Paperback, 872 pages
English language
Published May 16, 2016 by The Borough Press.
When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere...
Five thousand years later, the survivors' progeny embark on another audacious journey into the unknown, to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
Really great right up until almost the end. Stephenson really seems to struggle with conclusions. Still well worth the read, but an unsatisfying, overly-quick resolution.
Enjoyment like a rollercoaster (ups and downs).
This was my second ever 'hard' science fiction novel--after The Martian--and from the first page I was completely engaged with the detail, realism and narrative strung by Stephenson. It's a book that will grab you and not let you go.
The third act opens very weakly, taking my rating from five stars down to three: something just felt 'off' as the descriptions became extremely speculative and unfocused. However, once the direction of the third act became clear, and the focus moved more toward the cultural interactions and the upcoming adventure, I was again completely hooked.
A book I loved, with a bump in the middle of the road that may leave some readers debating whether to continue. I'll be telling others: read this; do continue. After the first 50 pages of the third act, Stephenson picks up where he left of and …
Enjoyment like a rollercoaster (ups and downs).
This was my second ever 'hard' science fiction novel--after The Martian--and from the first page I was completely engaged with the detail, realism and narrative strung by Stephenson. It's a book that will grab you and not let you go.
The third act opens very weakly, taking my rating from five stars down to three: something just felt 'off' as the descriptions became extremely speculative and unfocused. However, once the direction of the third act became clear, and the focus moved more toward the cultural interactions and the upcoming adventure, I was again completely hooked.
A book I loved, with a bump in the middle of the road that may leave some readers debating whether to continue. I'll be telling others: read this; do continue. After the first 50 pages of the third act, Stephenson picks up where he left of and it ends as strong as it began.
People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently - and generally better - than people who serve other masters.
I am conflicted on this book. The first two thirds were incredible. The story had me hooked immediately and I loved all aspects of the book. Then the final third happened and the momentum stopped and finishing became a chore.
The technobabble and constant focus on “show, don’t tell” didn’t bother me. I enjoyed tangents about orbital physics, complications in managing propellant, and discussions about how similar technology to what exists today could be used to prepare for the end of humanity. There was no deus ex machina, the technology and solutions all felt probable and not entirely unrealistic.
I was invested with the Izzy and Earth characters during the Hard Rain. The final moments of humanity reminded me of the band playing as the Titanic …
People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently - and generally better - than people who serve other masters.
I am conflicted on this book. The first two thirds were incredible. The story had me hooked immediately and I loved all aspects of the book. Then the final third happened and the momentum stopped and finishing became a chore.
The technobabble and constant focus on “show, don’t tell” didn’t bother me. I enjoyed tangents about orbital physics, complications in managing propellant, and discussions about how similar technology to what exists today could be used to prepare for the end of humanity. There was no deus ex machina, the technology and solutions all felt probable and not entirely unrealistic.
I was invested with the Izzy and Earth characters during the Hard Rain. The final moments of humanity reminded me of the band playing as the Titanic sank. It was elegance and bravery in the face of utter destruction, and it was incredible.
The mind couldn't think about the End of the World all the time. It needed the occasional break, a romp through the trivial. Because it was through trivia that the mind was anchored.
As the years advanced I liked how the focus of the story did too. Technology was still an important character, but it was now addressing interpersonal conflicts and showed that the survivors on Izzy still had baggage with them and tried to apply their own personal agenda on the remaining human race.
The characters were secondary to the story and the struggle for survival, and this was okay, until the final “book” showed up.
I will put the remainder of the review in spoiler tags because I discuss the final third of the book and spoilers exist.
The meeting would later be known as the Council of the Seven Eves.
The unique characteristics of each Eve, their genetic modifications to their descendants and racial struggles that evolved over time were now very critical to the story. I had spent the previous two thirds of the book focusing on the struggle for survival and less on how each character interacted that I felt like I was handed a pop quiz at the start of the third “book” and realized I had been focusing on all the wrong material.
Another reviewer commented that the final stages of the book "sent an engineer to do an anthropologist's job", and I fully understand that. There was an unnecessary amount of time discussing social situations, racial tensions, how Red and Blue interacted when all I want to learn about is how humanity survived for another five thousand years! And when I got my wish as future technology was described that became a chore too.
