Review by New York Times Review
IF THE MOON ever disintegrates, causing Earth to become a fiery hellscape for several thousand years, and we can select only a few hundred humans to entrust with the survival and repropagation of the species, I vote for Neal Stephenson to be one of those humans. There's just no way he wouldn't do a good job, you know what I mean? Or, at the very least, an astoundingly thorough job. Readers of Stephenson's previous work definitely know what I mean. This is not a writer who does things in half-measures. The author of "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon," and many other similarly imposing books in the past couple of decades, Stephenson seems to know how to do things in exactly one way: all the way. He publishes fiction by the pound. Which is not to say the sheer quantity of his work implies anything negative about the quality. Sometimes it is said of an actor that he is so skilled, he could read from the phone book and make it interesting. If that gauge also applies to writers, then Stephenson hits the mark: His novels are actually comparable to phone books and they still manage to be entertaining. In his latest, "Seveneves," Stephenson applies his skills to a scenario like the one described above: What if Earth's moon suddenly and spontaneously broke apart into seven large pieces? What would happen to life on Earth? It's an intriguing premise, one that could conceivably go in any number of interesting directions. What would be the ramifications for every aspect of society, including economics, governance, the rule of law, privacy and security, not to mention even more fundamental matters like reproductive rights, religion and belief? Stephenson does eventually get around to some of those ideas, especially in later sections of the book. But for the first 600 pages or so, what he mainly seems interested in are the most literal kinds of ramifications, setting up his initial conditions and then meticulously working out the particulars of his invented premise. Individual fragments of the moon are described in loving detail, many even getting their own names, a creative choice the reader comes to realize is both necessary and appropriate, given how important these moon pieces are to the plot. So much depends on how these fragments interact and inevitably collide (in turn creating more fragments, thereby increasing the complexity of the required calculations exponentially). Earth is on fire during a period of several millenniums known as the "Hard Rain" and humanity has been reduced to just a few hundred people floating around in orbit in a "Cloud Ark," an intricate archipelago of satellites and modules - in essence tiny islands in the solar system, on which the remaining few members of humanity must learn to survive until they can figure out what comes next. Stephenson's inexhaustible focus on every single aspect of the explosion and its aftermath starts as impressive, then becomes a bit overwhelming, and then gets downright baffling as the reader wonders when the book is going to stop describing objects and start describing people - at which time it becomes clear that this is sort of the point: This is the stuff that would matter. The details are everything; in a sense, the moon rocks really are the characters. Under these intensely strange and sensitive conditions, anything inessential becomes trivial and, conversely, what seems like minutiae can end up meaning the difference between extinction and continued existence as a species. It's all about physics and logistics; human nature itself is of limited significance, relevant only to the extent it affects the likelihood of survival. FOR THE FIRST TWO-THIRDS of the book, we get a lot about the physics and logistics of living in space: working, sleeping and procreating, the precariousness of life at the mercy of cosmic rays. But mostly we learn about orbital mechanics. Perigees, apogees, the perils of having six degrees of freedom (three for position and three for velocity), all the horrors and ironies and brute facts of life in low gravity. Nothing can be assumed. Everything is earned. Everything must be calculated from first principles, derived from scratch, which can sometimes be tedious and other times result in small revelations about the things we take most for granted: our notions of up and down, of personal autonomy and interdependence. Even the simple inertial consequences of punching someone in the face. The skill with which this is all carried out is also a liability. Stephenson is so fluid a writer, so adept at the particular thing he does, that he can get away with very long stretches of what's frequently referred to as "infodumps" but what I prefer to call "techsposition": an amalgam of technical geekery and plotty exposition, fused into one substance, a material Stephenson has seemingly perfected. Some readers might wonder when he will get to the good stuff, but for many, this techsposition is the good stuff. Stephenson builds worlds quickly, standing up the frame of his structure, then slowly layers in detail. This is thought experiment as extreme sport, speculation taken so far it seems to verge on something else entirely. Imagine someone wrote a thousand-page doctoral dissertation on the classic arcade game Asteroids. Not the game as a theoretical subject, but actually on one particular game of Asteroids, perhaps the all-time-record game, documenting every last asteroid that was exploded, and the exact sequence and timing of thruster use to avoid all of the fragments (and fragments of fragments, and fragments of fragments of fragments, and so on). The amount of context required to understand any given passage, its lingo and conceptual background prerequisites, is astounding - resulting, at times, in sentences like this: "A new niksht had been formed, just at the place where the whip was attached to the hebel, and was beginning to accelerate 'forward,' accelerating the flivver to the velocity it would need to accomplish the rest of the mission." This sort of thing can probably be placed under the general category of world-building, but whatever it is, it is not about character, or story, or even plot. The challenge of writing a novel in which some of the most important entities are rocks is that some of the most important entities are rocks. It's not that the humans don't matter - Stephenson makes clear that their choices, both big and small, have lasting impact, whether intended or not (usually not). But the ratio skews heavily toward technical detail, which is a shame because Stephenson is quite good at human stories when he chooses to be. For all of the fun and speculation and technical geekery in "Seveneves," its most affecting moments come when it engineers collisions of human drives and desires, resulting in flashes of genuine insight and sudden emotion. When, amid all of the chaos and turmoil, we focus on instances of selfishness and sacrifice, on what people might feel and say at the end of