Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (MOBI)

Description

What would happen if the world were ending?

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of May 2015: Stephenson is not afraid of writing big books—big in page count, big in concept, and big in their long-lingering effect on the reader’s mind. Newcomers to Stephenson should reject any trepidation. This science-fueled saga spans millennia, but make no mistake: The heart of this story is its all-too-human heroes and how their choices, good and ill, forge the future of our species. Seveneves launches into action with the disintegration of the moon. Initially considered only a cosmetic, not cosmic, change to the skies, the moon’s breakup is soon identified as the spawning ground of a meteor shower dubbed the Hard Rain that will bombard Earth for thousands of years, extinguishing all life from the surface of the planet. Now humanity has only two years to get off-world and into the Cloud Ark, a swarm of small, hastily built spaceships that will house millions of Earth species (recorded as digital DNA) and hundreds of people until they can return home again. But who goes, and who stays? And once the lucky few have joined the Cloud Ark, how will the remaining seeds of humankind survive not only the perils of day-to-day of life in space but also the lethal quicksand of internal politics? Slingshot pacing propels the reader through the intricacies of orbit liberation points, the physics of moving chains, and bot swarms, leaving an intellectual afterglow and a restless need to know more. An epic story of humanity and survival that is ultimately optimistic, Seveneves will keep you thinking long past the final page. –Adrian Liang –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From the Back Cover From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand yearsWhat would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remains . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant. –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Review “No slim fables or nerdy novellas for Stephenson: his visions are epic, and he requires whole worlds—and, in this case, solar systems—to accommodate them…. Wise, witty, utterly well-crafted science fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews“Stephenson’s remarkable novel is deceptively complex, a disaster story and transhumanism tale that serves as the delivery mechanism for a series of technical and sociological visions…. There’s a ton to digest, but Stephenson’s lucid prose makes it worth the while.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)“The huge scope and enormous depth of the latest novel from Stephenson is impressive…. A major work of hard sf that all fans of the genre should read.” —Library Journal (starred review)“Well-paced over three parts covering 5,000 years of humanity’s future, Stephenson’s monster of a book is likely to dominate your 2015 sf-reading experience.” —Booklist“[Stephenson] plays with hard ballistics, hard genetics, hard sociology. And what thrills me, is that he makes it interesting. That he makes life and death in space about actual life and death .” —NPR Books“Written in a wry, erudite voice…Seveneves will please fans of hard science fiction, but this witty, epic tale is also sure to win over readers new to Stephenson’s work.” —Washington Post“Seveneves offers at once [Stephenson’s] most conventional science-fiction scenario and a superb exploration of his abiding fascination with systems, philosophies and the limits of technology…. Stephenson’s central characters, mostly women, serve as a welcome corrective to science-fiction clichés.” —Chicago Tribune“Seveneves can be fascinating…. Insights into the human character shine like occasional full moons.” —Boston Globe“[A] novel of big ideas, but it’s also a novel of personalities, of heart, and of a particular kind of hope that only comes from a Stephenson story. Science fiction fans everywhere will love this book.” —BookPage“Stephenson…knows the life-sustaining power of