Seveneves- Neal Stephenson (spoilers in tags)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

IP,

As to the "under-reaction in Earth Society"

Just wait for it

[MerenthaClone]

IP,

As to the "under-reaction in Earth Society"

Just wait for it

Nah, its still 100% an under-reaction even knowing the events you're alluding to. It almost would work if

our perspective changed to only be from Izzy pretty much immediately after Dubois explains what's going to happen with the White Sky and Hard Rain, because then you'd be isolated from it, but we get lots of ground-level stuff that's just mindbogglingly normal, even right up until the end.

Its pretty clear that the social reaction to impending doom isn't the story Stephenson wanted to tell, so he just ignores it. IMO.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

MC,

Have you read Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke? His discription of the "end of the world" while a step removed were fairly believable. Perhaps what Stephenson was trying to convey was the disbelief ordinary people felt toward "White Sky" and "Hard Rain". At least right up until the end of the countdown to "White Sky".

[Brendan Moody]

I'd say the narration is pretty clear that almost everybody "gets it' right away; is there any sign that the lack of response has to do with disbelief/denial?

I think it's telling that

the one bit of major negative reaction we do get, the lead-up to the nuking, is pretty clearly there as part of the characterization of JBF rather than as a thematic point in its own right.

Stephenson just isn't as interested in the social ramifications of the impending Hard Rain as he is in the minutiae of schemes for changing direction in space. And really,

the social collapse of the human colony later is similarly skimmed over. After pages and pages about how to turn a comet, we get a couple paragraphs of "then the experiment fell apart and almost everybody died."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

BM,

A fair point. That said I like Stephenson's technical focus. Always have.

[peterbound]

Gonna have to pick this up.

[Iskaral Pust]

55% through (Kindle is so precise on that). Same opinion holds but I will stubbornly persist.

I agree with Merentha and BM. I understand that NS wanted to write about his specific topic and exclude the societal impact, but in that case make it an off-screen uncertainty for the Izzies. Don't show Doob easily flying around to visit family and friends and go on hiking trips and romantic getaways. Unfortunately, the societal impact is Chekov's gun. Knowledge of our own mortality is the defining conflict within sapience; making that conflict immediate and inescapable demands resolution. NS should have concocted a different scenario.

But that's still only a sideline complaint. The writing is still too dull, the characters are merely vectors for info dumps, no humor or flair in the prose and the story remains a mix of The Martian and Gravity. Where is the new Eliza or Shaftoe or Waterhouse? JBF is a cliche politician snake to contrast with the rationale, clear-headed scientists, but (so far) not the necessary, subtle mastermind of Comstock.

[Alejandro Rodriguez]

I hate to be the kind of reader that complaints about plot devices, but there are three things that bother me about this otherwise great novel at a fundamental level

* The under-reaction of Earth societies: As was mentioned before, schools got a flexible schedule, the stock market changed a bit and people had more casual sex. Beyond that people kept on going with their lives as if nobody cared the entire world was about to end.

* The Big Ride: I know the plot required an epic journey leaving only seven survivors, but the way they got to it took all of humanity acting like idiots. Why didn't they plan to put people in high orbit from the beginning? Mankind has been able to reach the moon for decades, without any need for megaton asteroids. The arklets apparently could make the trip there in only 5 days, yet they preferred to take a 3 year journey in which almost everybody die just to carry around the space station.

* "Cannibals" are totally evil: 28 scientists and engineers area appalled and completely unable to accept that a group of people stranded in the middle of nowhere for a long period of time will resort to eating the dead to survive, even though that's totally reasonable and exactly what normal people do in those situations. The stigma is so big that the cannibals decide to have a gun fight in the only space ship left for all humanity.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

AR,

As to point three:

I don't think Aida was waiting for people to die before they started dinner. I think they were killing people and then eating them. They certainly did that with the Scientist/blogger.

[Kat]

AR,

As to point three:

I don't think Aida was waiting for people to die before they started dinner. I think they were killing people and then eating them. They certainly did that with the Scientist/blogger.

I re-read that section, and they didn't piece together that part until after the fight was over when they had a chance to piece the story together from the email records. There's just the one guy who's drifting into space and hacking the email or whatever (which made me laugh in an otherwise bleak scene) and is relaying the info to the rest of Endurance. And even afterward, I think the part that shocks them is the "corporal punishment" inflicted on Julia and Tavistock Prowse-- Julia got her mouth bolted shut and they ate Tavistock piece by piece as some sort of ritual, which is pretty shocking and you can see why they'd be repelled by that. I'm actually surprised the other 7 let Aida be one of the Eves after that.

