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Seveneves- Neal Stephenson (spoilers in tags)


Ser Scot A Ellison

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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.

Yeah, that's just about my overall opinion too.

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Just finished it. Relieved to be done and looking forward to reading something else now. I agree with most assessments here although I'm not sure that I'm overall glad to have read it.



The long tech-splaining was nowhere near as fun as the metaphysical tangents in Anathem or the Enlightenment backdrop in the Baroque Cycle or even the cryptography in Cryptonomicon (although perhaps on par with the libertarian fantasies in Cryptonomicon).



The characters in the first two parts never really came to life. On one hand, it's nice to see him depart from his stock characters of socially clumsy nerds and plucky libertarians (all males too), but on the other hand he didn't seem to have a great feel for this cast of characters and could not imbue them with life or depth.



The themes did not feel new enough. It felt like a mix of KSR's Mars and The Martian. The third part was more interesting with the new races from the seven eves, but I think that also invites a very long discussion of how this point of view relates to interpretations of race in our society. All SF is a mirror for the present. Don't worry, I won't go down that rabbit hole here.



I think he found a few cool tech ideas for a story but lost sight of the narrative. I presume there is a sequel pending, although NS has ended books rather abruptly before.


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Finished. Big reservations, but very glad I read it. I found the first two parts gripping, after a little bit of adjustment to the consciously, deliberately expository way Stephenson often puts scenes together; they were very interesting, even for someone with no technical know-how whatsoever, but they were also compelling dramatically. I felt much more emotionally detached from the third section.



I'm very much the wrong person to be talking about how much sense the details of the orbital mechanics do or do not make, but might the reason that Izzy needs to go on the big ride post-white sky, rather than earlier on when it's not laden down with so much crap and thus easier to move, have to do with the desire to make transporting goods and people to Izzy from the ground as efficient as possible? The focus during much of the preparation time pre-white sky is launching vast amounts of crucial shit into orbit where Izzy can get at it, and presumably Izzy's orbit has been chosen to make it as accessible as possible from Cape and Bakenar and wherever else they're launching from. Raising Izzy's orbit would presumably make this more difficult.



I agree that the characters are thin a lot of the time and that a lot of them exist mostly as jobs and mouthpieces to say interesting things. I find Dyna and Ivey somewhat more compelling as people, though, and I think their friendship scenes elevate their arcs. I got a lot out of their stuff. A few of the other characters in the same group -- Moira etc -- also interested me periodically; Stephenson is just plain a good writer, so even if character's not his focus he delivers details in ways that I find at least give me something to chew on character-wise at least some of the time. I got a lot less from the people in the final third, which is a big part of why it doesn't work as well for me.



Some of my favourite parts were the Ymir retrieval mission and rescuing Tekla and stuff like that, parts where Stephenson's marrying his pentient for intriguing scientific detail with fully imagined -- rather than summarized -- scenes with drama and stakes. Dang, the Ymir part's great.



I agree that, in a book that's so strengthened by detail so often, it feels wonky when things are just so totally handwaved away. In the particular case of the pingers, I think just a couple of definite foreshadowings in the first two thirds could have done wonders for making the reveal feel less artificial later -- a scene in which Ivey analyzes Cal's pictures and decodes some of his hints at the undersea project, for instance. I'm not opposed to the pingers -- I think they're cool -- but I agree that I would have liked a lot more about how they survived and evolved, because that airy "oh, they survived in teeny tiny submarines for literally five-thousand years and evolved to be basically amphibious lifeforms via selective breeding" is some fairly big talk.


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Huh. Finished. I enjoyed it a lot (people tinkering with things in space) while not thinking it's a really good book. I'm with Isk, too - where'd Stephenson's humour go? Even when he's pretty bad, there's a certain flair, style, verve to his writing, both in terms of prose but also in terms of plotting and even characterization. This was just clunky, like the skeleton of a Neal Stephenson novel that he needs to go over one more time and add, you know, Stephenson writing. The last third is a huge letdown. The "races" are a really intriguing concept, and a reasonable one, even, but were never developed much beyond D&D classes. Probably not enough room - that's the base for a doorstopper all of it's own.



However, I was pleasantly surprised by then women in the book. It really seems to me like Stephenson notice the criticism, understood it, and fixed it. That impressive and very rarely seems to happen.


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Not his best work but still quite enjoyable. I really did enjoy his description of orbital mechanics and how physics is really not a debatable subject. I just wish the 3rd section was a bit longer without the exposition about the different races. I would rather have been shown this by their interactions.


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Okay, I read the book now I'm listening to the book.

Yes, the lead up to the hard rain was too orderly. There would have been huge fights over who would be sent to the Could Ark. Would all our existing social problems be set aside and everyone works like happy drones to attempt to preserve what we can in the Cloud Ark? I doubt it. With all the social tumult we have seen in the last few weeks it makes me wonder if that could be set aside for the good of all if we were faced with the White Sky/Hard Rain scenario. I would hope we could I just doubt it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Enjoyed it, though there were a few points when stupidity trumped everything else, as far as character decisions went.

 

 

[spoiler]So am I the only one who thought, as soon as that modified shuttle showed up after Earth started getting pulverized, that they should have just spaced JBF right away?  Might never had had the split between the arklets and Izzy, and maybe have kept part of genome project intact.[/spoiler]

 

Also, there was one point where [spoiler]Julia said that she'd seen exactly how fast vacuum evacuates a ship after a bullet hole - are we to understand that she shot her advisor intentionally?  If so, why?[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler]Also think it's interesting that despite all of the drama around what was going on in space, humanity wasn't going to die out anyway.  Not sure the McQuarrie descendents in Alaska would have lasted another 5000 years in a hole, but the pingers seemed to have adapted to the new world.  (Though it would likely have taken much longer for Earth to re-oxygenate without the spacers clearing out the rocks from low earth orbit and re-engineering the biosphere.)[/spoiler]

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Mcbigski,

[spoiler]Right after watching the vast majority of the Human Race die I doubt anyone who made it to the Cloud Ark was in danger of being spaced. The mistake was in banishing JBF to an arklet instead of keeping her close where they could control and perhaps even utilize her. Idil hands and all that.[/spoiler]
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Mcbigski,

[spoiler]Right after watching the vast majority of the Human Race die I doubt anyone who made it to the Cloud Ark was in danger of being spaced. The mistake was in banishing JBF to an arklet instead of keeping her close where they could control and perhaps even utilize her. Idil hands and all that.[/spoiler]

 

I thought it was interesting because it highlighted the lack of will to deal with transgressions.  A small community can self-police but the increase in social complexity demanded a different approach.  The constitution, etc required executive will that was lacking.  I agree with Mgbiksi's suggestion of what should have happened but the whole point of that plot point is that the community was unprepared for self-governance or to handle subversive political pursuit.  NS loves libertarianism but he basically showed here that the libertarian Izzies were too naive.

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I'm over halfway through this book and I don't know if I'll finish it. It's just dull, dull, dull, dull, dull. I'm used to Neal Stephenson books starting slow, but I'm past the halfway point and I still don't know what the story is supposed to be. Something happens and then something else happens and then something else happens after that, and none of it seems to go anywhere. 

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LoG,

Where are you? Have you gotten to the "White Sky/Hard Rain" yet?

 

Yes, I'm just past that. The gang just landed on the comet and found the bodies of Sean and his crew. That was about two weeks ago when I put it down.

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