storytelling, since storytelling is what he does…. Today’s post-apocalyptic stories routinely aim to convey the loss of the old world through the personal losses of a few characters. Stephenson makes you feel the loss of Earth on the scale it deserves.” —Salon –This text refers to the audioCD edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I like Neal Stephenson. I really do. I particularly enjoyed Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and even had a grudging respect for Anathem, generally reviled among his hard-core fans. But I hit the wall with Seveneves. Let me explain why, because I think many reviewers either blindly bought into it, or put it down as garbage. There is a reason for both.Seveneves is an 880 page novel, ostensibly about a very near-future catastrophe where the world must work together in a short amount of time to build out an orbiting habitat (using the ISS as a core), to save what tiny fraction they can of the human race. As you can imagine, this rush to save the essence of humanity is a perfect stage to explore every near-future space technology and Stephenson takes every opportunity to do so. And then some.Unlike Cryptonomicon, for example, where the Turing code-break/world net/Axis gold story lines are different enough for the reader to enjoy or slog through, the technology in Sveneves is so dense, so similar in purpose, and so relentless, it’s easy for one’s eyes to glaze over. A six page description of delta-V and how to achieve it might be interesting in and of itself, if it weren’t part of many, many more pages of orbital mechanics and how to use a nuclear reactor to power a space-borne craft. And although the subjects he deeply delves into range from genetics, to asteroid mining, water from comets as propellant, and zero-g sex, these components are all in service to a very specific technology problem the survivors are trying to solve.The first two-thirds of the book relate the challenges of creating the habitat and stabilizing its existence. Unfortunately, the story is but a mere framework on which to hang gobs of technical dissertation, and the characters are poorly formed, used only as chess pieces around which the technology can orbit. No matter how much you may adore hard SF (and Stephenson admits he did play fast and loose with bits of the tech), Seveneves ends up reading, for the most part, like transcribed lectures.The last third of the book, when the survivors can finally return to Earth, exalts similarly in forward-derivative tech, although the story itself picks up a little more steam. The ending is meh and satisfactory only in that it is an ending.The secret to Seveneves, however, is spelled out in the author’s five pages of acknowledgements at the end. He tells how he started developing ideas for the book in 2006, and lists the huge cadre of techies, space scientists and enthusiasts, and geeks that helped him vet any number of ideas in his book. The real telling line, comes at the end when he thanks his editor for her patience with him while he spent seven years deciding what to do with all these ideas. To me, that’s tech in search of a story and that’s exactly what you get in Seveneves.Many reviewers either loved it because it was NEAL STEPHENSON, while many just stopped reading and tossed it on the floor. When I realized less than half way through that I really fell into the latter camp, I nevertheless struggled through to the end because I adore Stephenson’s snarky prose, which is definitely on point. I gave the book three stars, though it really deserves two and a half stars because you have to admire a writer with his cojones to put this out.Should you read Seveneves? If you’re a Stephenson nut, you can’t not read it. If you’re new to Stephenson, stay away and try some of his earlier books from the 1990s. He is no doubt a very fine writer and I would hate to have a newbie be influenced by what I hope is a vanity project that has emptied Stephenson’s pent-up rolodex of very near-future space tech, and that his next book is more accessible.

