23 ms·

The Day the Moon Blew Up

173 points by JacobJans 10y ago

dbcooper 10y ago
>Seveneves belongs in the subgenre of hard science fiction, which means it emphasizes scientific accuracy. Everything adheres to physical laws, so unlike Star Wars, no one travels anywhere near the speed of light. A pity then that a little basic chemistry eluded both the writer and the critic - there's no carbon on the moon. Rather difficult to support humans, and carry out feats of biotechnology, without it...
- JacobJans 10y ago
  What do you mean? In the book, the moon explodes and destroys the world. Pretty much the exact opposite of supporting humans.
  - drakenot 10y ago
    I'm guessing you haven't read it then? I don't want the spoil the ending but your parent post makes sense.
  - dbcooper 10y ago
    My understanding is that the surviving humans shelter in "the cleft", which is a fragment of the moon. They then use biotechnology techniques to repopulate. Even when limited to the biotech operations, they would need a lot of carbon based materials. Keith Robison has some thoughts on it: http://omicsomics.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/thoughts-on-synthetic-biology-of.html http://omicsomics.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/thoughts-on-synthet...
- ef4 10y ago
  They did bring tons of comet with them. Which could theoretically be a source of carbon. It's a stretch, of course. But I think the story was that they kept the population in the Cleft down to a few hundred for many generations, only growing beyond that once people began venturing further afield. At that point, carbonaceous asteroids are not implausibly hard to get -- from high orbit, you've already paid most of the delta V needed to get elsewhere in the inner solar system, if you've got a lot of time to spend.
- djloche 10y ago
  The book goes into great depth and makes "rather difficult to support humans" the focus of the entire first 2 parts of the book. Space is indeed rather difficult to support humans. The third part of the book is a 'what if they actually survived and continued to survive, fast forward 5000 years". In reality, there would be no survivors in left space, but I appreciated the final third part of the book all the same because I enjoy the fiction part of science fiction just as much as I do the science part.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Hard scifi usually has an unrealistic premise but everything else is constrained by real science that we know. If everything was exactly adherent to science and tech as it currently exists, it wouldn't be science fiction. It would just be fiction.
- a_bonobo 10y ago
  IMHO, "hard SF" has developed as a term for books that have "hard physics", everything else like biology, chemistry, sometimes even mathematics is usually lacking. As an example: The Cheela, the microscopic intelligent life forms in the more famous hard SF Dragon's Egg, are described like eukaryotes with an eukaryotic life style, but they're so tiny that they don't need any of the complex "inventions" of eukaryotes, for example, they wouldn't need any "plumbing" in the body since they're small enough for diffusion to deliver nutrients. IRC their DNA is triple stranded; DNA is double stranded so that it's more safe from mutations as you can always read the opposite from the opposite strand, if you had a second backup in the form of a third strand you would have no stable chemical bonds between the bases. Triple helices exist but these doesn't help with stability and are implicated in transcription. Edit: Similarly, there should be massive problems in the later communication because the Cheela shouldn't have a base 10 mathematical system as they don't have 10 fingers, you could still display it as base 10 but there has to be a conversion (see https://www.quora.com/What-does-one-mean-by-Every-base-is-base-10 https://www.quora.com/What-does-one-mean-by-Every-base-is-ba... ).
- rtkwe 10y ago
  That was covered at least in passing. The comet they capture and use to reach the Cleft provides the sources of carbon and other elements that are hard to get. Presumably long enough to build and launch slow missions to capture and redirect other sources (happens 'off screen'). > "The black stuff has all kind of goodies on it. Carbon, obviously. But also nitrogen, ptoassium---" "Micronutrients," Markus said, "that the Cloud Ark will be needing."
  - knodi123 10y ago
    but isn't it all poisoned by those pesky radioactive flea particles? Or was that problem only insurmountable due to the limited resources of the comet expedition?
    - rtkwe 10y ago
      The fleas caused a lot of problems even during the Great Ride but I imagine once they were in the Cleft they'd be able to figure out a way to process it to remove the contamination. it wasn't covered in the book though that I remember.
      - obbybreeden 10y ago
        There was a passage where they had rigged the robots to pick out debris from the ice. I think they would eventually be able to pick out the hotter bits out of the ice as well.
