinah's father and Ivy's fiancee both led successful prepper survival missions, then plausibly there would have been dozens if not thousands of other groups doing the same all over the world. I was expecting a bigger nod to Patrick Tilley's Amtrak Wars series here. And I think that's my biggest disappointment with Seveneves. Amtrak Wars covered this theme in a far more interesting and enjoyable manner 30 years ago. Or at least, covered the theme of the last third of Seveneves. I'll call it Post-Apocalyptic Survivor Reunion Angsty Rom Com.

I enjoyed the last third of Seveneves more than the first two thirds, but, to the point that this can be said of any such lengthy novel, it felt rushed and underdeveloped. It could be that Stephenson is planning to exploit all his painstaking scene-setting with a sequel set in this future. In any case I think if less time had been burned describing the minutia of precisely how the survivors got to The Cleft, and more focus had been given to what happened 5000 years later, Seveneves would be a far more successful novel. As it stands, the entire novel is one great big loving tribute to orbital mechanics within it's very structure. The bulk of the mass is given over to getting off the ground, and all the important decisions are made right up front, resulting in an expected and underwhelming termination.

This book is one for fans of "hard" sci-fi, and probably most of Stephenson's followers will pick it up like I did. It is flawed, it is not Stephenson's best, and if you haven't read The Amtrak Wars, then you probably should!

SPOILERS

I can't resist an attempt to summarise this book's plot. The moon blew up, which resulted in planet wide habitat destruction. Humans had 2 years to execute a survival mission. It was too hard so they mostly just settled for laying around waiting to die, while building an excellent reality TV docudrama about our big hope. But the joke was on the actors in that show, since they thought it was real. One billionaire Aspergers guy sees what's going on and calmly gets on with the only possible fix for this plan. Exit Aspy in a radiation induced sleeping bag black pudding but cue arrival of salvation in the form of giant ball of ice.

All life on Earth perishes except for a savvy US mining prepper and a US submarine load of navy types. People in orbit disagree about options and splinter into two groups. The Swarm and the Clefters. The Swarm descend into anarchy and cannibalism while the Clefters slowly die of radiation poisoning. The remnant of each group unite and make it to safety inside a stable chunk of the moon's metallic core. There are now only 7 fertile women left in orbit, one of whom is handily a geneticist. They start a factory for genetically modified babies.

5000 years later, these orbiting people have created Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Ringworld for real, around the Earth rather than a sun. They have been terraforming earth and introducing genetically modified lifeforms. They go down to the surface and discover that the savvy miners have survived underground, and the submariners have survived underwater. There are a few misunderstandings and political jockeyings. Fancy meeting you here etc, gee we Humans can survive anything and we must actually be the god that we thought we proved didn't exist. Which gives us Purpose.

This is just incredibly awesome. This story is so frightening and severely troubling - in a good way. I have such a hard time putting it down for the day so I can get some sleep. I agree with other comments that the book makes me want to see pictures on every page - to show the fantastic constructions and the frightening scenes the characters have to observe. My mind goes nuts when imagining how it all looks. I just love, love, love this novel.

“Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.” You just said 99 percent of everything that goes on has nothing to do with the religion therefore you just admitted to the fact that you only know 1 percent about Christianity... Yes very intelligent. Have fun on judgment day(;

Nathan wrote: "I've read all of Neal Stephenson's previous novels and enjoyed them all. I'm of the opinion that Cryptonomicon and the three Baroque Cycle prequels were the pinnacle of Stephensonia. With Anathem, ..." Hi Nathan! We agree! Seveneves seems a bit like a thin tortilla of novel wrapped around a huge hard-to-digest chunk of physics and technology... Like Neal was really in love with the ISS and its current sister technology and neglected to write in Bobby Shaftoe. I guess Dinah is supposed to take that role, but the characters remain a bit cardboardy, they don't really get to cut loose and do their thing. Except in the bits about politics, the *spoiler alert!!* fragmentation of the orbiting community and the gory detail of the uprising... but that's over halfway in, and over soon. My favourite parts are also the future, and the projection of how the different "races" turn out and I would've liked a bit more about that. Having said that, there's plenty of good stuff there - speculation about how we could live on the ISS, social media fragmenting societies, women running the world - but... sigh... I miss the Shaftoes. Seveneves