⭐ I am 74-years-old and time is valuable and this book just took a nice chunk of it out of my life. I had never read the works of this author and did like the story outline. Reviews were generally positive, but I place much of that in Stephenson’s legion of followers.The technical aspects are far too detailed and excessive. I lost count on the pages dedicated to delta-V. This was symptomatic of the book and especially in the first 500+ pages. I can understand character development, but again – excessive.Will I give the author another chance? Probably – but some folks also remarry an ex.

⭐ Steampunk at its worst. Irrational premises. Uses of materials and energies that would have made John Campbell blush.Without being a spoiler, let me point out just one of the many annoying sillinesses: The characters in the book retain the ability to manipulate the genes of their descendants, but when their storehouse of human genetic material is accidentally lost, they don’t have the good sense to collect new samples before sending crewmen out on suicide missions.Stephenson at his best addresses genuine complexities in cutting edge technologies, difficult philosophic problems, and genuine human behavior. This book does none of that.

⭐ I’ve never run a marathon, but I would say this book is the literary equivalent of what I’d expect:You start out decently. You’re getting into it, and psyching yourself up for the full journey. Then, you start to hit your stride. You get into a good pace and make good progress. You start to get fatigued, and you look ahead and realize just how much is still left to do. “No!” you say “I signed up for the this, and I’ve made it this far. I have to keep going”. You keep going, but you’re losing steam. Your pace and patience are wearing thin. Finally, fully exhausted, you cross the finish line. Was it worth it? Will you ever do it again? After that experience, you can’t imagine try anything like this again anytime soon.To be more specific: it is clear that the author did a lot of research and work to make this seem scientifically accurate and authentic. There are few deus ex machinas and much of the premises feel believable, but in a book nearly 900 pages long, some brevity would have been appreciated. The author spends multiple paragraphs to multiple pages explaining concepts that – while accurate and correct – don’t need to be spelled out in such detail for the purposes of the story.The best example is, as another commenter put it, the pages-long explanation that a massive, fast moving object needs to slow down a LOT before it can enter Earth orbit and meet up with the ISS, otherwise it will just burn up or shoot off in another direction back into space.See that? See how I wrote that in just two sentences, Neal Stephenson? The rest of the story around that effort doesn’t change, but the multiple pages about altering “delta V” on a comet can be thrown out now. There are multiple times in the book that whatever dialog, situation, tension, or build up and interrupted by these long-winded, highly-technical asides; they are very jarring and really pull you out of the moment.Likewise, there are what feels like 30-40 primary characters over the course of this book, and the point of view switches between them abruptly and awkwardly in a few places. While you might be following one character for 400 pages, suddenly you’re seeing things from someone else’s eyes without a break or warning.Speaking of breaks, holy hell the sections in this were long. Some “chapters” were hundreds of pages, it felt like. Given that so much of the story and in-universe history is broken into so many smaller, named segments, it was a little odd that the text itself wasn’t as well.Let me throw one other thing that slows down reading the book: every single thing gets a proper noun. It totally makes sense that language would change over thousands of years, which the author does address well with the evolution and contraction of words (ex: varp, kupol, dukh), but it seems over the course of world building, the author felt that every place, every technology (or version of technology), or every idea needed to be given a name to refer to it, regardless of how often those terms are used or needed. A good example is stopping to explain the evolution of the tech and name for the “ambots”. Again, just take a moment and say “these weapons fire little robots that do X” and move on. The etymology of some things isn’t important to the story.The ending of the final act sort of just happens, with whatever resolution to the conflict described in one or two paragraphs, almost like the book had meant to go on a little longer and explore the things introduced in the final 50 pages or so (like literally anything about the Pingers or whatever the Purpose is). What was the point of the final act? We head to the beach to find Pingers, they show up, and it all kind of just ends?

⭐ Stephenson’s books always start with such big and bold ideas, but have a way of faltering by the end. He’s a better starter than finisher. This one in particular felt uneven – 150 pages that cover two weeks, and then about the same to cover five thousand years. The last section was so short compared to the first two, that it just felt like escapist “future apocalypse” sci fi, and radically different in pacing and tone from the hard, near-future storytelling of the first four-fifths of the book. I slogged through to the end, but there’s no way I ever re-read this. The ending felt rushed and incomplete the same as Snow Crash and the Diamond Age – like we were let off the bus two stops before the end of the line.

⭐ Read at least a random dozen of the other 1 Star Reviews and Know that None of them are lies!They are All Passionately Warning you to Avoid this Dreadful Dreck!If you like wasting your precious time on Earth reading orbital mechanics, outer space hazards, and tech manuals made into a narrative, endless technical descriptions of “important” things, being reminded in 3 pages (again) about an object you already slogged through a 30 page rambling description of already, having a concept being fleshed out with better character developement than the humans and you like to waste money, well have at It !!! There’s a myriad of selections by unknown & new authors available, so make a choice of any other Sci-fi novel you see and you couldn’t find it more worse than THIS!