I enjoyed the creativity and extrapolation of what the future civilization looked like but the book became bogged down in the details. There was no tension and no reason for me to care. The human race survived and was returning to Earth. The last five millennia of a struggle was coming to an end and the story lacked a finish. What conflict remained felt silly (which I’ll cover in a moment) and a bit of a bore.
Some suggested that this story could have been broken up into a proper trilogy, and that would have been great. It could have also wrapped up with a few pages on the life of Kath Two looking down at an Earth that has been rebuilt and wondering about the possibilities it may contain. This would be just a hint to know that humans, in one form or another, continue.
Unfortunately the direction of the final third of the book lacked direction and a reason to be involved as a reader, which is disappointing because the first two thirds of the book did that perfectly.
It was enough to keep the ship lodged in one place until they decided to move it. Which they never would.
To address the Diggers/Spacers/Red v Blue conflict near the end let me pull up a tweet that Neil deGrass Tyson made in November 2014 regarding Interstellar:
In #Interstellar: On another planet, around another star, in another part of the galaxy, two guys get into a fist fight.
I have really mixed feelings about this book. The premise is great but the narration is really uneven. Long stretches of very engaging content are followed by equally long passages which - in my humble opinion - could easily be reduced to one tenth of the size. Characters go from complex, layered beings to cartoonishly one-dimensional ones. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book but I do think it could be just as good - even better at 400 pages, as opposed to 880. But even with this caveat I can still recommend it.
Like other Stephenson books, its two books bound together and the first book is usually better. Seveneves is an epic tale and worth the read.
What a great hard sci if book, I was split between 4 and 5 stars, but I really enjoyed it.
What a great hard sci if book, I was split between 4 and 5 stars, but I really enjoyed it.
Stephenson continues his habit of producing books of unusual size, but he has a lot of story to cover. Even in 800 pages, it can feel a little rushed while he details 5000 years of future history.
I think this is the last book by Neal Stephenson I will read. I really enjoyed Snow Crash ten years ago. Since then, I have tried to read several of his novels, and I think I've abandoned all of them until Seveneves.
Seveneves has an interesting premise, though can feel depressing. That's not why I'm done reading this author. It is just plodding in a way that makes reading a chore. I've read a lot of hard SF. Rendezvous with Rama never made be feel like this. Seveneves spends too much time describing the look of this and that module, or where it is in relation to this other thing...blah blah blah. I was told what pykrete was at least four times. (If it isn't used frequently enough and named well for me to remember....don't name the junk.)
There's a good novel in here, it's just diluted with an extra …
I think this is the last book by Neal Stephenson I will read. I really enjoyed Snow Crash ten years ago. Since then, I have tried to read several of his novels, and I think I've abandoned all of them until Seveneves.
Seveneves has an interesting premise, though can feel depressing. That's not why I'm done reading this author. It is just plodding in a way that makes reading a chore. I've read a lot of hard SF. Rendezvous with Rama never made be feel like this. Seveneves spends too much time describing the look of this and that module, or where it is in relation to this other thing...blah blah blah. I was told what pykrete was at least four times. (If it isn't used frequently enough and named well for me to remember....don't name the junk.)
There's a good novel in here, it's just diluted with an extra not good novel. Cut by a third, this could have been excellent.
tl;dr: This book wasn't so great.
The ideas in the book were good, and I was reasonably engaged for the first 2 acts, but the last act felt dragged out and obvious. I was pretty sure about the major curves of the story early on, and it took a long-ass time to get there.. And then when it got where it was going it wasn't terribly satisfying...
This might be the last Stephenson book I read until he gets an editor. His stories are engaging, but he spends too much time zooming in on details. I guess some people dig that, but when I look back, even the books of his I've enjoyed since he wrote The Diamond Age have been long struggles for me to read. Cryptonomicon, which I liked in retrospect, took me years and several aborted/restarted attempts to complete. At the time I blamed that on College, …
tl;dr: This book wasn't so great.
The ideas in the book were good, and I was reasonably engaged for the first 2 acts, but the last act felt dragged out and obvious. I was pretty sure about the major curves of the story early on, and it took a long-ass time to get there.. And then when it got where it was going it wasn't terribly satisfying...