The other parts I'm vaguely confused by (more technically-- ok, it's science nitpicking):

1. After they settle in at Cleft, where does their spacefaring civilization get the propellant and raw materials needed to terraform the Earth? Do they just wait for passing comets? I was under the impression that they pretty much used up all of the comet Greg's Skeleton bringing the Endurance to the orbit of Cleft. But they later mention that the terraforming requires pulling in comets (including from the Oort Cloud)...so how did they bring them in, given that we saw how much propellant they needed just to shift the orbit of their pet comet and move their asteroid chunk around Earth's gravitational field. Seems like an oversight given how much Stephenson is over the technical details of orbital changes in the rest of the book. I recommended this book to physics teachers anyway. :P

2. If they were so desperate for genetic material that they were willing to use parthenogenesis, and if Moira is such a versatile geneticist...why didn't they use genetic material from the people who had recently died? It seems like they could have cloned them or at least sequenced their genes for later use. Or is that too weird and creepy? Same with Luisa- couldn't she just have given an egg or other genetic material to one of the other women to use?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kat,

I agree. I cannot fathom why they let Aida reproduce. That woman seemed pretty messed up to me. Not that anyone would be in very ggod shape if they believed humanity was down to 8 people

As to your second point.

I believe that the spacers were trapped in the cleft for nearly a thousans years before they were able to become a spacefaring civilization again. The Cleft was a giant chunk of iron and so they had lots of resources to build with. What I wonder about is what did they eat and breath during that thousand years living in the Cleft?

[Kat]

Warning: geochemical/physical ramblings under the spoiler in addition to spoilers for Part 2

They had the "vitamins" meant for a much larger population, and also had the space gunk left over from the comet that would have given them enough organic material to fertilize plants, algae, etc with micronutrients. I also think they still had a little bit of the comet left, but not enough to move them if they needed to go anywhere far. Getting to Cleft was a one-way trip if they brought Amalthea and that was what was controversial- if they didn't make it, they were pretty much fucked as they'd then be in the orbit of the ex-moon's debris field. IIRC their systems weren't in the worst shape ever once they arrived. They weren't low on air, and even if they had been, they could have converted the rest of the comet into air pretty easily and as long as your ecosystem/scrubbers are working well, they'd have had enough air for a much larger population than they ended up with so long as it remained a closed system. Keep in mind that the people who died on Izzy all died because of battle wounds, cancer from when they had been in orbit, etc. rather than starvation or lack of air (unlike the people in the doomed Swarm).

But unless they had a really energy-efficient way of breaking down rock into its constituent elements, I have no idea where they would have gotten the volatiles necessary for propellant to move stuff in between high and low orbits. They were sitting on a big chunk of iron/metal- that's why they chose to land on Cleft, because it used to be the Moon's core. Problem is, the rest of the moon rocks would be minerals where oxygen is really tightly bonded to the rest. Oxygen is the most common element in the Earth/moon's crust and mantle, followed by silicon, followed by various metallic elements like aluminum, calcium and iron. But there's a reason that here on Earth, we don't mine really common minerals like quartz and plagioclase to get those elements out. Silicates (all of Earth/moon's most common minerals) have very strong chemical bonds in their crystal structure that form at high temperature, so it is difficult to get them to break apart without a slow process like water-->chemical weathering (which will result in most things turning into clay minerals, also difficult to break down) or raising them to high temperature (needs a lot of energy). Metals would be easy to get because they are sitting on a big chunk of probably iron+nickel. In fact, Cath 2 observes this when she visits Cradle later on, that some of the parts will rust and leak red fluid into the streets. But gases and water would be hard to come by because moon rocks are pretty dry. Anyway, this is all just geological masturbation that I enjoy doing, but my main point is that it seems like Stephenson did a lot of scientific/technical research for Parts 1 & 2 and then didn't really think through the transition between Part 2 and 3 of this book. There's a big hand waving implied there that is inconsistent with the research done for all the other parts.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kat,

Fair enough. He does seem to hand wave and suggest they had a thousand years to figure it out without explicitly explaining what they did to survive. That's what I mean when I say this book is begging for a deeper look at the immediate post "Epic" period of time, and a sequal to tell us how things work out between the Spacers, Diggers, and Pingers.

[NewsToTom]

I hate to be the kind of reader that complaints about plot devices, but there are three things that bother me about this otherwise great novel at a fundamental level

* The under-reaction of Earth societies: As was mentioned before, schools got a flexible schedule, the stock market changed a bit and people had more casual sex. Beyond that people kept on going with their lives as if nobody cared the entire world was about to end.

* The Big Ride: I know the plot required an epic journey leaving only seven survivors, but the way they got to it took all of humanity acting like idiots. Why didn't they plan to put people in high orbit from the beginning? Mankind has been able to reach the moon for decades, without any need for megaton asteroids. The arklets apparently could make the trip there in only 5 days, yet they preferred to take a 3 year journey in which almost everybody die just to carry around the space station.

