Seveneves

[jack]

So. Neal Stephenson's recent-ish doorstop about the moon blowing up and the earth becoming uninhabitable, and humanity jump-starting a space settlement to continue the race until the earth's surface recovers. He did write short books once, but not for decades now IIRC :)

The near-future space stuff is all interesting. Sometimes it feels a bit on-the-nose, "I learned about this interesting thing, now I'll force it into my book", but as a look at what humanity could potentially build if countries threw ALL their resources at it, and what an ongoing settlement in space might realistically look like, it's very interesting.

The politics references are a bit tedious. Both the "oh look, geeks resent politics, yes, politics even of a few hundred people is a giant sewer" is probably... plausible, but feels over-done. And the references to earth politics, we get another big dump of libertarians-aren't-exactly-right-but-don't-we-empathise-with-them-lots, which I sympathise with a little bit, but am also massively critical of. And the female US president is an interesting character, and god knows I don't expect us presidents to automatically be nice people, but her naked ambition and cynical manipulation feel like they came out as criticism of a female president *at all*.

He does successfully introduce many female characters -- I haven't counted, but the titular Seven Eves are seven of the most major characters, who all happen to be female.

The post-timeskip "what space settlements look like after 5000 years" was interesting, but felt much less likely. And a bunch of other stuff that happened felt MUCH less likely.

Can you really produce a closed underground system recycling oxygen and carbon dioxide, growing plants under electric lights, all powered solely by geothermal power?

I think epigenetics means "magic ways experiences an organism has as an adult can affect what their children inherit, i.e. basically all hereditary biology that's additional to DNA". But Neal Stephenson seems to think it means "magic ways an organism can suddenly change as an adult and become a significantly different organism". Is that right??

I'm annoyed by, AFTER the seven eves, we revert to current-stereotypical-gender-roles at least somewhat. I do suspect there are SOME inbuilt reasons for that. But after that cultural bottleneck, you didn't think it might be interesting if we DIDN'T have those assumptions?

And I'm annoyed by "oh no, the last seven members of the human race disagree what children to engineer -- lets all just do our own thing and create seven eternally distinct tribes." They couldn't find ANY more compromise than that? Stuck in a small habitat, all the different offspring didn't immediately interbreed?

Comments

[edrith.co.uk]

Interesting to see your thoughts. Seveneves is probably my third favourite of his books, after Anathem and The Diamond Age.

I agree with you about the first part being more compelling and realistic. I agree that it seemed really implausible the tribes wouldn't interbreed (at the very least within their two factions) and after how realistically brutal he'd made the first part, the handwave 'now they all survive and are really successful' was hard to believe. I seem to remember reading an interview with him where he said he basically wrote the second part to show the cool megastructures, and they are cool but that does show a bit.

Like you I enjoyed the way it showed what we might be able to do if absolutely pushed; I also enjoyed the way they tried to set up durable social structures which then failed.

I think you're too hard on Julia though. In a book with lots of well-developed female leaders they don't all have to be noble and good (indeed, that itself would be quite limiting) and as you say, it's hardly unlikely the US President will be ruthless and ambitious. But also I don't think she's that bad: sure, she's not at all likeable, but she does deserve a good chunk of credit for saving the human race, given the pivotal role the US would play in making or breaking such an endeavour.

[jack]

Yeah, it's always interesting to see what people with different opinions thought.

the handwave 'now they all survive and are really successful' was hard to believe

Well, maybe something else would have been more dramatic, but I didn't really question that specifically -- they'd reached somewhere flagged as approximating safety, and I assumed they did have plenty of setbacks from there on, but "growing steadily into an industrial civilisation again" didn't seem a stretch.

I also enjoyed the way they tried to set up durable social structures which then failed.

I was interested in what it was doing, and I liked many of the specific moments, but I didn't think it was done as well as some of the other things.

I think you're too hard on Julia though.

Hm, I'm really not sure, I have a lot of reservations I'm finding it hard to put into words.

I agree with you, in a book with many female characters, I would expect a range of personalities, including destructive and unpleasant ones.

But something still nags me a lot about JBF. I think it's partly that several things seem like specifically Hillary Clinton references, and I'm *not* sure, but that does make me worry this is a "this is what a female president would be like", more so than just "this is what all presidents would be like".

Partly, it's the comment later, when she was in the swarm, that she felt obliged to see the status quo as a problem which needed her unique leadership to be solved -- which led to her getting 90% of the survivors of the human race killed because she ignored all the experts in favour of people who gave her facts supporting her ambitions. Maybe it's not a female stereotype, it's a politician stereotype, and I do agree, that is a *common* fault in politicians, but it somehow felt very forced, like there's no middle ground being an engineer who hates considering people's feelings at all and a narcissistic megalomaniac.

[catyak]

I thought it had an unfinished air about it at the end. We're introduced to the on-Earth survivor races and the huge bit of engineering that emerges from the ocean, and yet they are relatively minor things at that point. Perhaps there's going to be a sequel?

[jack]

It did, but it didn't feel to me like there was worldbuilding which hadn't made it into the page, it felt like that was all there was so far. There COULD be a sequel, but I feel like it'd be making up new stuff about the diggers and pingers, and no particular reason to expect that would produce plot that stephenson wants to write

[khoth.livejournal.com]

I liked the first part but found the post-timeskip part a letdown. After most of a book about struggling to survive, extended descriptions of someone taking public transport felt anticlimactic.

Like you, I wasn't a fan of the separate races thing. 5000 years and no significant interbreeding, and nobody tries to make new races?

In general I found it hard to believe the new setting. The amount of history and culture in the span from present day to 5000 should be comparable to the amount of history and culture we've had so far, but it really didn't feel it. It seemed to just fall into the typical careless sf trope where in the far future everyone's cultural references are to the 20th century.

[jack]

I thought the second half had SOME good ideas in it, so I think it was worth having it, but I agree with you, it was quite weak, you'd expect a lot more depth and history. It feels in some ways that Snow Crash and Diamond Age, despite being set nearer in the future, were more *different*.

[damerell]

There's a Williamson where some people are trapped in an airtight compartment on a sunken cargo ship in WW2, and rig up (from the supplies they happily have) an exercise bike to make electricity to run lightbulbs to grow food to make oxygen (and food) and... well, it seems slightly more possible with an external power source, anyway.