- tlb 10y ago
  There's some carbon on the moon. Rock samples are reported as having on the order of 100 ppm carbon [1]. That means that the amount of carbon in a human body is found in 100 m^3 of lunar soil. So if you extract all the carbon from the top meter of regolith, you could cover the moon with humans on a 10 meter grid spacing. [1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/LunarSampleCompendium15265.pdf https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/LunarSampleCompendium15265....
- Symmetry 10y ago
  I think we're supposed to assume they went out and got more carbon somehow. It would have made more sense if they'd carried the comet parts into the cleft but I'm willing to forgive it. Of course the physics of the moon blowing up are totally wrong but I'm willing to swallow a single impossible thing and keep going. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/06/seveneves-and-roche-limit.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/06/seveneves-an...
eganist 10y ago
Seveneves is one of my favorites, even though it gets mixed reactions from a lot of others who've read titles like Anathem. I can't compare it to Anathem (the only other Stephenson book I've read so far is Cryptonomicon; looking to change that), but I can say I love the technical depth. Perhaps it's because it helps me suspend disbelief much more easily, though Bill's point that "if you’re the sort of reader who doesn’t care how such a thing might work, you will find yourself skimming parts of Seveneves" is probably true for most lay readers. The only thing that somewhat frustrated me about it, as I suspect is the case for most people, is the fact that the last third of the book feels like it could (should?) stand on its own. That being said, there's enough room for Stephenson to explore in more depth some of the events leading up to the third act in subsequent novels... so here's hoping. I figure explaining why I feel this way would be a bit of a spoiler. Bill does enough to allude to it. Anyway, thumbs up from me. I enjoyed every bit of it, and Bill's review does a good job of selling the book without spoiling it.
- wrs 10y ago
  Like all Stephenson, this book is full of ideas that are just...huge. The frustrating thing is the feeling that it should be merely the first book in a long, rich series, like Niven's Known Space. But the guy has so many ideas he just has to crank out this giant book and move on to the next one...
  - arethuza 10y ago
    Doesn't the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon count as a "long rich series"?
    - jeremysmyth 10y ago
      Only in the loosest possible sense. Having the same (or similar, or related) characters does not necessarily imply a "full rich series". The Baroque cycle, sure, because the characters share arcs. Cryptonomicon is a completely different story though. Stephenson said this about the relationship between Cryptonomicon and its different-timeline "sequels" (not yet written at this point): " I'm trying not to give the idea that it's a tightly locked together set of books... There are always a few strange little corners of the story that may not make sense outside of the context of the full series, but 99% of it can stand on its own reasonably well, I hope." http://www.locusmag.com/1999/Issues/08/Stephenson.html http://www.locusmag.com/1999/Issues/08/Stephenson.html
astrowilliam 10y ago
Definitely one of my favorite books. I bought a hard copy and read through it immediately. Then I got the audio book and listened to it in my car while commuting. What a great piece of work.
eric_arrr 10y ago
A couple of fun things hidden (or not exactly) in this video: There's no missing a couple of Neal's swordfighting buddies at 1:07. Wondering where the camera stand is? Look for its reflection in the window behind Bill at 1:52. What car did Bill drive to the meet-up? Probably not the Model X. My money is on the Porsche 959 shown at 2:17. (It's also a safe bet that the meet-up actually began at the Burgermaster, since that's in Bill's neighborhood. That way Bill only has to make one round-trip to Seattle instead of two.) I'm totally failing to get the joke with the shovels and pickaxes at the corner of Boyer & Howe at 2:40. (Surely not a macabre gag as they cross towards Lakeview cemetery...) And of course the gaggle of kids in Madison Park at 2:54 are observing the moon through a telescope.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Why wouldn't gates drive a tesla x?
  - eric_arrr 10y ago
    Bill might well drive a Model X and any number of other cars -- his daily was an armored mid-90's Lexus LS for many years -- but if there's a Porsche 959 parked at the south Kirkland Burgermaster, the odds are overwhelming that it belongs to Bill. This because only 345 Porsche 959's were ever built, and none were eligible for import into the US. That is, until Bill made himself instrumental in the passage of the show and display importation exemption* so that he could buy one. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_or_Display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_or_Display
    - adventured 10y ago
      Gates owns a silver 959. This one: https://www.instagram.com/p/MgiOYcGyhI/ https://www.instagram.com/p/MgiOYcGyhI/
      - eric_arrr 10y ago
        The silver one was presumed his, but not confirmed as such. But Bill being Bill, he might be collecting them. :)
saadrizvi 10y ago
I enjoyed Seveneves but thought it wasn't Stephenson's best work by far. I'd rate Anathem and Snow Crash much higher than it.