* "Cannibals" are totally evil: 28 scientists and engineers area appalled and completely unable to accept that a group of people stranded in the middle of nowhere for a long period of time will resort to eating the dead to survive, even though that's totally reasonable and exactly what normal people do in those situations. The stigma is so big that the cannibals decide to have a gun fight in the only space ship left for all humanity.

First point:

I think he just wasn't interested in writing about that, so he handwaved it away.

[Kat]

I hate to be the kind of reader that complaints about plot devices, but there are three things that bother me about this otherwise great novel at a fundamental level

* The Big Ride: I know the plot required an epic journey leaving only seven survivors, but the way they got to it took all of humanity acting like idiots. Why didn't they plan to put people in high orbit from the beginning? Mankind has been able to reach the moon for decades, without any need for megaton asteroids. The arklets apparently could make the trip there in only 5 days, yet they preferred to take a 3 year journey in which almost everybody die just to carry around the space station.

I think the idea is that the planners of this mission latched onto the idea of using the ISS as a base for their general population and they were trying to plan stuff quickly. No idea why they didn't send the arklets up, but from Dinah's POV they pretty much start sending stuff up way before the plan for the arklets is finalized. But yes, everyone is an idiot and they should have sent the ISS to a higher orbit while they were able to get stuff off earth's surface easily and before it became too massive and while the debris field was more consolidated. I get the idea that they planned the whole thing by saying "How can we maximize this mission given the technology we already have developed?" rather than trying for new things, and in being conservative/efficient, didn't plan it very well.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kat,

I don't recall that the cleft was noticed as a safe place to retreat to until well into the Ark swarm's planning. Could they have build a booster that could quickly and safely moved Izzy, asteroid and all to the cleft once it was identified?

[Kat]

Kat,

I don't recall that the cleft was noticed as a safe place to retreat to until well into the Ark swarm's planning. Could they have build a booster that could quickly and safely moved Izzy, asteroid and all to the cleft once it was identified?

It wasn't- that idea came way later, also after they realized they would need to have the comet to provide enough fuel to change orbits. They should have initially planned for orbits that would be outside the Moon's orbit, not that far past it, to avoid the debris. But given the exponentially increasing amount of debris, they would have had to realize this close to the beginning so they could then successfully navigate through the debris field. I think they were just like, "Hey, we have the ability to cheaply and quickly make rockets that will get satellites into a low orbit, so let's just do that on a large scale." It was definitely a lot of putting all your eggs in one basket having just that plan with the arklets rather than also planning a mission to Mars or a higher orbit as well.

For those nerds out there, here's a cool interactive satellite orbit map from NASA.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kat,

That link just took an hour out of my day. Very cool. :)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Here's a link to some interesting images that pertain mostly to part two of the book:

https://lithive.com/sections/627/gal?layout=compact

[MerenthaClone]

Here's a link to some interesting images that pertain mostly to part two of the book:

https://lithive.com/sections/627/gal?layout=compact

I think some of these are in the book itself, no?

Also, finally finished. My vacation ended and I couldn't fly through the book like I did the first time. A few things:

The Diggers were okay. Plausible that they'd survived, but they seemed like they hadn't particularly changed much and the fact that they'd had no issues in their survival plan that we saw, vs the tremendous struggle the Spacers had, was a little odd. Oh, okay, they just hung out underground for 5k years without

major shifts culturally, physically, or anything else? I mean, the Spacers' progress over 5k years kind of makes sense because they were starting from literally 7 people. Population growth and societal development is going to be really slow.

The Pingers, on the other hand, just...what? Okay, so the epilogue reveals that there was another plan to hide in submarines for 5k years. Uh, sure, I suppose, but how did literally nobody know about it? Why make it secret? How did they eat? What did they eat? How did the US government justify not sending up more vitamins to the Spacers because they were sending them to the Pingers first? And selective breeding works in dogs because you can get pups every, what, two years? You need ~16 for people at a minimum, you get 1 instead of a litter, and you'd need to have a lot of space for it to work. They just felt so tacked on. I get that Stephenson's focus was the the tech and the Spacers, but dammit, I wanted more from the societal aspect.

Finally, re: the Spacers. He does what a lot of typical scifi authors seem to do and really lengthens everything. Okay, 5k years to expand like that, sure. I buy that because society is starting from basically 7 people and is initially confined to one chunk of the moon. But 200+ years of low-grade conflict between Red and Blue with no change in anything? Yeah, no, I don't buy that. We saw huge societal shifts in single-digit year spans in the Swarm and now, suddenly, everything is completely stable? Red and Blue are two countries, essentially, that have been at war longer than most modern countries have existed. And nothing has changed since that started. It just felt very cliche scifi at that point, but maybe I'm missing something.

Summary: First two thirds start of slow and techwordy, get better and then pick up into a gripping read that then just grinds to a screeching halt for the last third. And still, despite all of that, I really liked it.