Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
869 pages - 2015 - fiction, sci-fi
April 25th, 2024 — May 17th, 2024
Rating: ⭐⭐½
I really wanted to like this book, but I was really torn. Science fiction can be very daunting for every reader, and this one as an 800-page tome is definitely no exception. But it is such an interesting premise—surely I thought it would be a fun read.
My problem is with the length, in part. The book starts with the moon exploding, and the rest of the book is dealing with that, both right after and thousands of years in the future. I think it could have been both so much more concise and much more detailed.This review will be concise, mostly because I was confused for a good portion of the book.
The first section deals with the immediate aftermath of the moon’s explosion. Everyone on Earth starts to come to terms with the idea that the five original fragments of the moon will continue to smash into each other and fragment further until it becomes a “Hard Rain”, releasing dust and debris down onto Earth’s surface and destroying every living thing. People are told that they have two years, give or take a few days, to live. A select, elite group will be shuttled into space as they work to build up the International Space Station to hold more people; the rest have to deal with mortality.
Section 2 is about their survival in space. The Hard Rain has started its scourge on the planet, and the few hundreds in space have to cope with that entire loss, plus the problems that come with makeshift space inhabitance. Some modules of the Ark, the name for the expanded ISS, are starving; other modules have been bombarded with radiation. By the end of the section, there are eight people alive—one man and seven women. The women realize that they can reproduce using parthenogenesis, using genetic modification to create their children, increase genetic diversity, and remove any potential genetic problems. They become known as the Seven Eves.
The third and final section begins by stating that we have jumped five thousand years into the future. There is a civil war happening between the Red and Blue factions, about whom I am not very familiar; some people have gone back down to Earth before it was agreed upon, so there are some Indigens and people living in the oceans because of selective breeding.
The first two sections were fascinating and had very real deadlines. Humanity is about to be destroyed, and they have to figure out how to possibly save some small portion of it while dealing with the inevitable repercussions. No matter what, people are going to be left behind. The president of the United States, Julia, illegally makes it to space in the nick of time, despite the world leaders making a pact to go down with the ship, as it were. So the folks on the Ark now have to also deal with creating cosmic law and doling out punishments for now-obsolete crimes.
But five thousand years is far too much of a time jump. It should have been a completely separate book, I feel. I could not become attached to the characters in Part Three because they did not feel as fleshed out, and especially because they were always referred to in reference to their Eves. Julian descendants learned debate skills; Dinians learned Morse code. It was interesting to see how the different “races” diverged from the Seven Eves, but I wish it had been further explored. There was so much happening that it was difficult to keep it all straight in my head.
It was interesting, and as far as sci-fi goes it was definitely dense but it was also relatively easy to follow for the first couple sections. As someone far removed from aerospace circles, I definitely had a feel for the urgency of every problem, imminent and far-off. But overall, one-third of it could have been lopped off into a sequel.
Total pages read so far, 2024: 9,809
Total books read so far, 2024: 26
Next book: The Elementals by Michael McDowell