- scholia 10y ago
  Same here, plus The Diamond Age. I read them all as they came out, and the shorter earlier books (The Big U, Snowcrash) had much more impact on me than the longer later ones. Or course, it's impossible to read Snowcrash today and feel anything like the same impact because ideas that were pretty far out way back then are commonplace today.
  - saadrizvi 10y ago
    +1 on Diamond Age - awesome book.
vessenes 10y ago
My theory about the book, and the reason why there's such a tone change at the end is that this book is the kickoff to a much larger cycle. If it is, I think there's an authorial question -- when do you shift gears to the far future, and how? It makes some sense to me that readers might find the style transition jarring between volumes. Also, some of the cool stuff starts to happen later. So, perhaps -- hopefully -- we can look forward to more. There's plenty teed up in the novel; it seems like every group of humans that went out on their own survived in some way, (making me think the Mars folks are going to be around at some point), and we still haven't found out just who blew up the moon. Stephenson created the Hieroglyph project, trying to get sci fi authors to inspire more science, and I suppose more faith in humanity. I would be surprised if we don't get more of this story aimed at inspiring us in a variety of ways.
- bostonpete 10y ago
  > it seems like every group of humans that went out on their own survived in some way The survival of both the other two groups seemed pretty far fetched to me.
  - vessenes 10y ago
    Just wait for Mars.. :) I had the same reaction at first. But, then I was thinking about dogs; dogs evolve really quickly under pressure. If that's not a high pressure evolution event, I don't know what is. I'm curious to read more about everyone in any event. Here's hoping.
    - obbybreeden 10y ago
      SPOILERSSSSSSS It's not even about evolution. Imagine if the 7 eves weren't playing some weird genetic metagame, but instead had one over-arching problem to solve. The main dilemma of the Pingers was how to survive underwater, and they had as much technology (if not more, there's more submarines in existence than ISS modules). They also had tons of food (think of how many whales died, and how long whale fall ecosystems last). And a nice natural shield consisting of the ocean. If the Aidans could bring back the Neanderthal, then the Pingers probably started their experiments early and often.
hyperpallium 10y ago
boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
- bostonpete 10y ago
  What do you mean? They thoroughly explained it -- it was an agent!
  - rspeer 10y ago
    It's a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (In particular, what the band Disaster Area's songs are about.)
ef4 10y ago
The first third of Seveneves is a real gut punch. The only other world-ending story that comes close in terms of emotional impact for me was Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End". Stephenson manages to show humanity in all its realistic messiness but still leave you proud -- on balance -- that humans mostly get our act together in a desperate attempt to preserve a seed of life and culture.
- agf 10y ago
  I found Childhood's End an extremely unpleasant read, and so that comparison makes it hard for me to even think about reading Seveneves. It was just so depressing, taking the concept of isolation to such an extreme it felt abusive. Or maybe I shouldn't have read it while isolated myself (literally living and working in the middle of nowhere without transportation and minimal contact with anyone I was close to). Maybe if I'd read Seveneves without ever having heard this comparison, I would have made it through to the part that makes you proud, but at this point I doubt that's possible. Going to skip this one, and I'd suggest everyone else skip Childhood's End.
  - HCIdivision17 10y ago
    I haven't read Childhood's End. I really enjoyed Seveneves, though. But there's just a lot of cool stuff in the story that is worth the exposition. As others note, the book is written in sections; if you really don't want to go through the triumph and heartbreak of the outplaying story, it wouldn't be awful to jump to a later section. I may be a bit heretical saying so, but some ideas later in the book are just wonderful. You'll lose out fast forwarding, but I'd recommend that over skipping it :)
  - ido 10y ago
    It's been a couple yeas since I read it, but I recall it being a pretty interesting read that didn't trigger any of the above feelings (just as a counter experience, that I wouldn't suggest people avoid it). SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER . . . . . . was it the guy's experience going to the alien planet that triggered you? I actually didn't realize that might have been the reason upon first reading your comment.