This might be the last Stephenson book I read until he gets an editor. His stories are engaging, but he spends too much time zooming in on details. I guess some people dig that, but when I look back, even the books of his I've enjoyed since he wrote The Diamond Age have been long struggles for me to read. Cryptonomicon, which I liked in retrospect, took me years and several aborted/restarted attempts to complete. At the time I blamed that on College, but now I'm not so sure. The Baroque Cycle took me a decade, and I ultimately only finished it out of stubbornness. Anathem and it's invented-language gimmick infuriated me, but the story was compelling enough to drag me along.
Now his last two books have been largely (big) gimmick-free, but have both felt really stretched out. I think i like the macro of his stories much more than the micro, but he seems interested in focusing on the micro.
To be honest, if I could have given this book 2.5 stars I would have. I was really struggling to choose between 2 and 3 stars.
This is the first bok I've ever read by Neal Stephenson and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is long, but I burned through it because I found the story fascinating.
True, it is really two books, some would say even three.
"Book 1" starts out as the story of the end of Earth, triggered by the misterous destruction of the moon. Humans desperately scramble to make a plan to survive the looming destruction.
"Book 2" is the chronicle of those who made it out of Earth. The last existing humans. It is the story of their struggle for survival.
"Book 3" is set 5000 years in the future, when humanity returns to Earth and tries to claim it back as home. But society is so different then.
What I loved about the book is how ambitious and grandiose it is. I loved the huge ideas it tackles, and the technical …
This is the first bok I've ever read by Neal Stephenson and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is long, but I burned through it because I found the story fascinating.
True, it is really two books, some would say even three.
"Book 1" starts out as the story of the end of Earth, triggered by the misterous destruction of the moon. Humans desperately scramble to make a plan to survive the looming destruction.
"Book 2" is the chronicle of those who made it out of Earth. The last existing humans. It is the story of their struggle for survival.
"Book 3" is set 5000 years in the future, when humanity returns to Earth and tries to claim it back as home. But society is so different then.
What I loved about the book is how ambitious and grandiose it is. I loved the huge ideas it tackles, and the technical detail of all these imagined technologies. I loved it's descriptions of space and its understanding of orbital physics, to the point of actually teaching me concepts such as Nadir, Zenith, Apogee and Perigee. (Go Science!)
I don't give it 5/5 because I felt that while it excelled in the science and technical details, it lacked a bit in character development and depth. Characters are a bit uni-dimensional and predictable, although it does have a bunch of kick-ass female heroes. :)
I really hope Seveneves is just the beginning of a larger trilogy, as the universe it creates is so elaborate, meticulous and complex it really deserves further exploration.
Also because it ends on a real cliffhanger. But I won't spoil it!
If you like space set, high stakes, apocalyptic and imaginative stories... I would say this book is for you.
It's a good, albeit long, read. It could comfortably be two or three different-but-related stories.
Huge premise, fascinating ideas; thin characterization, constant ok-you-need-to-know-this infodumps. I liked it, overall.
I desperately don't want this book to be over. But it is and now all that is left is to write a review. I didn't want to read it. I didn't want to read about the desperation of mankind trying to survive the apocalypse. I don't like this kind of survival story. It's the same reason I didn't want to read The Martian.
But I did read it because of all the glowing reviews. So the moon blows up. Surprisingly it doesn't come crashing down at once. But eventually it will in the so-called Hard Rain turn the Earth into a glowing ball of fire (not a spoiler I think). Mankind gets all of two years to prepare. I don't think it says when the story is happening but reference is made to one man's experience cleaning up in Fukushima so it cannot be more than 10-15 years into the …
I desperately don't want this book to be over. But it is and now all that is left is to write a review. I didn't want to read it. I didn't want to read about the desperation of mankind trying to survive the apocalypse. I don't like this kind of survival story. It's the same reason I didn't want to read The Martian.
But I did read it because of all the glowing reviews. So the moon blows up. Surprisingly it doesn't come crashing down at once. But eventually it will in the so-called Hard Rain turn the Earth into a glowing ball of fire (not a spoiler I think). Mankind gets all of two years to prepare. I don't think it says when the story is happening but reference is made to one man's experience cleaning up in Fukushima so it cannot be more than 10-15 years into the future, at least that's what the technology feels like.
