Review: Neal Stephenson's "Seveneves"

[Robin Goodfellow]

Having read Snow crash years ago, loved it, and thought I'd give this one a shot:

The premise: An unexplained impact on the moon shatters it into 7 pieces, and it's predicted the remnants will fall to the earth and cause a fiery cataclysm in 2 years. Humanity pools its efforts to launch as many people and as much stuff as it can into orbit, in a hail-mary for the survival of humanity.

The remnants form an orbital colony, but eventually get consumed by a civil war. Barely surviving the civil war, the orbital colony goes on to grow and repopulate earth 5000 years later.

An interesting premise.

The dust jacket left me with the impression that the book picks up at the 5000 year part, with the recolonization of earth, and a surprise waiting for them on the healed planet, a premise that I found incredibly engaging.

In truth, the first third is devoted to humanity's pre-disaster preparations, the second third is devoted to the struggles of the orbiting survivors, and the last third happens 5000 years later, as the future-humans recolonize earth.

I can't say I'm really liking this book. The first third was a pretty decent take on the humanity-prepares-for-disaster trope. The second third was a lot of misery, as things get pretty ugly among the survivors.

I've just started the third third, and wanted to take a moment to capture my impressions sofar.

This book is a little too hard-scifi for me, with exhaustive descriptions of engineering details and physics problems and solutions and rocket thrusters and acceleration and OMFG I DONT FUCKING CARE WHATS GONNA HAPPEN TO THE PEOPLE?

It really felt like some of the golden age hard sci-fi I read as a kid. AC Clarke comes to mind, as well as about 20 other novels from that era and genre. It was interesting when I was 12, but at this point, it is feels like something I've already seen enough of..

The plot premise(s) of the book are far more interesting, and the technical details interfere with the progression. Sadly, I find myself skimming some pages, glancing through talk of machines and physics and rocket thrusters until I see a character's name, at which point my attention refocuses.

All told, the book is bigger than it needs to be, both in terms of word count, and physically. There's big print and lots of white space, and lots of extraneous detail. One is left with the impression that it has been deliberately inflated, like puffed wheat. Stephenson is cheapened by such ostentation.

Contemporary readers will recognize characters very similar to some current public personas, such as Neil Tyson, Malala, and Sarah Palin. These parallels may not be so clear to readers 20 years from now.

The title of the book obvious refers to the seven fragments the moon breaks into, but a slightly different meaning comes to light as the book progresses.

I'm on the last third now. It's interesting, but I'm rather eager to just find out what the fuck happens and finish the book. This contrasts to another book I read recently, which was just such a pleasure to read, that each page was a joy to savor, and I was sad when I ran out of pages.


This book is good, but not great. It is not Stephenson's best.

3.8 stars out of 5.

Will post followup when done.

[Mibz]

Originally posted by Robin Goodfellow
I can't say I'm really liking this book.

This book is a little too hard-scifi for me, with exhaustive descriptions of engineering details and physics problems and solutions and rocket thrusters and acceleration That's pretty much my review of Anathem as well, haha. The descriptions made it harder to read, but it was something else that made me stop entirely. I don't know if his other books also do this, but in Anathem some objects have different names, like instead of camcorder or video camera it's a "speelycaptor". When you have to constantly stop reading to try and remember what the fuck a specific noun means, it makes the book a chore. So I said fuck it and moved on to something else.

When my buddy told me that the rest of Stephenson's books were similar I decided to just pass on him altogether.

[Robin Goodfellow]

Originally posted by Mibz
That's pretty much my review of Anathem as well, haha. The descriptions made it harder to read, but it was something else that made me stop entirely. I don't know if his other books also do this, but in Anathem some objects have different names, like instead of camcorder or video camera it's a "speelycaptor". When you have to constantly stop reading to try and remember what the fuck a specific noun means, it makes the book a chore. So I said fuck it and moved on to something else.

When my buddy told me that the rest of Stephenson's books were similar I decided to just pass on him altogether.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who finds his books onerous.

Snow Crash was simply magnificent. Read it 20 years ago as a kid, and read it again about 5 years ago.

Lots of folks around me praise Stevenson... It sounds like he has become quite a phenomenon. But I find Scifi boring, so never followed up.

I'll confess I almost quit SeveneveS as well.... The middle is miserable and boring. But really, I'm just holding on to find out about the big surprise waiting for the returning humans down on Earth.

[Robin Goodfellow]

Well, I've finished the book.

I've been rather racing to the ending, just to find out what happened, and get closure, rather than a genuine can't-put-it-down.

There were some very innovative and big ideas in this book.... All tied together with a thin and watery narrative glue.

It is epic and ambitious in it's scope, but seems lacking in its execution.

While this wasn't really a great book, it has great potential for a movie. The space habitats would be visually stunning, as would some of the combat scenes near the end of the book.

The author creates a whole new type of personal weaponry that would look great on the big screen.

The "Surprise" awaiting the future humans was a rather predictable one. It was so easy to predict, I rather expected that the author would surprise with a different twist. But nope... the book ended rather as I expected.

All in all, it was a very *Interesting* book, epic in scope, with some big ideas, but execution was lacking.

This may have been a blockbuster 20 or 40 years ago, but given the maturity of the genre, as well as the experience of the author, I'd expect better.


3.8 / 5.