Tyr42 10y ago
I was just getting into Kerbal Space Program at the same time I started reading this book, and it's amazing how well they tie together. I would learn something about orbital mechanics in KSP, and then see it applied in the book, and I really enjoyed that feeling.
blisterpeanuts 10y ago
I greatly enjoyed some of Stephenson's other works, but I was actually a bit disappointed with Seveneves. The narrative is well crafted, but unfortunately I just got stuck on the whole space ark concept and couldn't suspend disbelief enough to continue. Maybe someone else can explain why it made sense to focus on an orbiting refuge, right in the path of the Moon's fragments, rather than dig a bunch of underground cities that would have saved many times more people. Midway through the first unit, I basically decided they should have dug tunnels ten miles long, one mile deep at bottom, lay tracks, and just go full steam carting rocks out while digging massive caverns. They could move entire hospitals, schools, factories, labs, etc. into these places, store tons of food and supplies, lay pipes to connect to underground water supplies, set up parks, farms, and animal preserves using artificial solar lighting. Makes so much more sense to me than this nutty space station idea. And with gravity, access to minerals, oxygen, etc. I love space as much as the next geek, but if you want to save millions of humans, you've got to dig.
- p_eter_p 10y ago
  You might like Hugh Howie's "Wool" series...
  - huslage 10y ago
    I read this series right after I read Seveneves. The connections were impressive.
  - blisterpeanuts 10y ago
    Yup, loved Wool.
- aetherson 10y ago
  Well...... You'd clearly be right if you were looking at a timeframe of a few years, or a few decades, or maybe a century or two. But if you successfully establish a long term presence in space, you've got access to a lot of resources. If you're stuck in a hole in the ground for 5,000 years, and the surface is considerably more hostile than space, I think there's at least a colorable argument that space is the way to go. Spoilers for the end of the book follow. As it happens, remnants of humanity survive in space, underground, and underwater. This was the part of the story that broke my suspension of disbelief. I just couldn't really buy the end-third societies. It's like Stephenson couldn't get his mind around how long 5,000 years actually is. Just as a for-example, language: In 3,000 BC, there might have been an unknown language that we designate proto-Indo-European because we don't actually have any texts that reference it. Proto-Indo-European might have begat another language that is still so ancient that we can only guess at it that we designate proto-Germanic which begat a family of West-German languages that begat Old English that begat Middle English that begat modern English. Meanwhile, in 7,000 AD, apparently they speak a light pidgin of modern English that's pretty understandable to modern English speakers. I get Stephenson's argument for why his far-future cultures are so directly related to the action in the first two thirds of the book, I just can't quite buy it.
peteretep 10y ago
The character identification bit is interesting. I had assumed the president was meant to be Hillary Clinton until I read someone angrily complaining about his take-down of Sarah Palin...
- mseebach 10y ago
  Well, the book was written in the age of Palin more than Clinton, so the parallel is inviting - but isn't JBF a pretty well read big city liberal, generally well respected in Doobs circles? It's a very subtle dig. However, I read JBF as a catch-all figure for everything bad about politicians (generally useless, except to ferment conflict to serve their own path to power), so it's not surprising that people would project whatever politician they don't like onto her. In other words, she's both Palin and Hillary.
  - pavedwalden 10y ago
    When asked about the Hillary comparison at a book signing, Stephenson said that he hadn't wanted the character to represent Hillary and thought it was unfortunate that many readers would make that assumption just because there were so few alternative public figures to map the character to. He gave no hint as to there being anyone in particular she was supposed to be.
kaonashi 10y ago
Some not-so-hard science fiction on the same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI
CurtMonash 10y ago
Larry Niven was awesome at apocalypses. The short story Inconstant Moon is one of the greats, plus he did a couple of thick novels on the theme with Pournelle -- Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall.
j1vms 10y ago
360° video interview at the parent link (also works with mobile phone VR headsets - though didn't try it) is surprisingly pleasant, effective and amusing too. For example, when they are in the car, it's nice to be able to look elsewhere if you already get bored staring at the two of them. The director was a bit quirky I guess: there is even a play sword battle between two anonymous dudes on the side of the road, early on in the video (!) Edit: Someone did already post about the above.
smpetrey 10y ago
I love that Mr. Gates drives a Tesla :)
Jedd 10y ago
I believe I've read all of Stephenson's books (yes, even The Big U) Seveneves is in the top 5, but only just -- the Baroque Cycle (though not sci-fi) takes up three of the first five spots. In terms of can't-put-down-once-started, Reamde tops the list, but, again, not sci-fi. People seem to want to compare the content to Anathem, even suggesting it may fit into the same universe - though I can't see it myself. For what it's worth, both his SF and non-SF works are enjoyed by my other half, who usually eschews anything SF - so despite the alleged 'science-heavy style', there's one data point that suggests it's not as problematic as some reviewers expect it would be.