the world, at a time when nothing matters, or everything does. Mostly, though, from Neal Stephenson we expect setup and payoff on a grand scale, and on that front he reliably delivers. If nothing else, the amount of planning and organization required to make this work is admirable. Although the first two sections touch on politics and governance, in the last section the ambition of the novel ramps up, and widens out to include in its already broad survey topics including race, psychology, interplanetary diplomacy and evolutionary theory. Much of what seemed incidental in the earlier portions becomes, in the last third, the basis for a future civilization, and the way the puzzle fits together is ingenious if a bit neat. If the moon ever does crumble in the sky, and we can choose only a few novels to preserve for posterity, this one wouldn't make my list. But that's not the point of it anyway. Meanwhile it is ample praise to say that "Seveneves" would be a great way to pass the time while waiting for the end of the world. Humanity in this novel has been reduced to a few hundred people floating in orbit. CHARLES YU is the author of the novel "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 31, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
Stephenson's new novel begins with the moon exploding. But if you're looking for B-movie-style sf schlock, that is where the pulp in this painstakingly realistic epic begins and ends. Once the seven new massive chunks of lunar material that were our moon settle around their center of gravity, textbook astrophysics takes over as humanity tries to figure out what happens next. But this is astrophysics explained and performed by one of the most realistic and relatable casts of characters in eschatological narrative history. Should you find yourself reading Stephenson's epic in public, absorbed in the deeply technical and emotional unfolding of Earth's fate, prepare yourself for your own surprise as you look up to find everyone in the cafe going about their lives as if everything is just as normal as it was the day before. This brilliant piecebook will crush you like a crumbling mountain for most of the hours you spend on its nearly 1,000 pages before it launches into strangely cathartic visions of the far future for its finale. 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. High-Demand Backstory: This author is huge news these days, and his latest opus will be eagerly sought in the public library.--Francis, Chris Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. When the moon explodes, it doesn't take long for scientists (including Doc "Doob" Dubois, who bears no small resemblance to Neil DeGrasse Tyson) to realize that the debris will soon cause the destruction of Earth. The residents of the International Space Station, including roboticist Dinah MacQuarie and commander Ivy Xiao, immediately begin working with their colleagues on Earth to turn the ISS into a viable habitat for as many people as possible. The next two years are filled with heroic sacrifices, political upheavals, and disasters, most of which are only exacerbated when Earth finally succumbs to the "Hard Rain," meteorite bombardment that last for millennia. The survivors-seven fertile women-are destined to repopulate the human race, and it's only here, over halfway through the story, that Stephenson (the Baroque Cycle) really shows his hand, moving ahead 5,000 years to explore the moral and political implications of the earlier events. There's a ton to digest, but Stephenson's lucid prose makes it worth the while. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff and Verrill. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The moon is struck by an unknown object and destroyed, leaving humanity two years to prepare for the inescapable meteor shower that will wipe out the surface of the earth. An international collaborative effort to launch a small fleet of arks into orbit to save a remnant of human culture is threatened by internal politics, clashing personalities, and natural disasters. Millennia later, descendants of the surviving colonists-the new human races, plural-attempt to recolonize the planet but face their own set of obstacles as they make first contact with a very different Earth. Mary Robinette Kowal and Will Damron narrate the present-day exodus and far-future return phases of the book, respectively; both readers help give a warm human tone to a story that's often grim and occasionally bogged down by discussions of orbital mechanics. -Verdict Recommended for fans of the author, those who appreciate hard science in their sf, and readers looking for a space story that doesn't need to leave Earth's orbit to be epic. ["The huge scope and enormous depth of the latest novel from Stephenson is impressive even from an author known for wallowing in the details": LJ 4/15/15 starred review of the Morrow hc.]-Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., -Atlanta © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
No slim fables or nerdy novellas for Stephenson (Anathem, 2008, etc.): his visions are epic, and he requires whole worldsand, in this case, solar systemsto accommodate them. His latest opens with a literal bang as the moon explodes "without warning and for no apparent reason." When the reason finally does become apparent, it's cause to enlist steely-jawed action hero Dubois Jerome Xavier Harris, Ph.D., a scientist who makes fat bread as a TV science popularizer and sucker-up to the rich and powerful. Easy street gives way to a very rocky galactic road as Doob has to figure out why the heavens are suddenly hurling mountains of space debris at Earth in a time already fraught with human-caused difficulty. Ever the optimist, Doob puts it this way: "The good news is that the Earth is one day going to have a beautiful system of rings, just like Saturn. The bad news is that it's going to be messy." The solution? Get off the planet fast, set up space colonies, perpetuate the human race using turkey basterswell, a "DNA sequence stored on a thumb drive," anywayand multiple moms, whence the title. Stephenson takes his time doing so, layering on a perhaps not entirely necessary game of intrigue involving a sly-boots "dusky blonde" of a president. When the yarn moves into deep space thousands of years from now, however, it picks up both speed and depth, for while humans are more diverse than ever ("Each of the seven new races had embodied more than one Strain"), the gap between the haves and have-nots has widened, piles of gold and golden eyes and all. Stephenson does a fine job, la H.G. Wells, of imaging a future in which troglodytes live just outside the titanium walls of civilization, and though the setup is an old one, he brings a fresh vision based on the latest science to the task. Meanwhile, all those exploding planetoids make a good argument for more STEM funding. Wise, witty, utterly well-crafted science fiction. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