⭐ Had this been the debut book of a new author, I would have recommended a few Creative Writing classes and a good editor. Being the last of a long series of books by a revered author, I conclude Stephenson fell into the trapping in which many a famous author, director, and artist have unfortunately fallen, and in which his editor willingly followed him: the ego trip. It comes from the conviction famous and acclaimed authors develop over years of success that they can do no wrong, that anything that comes out of their pen (or word processor) is god’s given gift to humanity. Conviction often reinforced by the yes-men they surround themselves with, editors included, who, for fear or sycophantry, don’t tell them, to put it bluntly, when a stinker is a stinker.The idea behind the book is not so bad (hence the 2 stars): some unknown cause has broken the Moon into chunks which will eventually fall on earth obliterating the atmosphere and every living thing underneath it. Humanity spends the 2 years it has left building habitats in orbit, using the ISS as nucleus, and sending as many people as possible to live out the 5000 years needed for earth to be stable enough to restart the ecosystem. Of course, we all know the nations of the world can’t find their own behind with both hands in 2 years, imagine creating living accommodations in space that will sustain itself for 5000 years. Sci fi is all about the suspension of disbelief, so let’s pretend. We also have to suspend our disbelief further and imagine that electronic components will last 5000 years since we are told no chip fab is sent in orbit, when in fact, electronics components don’t last 5000 years, nor 500, in fact you are lucky if they last 50 years, but again, suspension of disbelief, remember? Which is fine because the author spends little to no time telling us how the surviving in space part actually happens, fast forwarding from a few months after earth is dead to 5000 years later, when everything is great, humanity is thriving, etc. Which is interesting because the author wastes no opportunity to tell us plenty about everything else, from orbital mechanics to how a whip works, from gliding techniques to Lagrange points. And he does that in the most excruciating detail. In fact, he’s so eager to let you know all about it that he will interrupt narration smack in the middle of those rare moments in which something interesting is actually happening to go on a rambling tangent on how to make projectile weapons that use robots as projectiles. By the time you are done reading that, you forgot why what came before was interesting. Or you simply fell asleep.Anyway, as I was saying before I went off my tangent (and be thankful it wasn’t a 6 page tangent like in the book), 5000 years later humanity is occupying many habitats in orbit and rebuilding an ecosystem on earth. Humanity is now sharply divided in racial groups related to the few humans who actually managed to have children in space (the 7 Eves of the title). They live in adoration of the past of 5000 years ago (imagine us westerners living in some kind of religious awe of the Mesopotamian civilizations, calling ourselves Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, etc, giving our children names like Gilgamesh, Sargon, or Hammurabi, obsessing over the latest episode of “The Parthian Empire”, etc. I know, I know, suspension of disbelief and all. Oh snap did I go off another tangent? It must be contagious).So what happens next? Ah yes, the book ends. Just like that. No warning, no cliffs, nothing. It just ended, leaving me with the most important question of all: who will give me back the hours I spent reading those 900 pages? And why weren’t they cut down to 300, adding maybe another 100 to set up a decent ending? This shall be a mystery that will never be solved.

⭐ I’ve never been a big fan of this author, but thought “what the hell” and the book was on sale. Needless to say, it wasn’t even worth the 2 bucks I spent on it. I admit I only made it through 20% of the book, but quickly realized that there was no way I was going to get into it. I’m currently re-reading Dune at the same time and the two books are not remotely the same n terms of holding one’s interest and caring about the characters and the story. Dune is the hands down winner.

⭐ I have been a Neal Stephenson fan since Snow Crash. This book is another example of his excellent hard sci-fi. I normally review products in detail, but I don’t like doing so with books as I hate giving any spoilers. In fact, I think this work is particularly suited to going in cold – try not to read any synopsis of the story beforehand.I will say that I purchased both the Kindle version and the Audible version of this book, and I kind of went back and forth between the two. Audio format can at times be difficult with Stephenson’s works because his technical details are generally easier apprehended (by me) in visual form. This ranges from diagrams (there are three or four in this book) to things like mathematical calculations.

⭐ The primary reason I disliked it was the excessive descriptions of mechanical features and orbits and altitudes. It got to the point where I was flipping through multiple consecutive pages to get past these descriptions to passages that furthered the plot. For the first 5000 years (and it felt like 10000), I don’t think this caused me to miss any details important to the story. I think I did miss some details in second part of the book that took place after earth became habitable again. But I was turning three and more pages at a time.The second, related reason I disliked Seveneves was the lack of attention to details that WERE critical to the plot. Why were the original cloud ark residents and those who planned the cloud ark so incredibly incompetant? The SHTF almost immediately after the hard rain. No attention was given to how an artificial community could be successfully managed. Why were there seven distinct races in a world where genetic diversity was an issue? How could seven races be maintained when interbreeding was possible and there was no physical isolation? Why were the spacers able to re-create extinct species from digital genetic archives, but not humans? Why was it not possible to forgive Aida’s extreme choices, especially given the pragmatic, scientific nature of the surviving cloud ark residents? How did some of the characters introduced towards the end of the book survive? Why did an otherwise responsible character set a potentially deadly explosive charge to force other characters to make a decision within ten minutes, when they (almost literally) had all the time I the worlld?The third significant reason I disliked the book was because the ending was so heavily foreshadowed that there was nothing surprising in the last several hundred pages. In fact, the only thing that was surprising was that the author included the utterly ridiculous coincidences that were glaringly forecast in the beginning of the book.

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