- mirimir 10y ago
  I also loved The Baroque Cycle, and Mongoliad (which also, now that I think of it, features that immortal mystic). It's hard to explain the connection with Anathem without too many spoilers. So I'll just note that Earth does explicitly exist in the Anathem universe.
  - Jedd 10y ago
    Oh, I've read both Anathem and Seveneves, and while I appreciate that Earth is referenced in the former, I don't recall anything that felt like it may connect (no hint of a multiverse in Seveneves, f.e.). I think I read some interview with Neal a while back where he said he hadn't considered writing anything else in the same universe as Seveneves, but if there was interest, he may come up with something. Obviously there's quite a few ways such a follow-up could go. Probably time, and a good excuse, to re-read Anathem.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      It's the Purpose vibe. Plus all the mystery about the Agent. But then, I didn't get the Hitchhikers' Guide joke about that :(
      - rtkwe 10y ago
        Many of Stephenson's books have some hint of Purpose to them. Either the characters are working towards their own purpose a la Avi and HEAP + Crypt or are being guided by people with a purpose like Fraa Erasmas in Anathem or Hacksworth in Diamond Age.
redthrowaway 10y ago
$('#ArticleDropUpshareHolder').remove()
- kristianp 10y ago
  Thanks, that's handy. I wish there was a complement to adblock that removed useless things that cover text, like email harvesting popups and other things that have to be closed manually.
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    The problem is that most of these things are hand-rolled. It's not like ads, where you can just block iframes that point at blacklisted domains. The ids and classes of those annoying things will be specific to each site, so it's hard to target. You could probably remove anything that had onscroll functionality defined, and just accept that it would break some websites.
jonathankoren 10y ago
Note to future VR directors: Don't do edits, and God don't change the default orientation of the camera! I know that goes against against 127 years of cinematic history, but moving the camera's default focus seriously confused my spatial awareness. I've turned so I can see them both, but oh no now I'm outside on the street, and now I'm back inside, but suddenly I'm rotated 60 degrees. If this wasn't VR, it would t matter but in VR, it's putting the audience on teacup ride.
100k 10y ago
"If Stephenson wrote Huckleberry Finn it would be 4,000 pages long and mostly about paddlewheel design" -- https://twitter.com/baconmeteor/status/663076130077802496 https://twitter.com/baconmeteor/status/663076130077802496 I have heard good things about this book, but it has been a while since I could get into Neal Stephenson's work. My favorite is one of his earliest, Zodiac. It's the only book of his I've read that doesn't just...end.
- yoodenvranx 10y ago
  > "If Stephenson wrote Huckleberry Finn it would be 4,000 pages long and mostly about paddlewheel design" And this is the exact reason why Stephenson is one of my favorite authors.
ChicagoDave 10y ago
I started reading Seveneves about 4 days ago. Been sitting on my nightstand for months. It's dry, but scary/sad as fuck.
GantzGraf 10y ago
Was anybody else turned off by the author's approach to characterisation in this book? I feel like he's over-explaining their reasoning/motivation for doing the things they do to the point where it's irritating. It's like he's trying to tell you everything about a character in the shortest time possible. No subtlety. Am I overreacting? I'm still within the first third but I don't think I'll be able to get through the book if it's entirely like this.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  Characterization is not one of Stephenson's strong points. Try an experiment: skip to 2/3 through the book, where it says "Five thousand years later..." and pick it up as though it were a new book. I think you might be happier.
- dboshardy 10y ago
  No, you're not. Stephenson is bad at character writing and development. His books just feel like ways for him to mentally masturbate onto the reader. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, once I slog through the first quarter of the book, I can't bring myself to stop reading. But at the same time I can't help but be frustrated by his "look how smart I am and all the things I know" writing.
pointernil 10y ago
I love how the book manages to tell just 1/3 of the whole story ;)
- mirimir 10y ago
  Actually, it's more like a quarter, or a fifth ;)
  - pointernil 10y ago
    Hard to discuss without spoilers but do you mean story-time-wise or story-line-wise?
