After an unknown force destroys Earth’s satellite, scientists realize that in two years the cascading fragmentation of the resulting pieces will end in a ten thousand year period of “Hard Rain”, during which a constant micrometeorite bombardment will sterilize the planet’s surface. Seveneves is about the moon exploding, which sounds like the kind of premise that couldn’t possibly be boring, but somehow this book finds a way. He’s somewhere between Andy Weir and Joss Whedon, a location otherwise known as the Hack Zone. I can’t say for certain because I didn’t finish the book, but what I did read was enough to tell me that Neal Staphenson is not the sci-fi version of Umberto Eco. So I was surprised when I cracked open Seveneves, read a few pages and then asked myself “Is the whole thing written like this? Are all of Neal Stephenson’s books written like this?” Something like a sci-fi Umberto Eco, in other words. Snow Crash, the Baroque Cycle, Anathem-these and more have a reputation as being big, dense bricks full of science and cryptography and philosophy. I’ve never read any of Neal Stephenson’s books before Seveneves, but I’ve been aware of the guy for a long time, always as a titan of sci-fi who writes very intelligent smart-guy books for smart-guy people.
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