The book is split in three parts. The first part tells of the preparations taken. The best bet seems to be space. The reader gets several great viewpoints some up in space on the international space station (Izzy), some down on earth. The second part is about the survival of those up in space after the Hard Rain starts. The third part ... don't let me spoil it.
This book reminds me of the Mars trilogy and to me it reads like a very well researched story. Sadly, or should I say boring-me, the research details sometimes make it onto the page a little bit too detailed - but not quite as philosophical as in the Mars trilogy. I tend to read info-dumps diagonally, so they don't affect me so much. If you hate that kind of extensive world-building and science-facting this may not be a book for you. If the Mars Trilogy is the Laphroiag among hard sci-fi, then this is an Ardbeg.
The first part is so realistic, the characters so true and believable, that the story bled over into my reality. I kept thinking it was really happening. I looked up and expected to see broken pieces of the moon hanging in the sky.
Many books use the apocalypse as a plot device. But very few actually describe it. This one does, and it is chilling and heart-breaking. After I read the beginning of Hard Rain, I dreamed I wanted to live up at the North Pole because most of the apocalypse would be going on around the equator (not that it would have mattered). The book is very intense throughout but this is one of the best and saddest moments in it. As if things weren't bad enough, an unexpected arrival up in space signals clearly that even the apocalypse hasn't managed to eradicate politics. And then Stephenson starts killing off people. Well, as the title says it. 7. At first I kept hoping that the title was referring to the initial seven pieces of the moon. But I knew all along I was wrong.
I was glued to the page, as catastrophe after catastrophe keeps decimating the survivors. But the title did give me hope that all was not lost. This hope brought me into the third part. I'll mark the rest as spoiler because I had no idea what was to come. And 5.000 years later the book turns into a mightily improved version of Niven's Ringworld. There are drawings at the end of the book of the structures he describes. The races spawned by the seven Eves have indeed survived and are only just now making Earth inhabitable again. But still: politics. The final third of the story is all about the fascinating setting Stephenson managed to create of a very alien place that is somehow still us. Embedded in this setting are the people of the new races, embroiled deeply into politics, and even war. And then suddenly the book was over. The end is fitting, even great. It's just: I can't believe the story is over now.
This heart-breaking epic was will most likely stay on my mind for quite a while. Definitely recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in science fiction. I am going to have to switch genre for a bit.
It's a 3.5* I think.. As many have said there are two souls to this book. It could have been two books and after finishing the second half and being what I feel was truncated, there could be three--or more.
I enjoyed the details, so much so that at times I found my heart pounding as something granular in detail caught my mindscape and made me as fearful as someone in an excruciating situation. That's rare. That's pretty awesome.
The book heavily draws upon todays landscape of personalities. Which makes getting to know these people easy and their twists and turns are not all to unknown to us. Funny, satirical, cynical, caricatures of the truth but interesting hooks none the less. The technology and solution all seem plausible to this geek. Some farther afield than others but still in the realm of probable if not fully possible.
Everything before the …
It's a 3.5* I think.. As many have said there are two souls to this book. It could have been two books and after finishing the second half and being what I feel was truncated, there could be three--or more.
I enjoyed the details, so much so that at times I found my heart pounding as something granular in detail caught my mindscape and made me as fearful as someone in an excruciating situation. That's rare. That's pretty awesome.
The book heavily draws upon todays landscape of personalities. Which makes getting to know these people easy and their twists and turns are not all to unknown to us. Funny, satirical, cynical, caricatures of the truth but interesting hooks none the less. The technology and solution all seem plausible to this geek. Some farther afield than others but still in the realm of probable if not fully possible.
Everything before the second half really syncs. It's when it moves into the second half of the book, a resolution stage if you would, that my mind just doesn't track as well as Stephensons on what happens. In 3000 years on earth we developed language, math, engineering, art, and so much more. In 5000 years in his future really only anecdotally we change. A little here a little there, and while being confined in space(s) might be some answer to that I just don't fully buy how little has changed. When we are presented with a potential size of change the book ends. Which also made it seem like the whole book lacked real climax, just a big moment in time and a slow retrograde resolution which didn't leave me as satisfied as I could be.
This was a pretty easy read to me but to some the techno-space-porn of it all will mire them down and make it laborious. Your milage may vary. I enjoyed this, it makes me daydream todays space program in detail I haven't thought of in years.