    - mirimir 10y ago
      I mean story-line-wise. Specifically, group-wise.
      - pointernil 10y ago
        Ah, so true! Thanks for reminding me.
ShardPhoenix 10y ago
The meeting seemed a little content-free, I wonder if there was some other discussion happening off-camera? Like, "I'll fund the movie version" or something. Or maybe Gates is really just like "Hey I liked your book, let's get hamburgers in VR".
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
> I should get back to reading sci-fi again. Tsk. Old enough to know that you read SF, watch sci-fi. Card, please.
RangerScience 10y ago
I devoured Seveness. The first third of the book - the consideration of what I might do if faced with such a reality - was perhaps the most I've ever felt reading a book. (The contender for that would be Wise Man's Fear) I find that question waaay more effective than "what would you do with a billion dollars?". Everything you know and love will be gone, completely, with the barest chance that you can contribute to something surviving... But you have time enough left to love it. Or contribute to something surviving. It's pretty intense.
RangerScience 10y ago
The whole last third of the book makes waaay more sense when you think of it as an MMO backstory: - Two factions (literally, red and blue) with mostly the same but kinda different everything - Thirteen-plus subspecies of human, with their own unique racial bonuses and skills (chain whip thing!). - Pristine, empty, Earth-like local, ripe for building... - ...and with monsters! And treasure! Right?!
- usrusr 10y ago
  Or a fanfic playground, where writers are free to reuse the same basic cast of predefined stereotypes without interfering with each other's characters. I think it's typical Stephenson: start with a clearly identifiable grand idea, get wildly sidetracked working towards it until the digressions are something much better, leave a skeletal version of the original idea for the end.
Houshalter 10y ago
Talk about misleading titles.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Seveneves is one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read. It was a hard emotional ride. (small spoiler follows) One of the interesting gems I remember: the surviving humans looked back at the recordings of their ancestors, in particular about how their behaviour was affected by social networks - and collectively decided not to pursue that aspect of the Internet. (This may actually be a plausible in-universe answer for why there's no Facebook in Star Trek.)
- pavedwalden 10y ago
  Watching people fight on Facebook and Twitter, I frequently recall Stephenson's vision of the human race nearly destroying itself with flame wars.
ctvo 10y ago
I enjoyed Seveneves. I'd recommend Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald as another recent moon-based book that's enjoyable sci-if. Mega corporations rule the moon and the government largely ignores what they do as long as raw materials are still delivered to Earth.
perseusprime11 10y ago
Dude! this is 880 pages long.

173 points by JacobJans 10y ago

>Seveneves belongs in the subgenre of hard science fiction, which means it emphasizes scientific accuracy. Everything adheres to physical laws, so unlike Star Wars, no one travels anywhere near the speed of light. A pity then that a little basic chemistry eluded both the writer and the critic - there's no carbon on the moon. Rather difficult to support humans, and carry out feats of biotechnology, without it...

JacobJans 10y ago
What do you mean? In the book, the moon explodes and destroys the world. Pretty much the exact opposite of supporting humans.
- drakenot 10y ago
  I'm guessing you haven't read it then? I don't want the spoil the ending but your parent post makes sense.
- dbcooper 10y ago
  My understanding is that the surviving humans shelter in "the cleft", which is a fragment of the moon. They then use biotechnology techniques to repopulate. Even when limited to the biotech operations, they would need a lot of carbon based materials. Keith Robison has some thoughts on it: http://omicsomics.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/thoughts-on-synthetic-biology-of.html http://omicsomics.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/thoughts-on-synthet...
ef4 10y ago
They did bring tons of comet with them. Which could theoretically be a source of carbon. It's a stretch, of course. But I think the story was that they kept the population in the Cleft down to a few hundred for many generations, only growing beyond that once people began venturing further afield. At that point, carbonaceous asteroids are not implausibly hard to get -- from high orbit, you've already paid most of the delta V needed to get elsewhere in the inner solar system, if you've got a lot of time to spend.
djloche 10y ago
The book goes into great depth and makes "rather difficult to support humans" the focus of the entire first 2 parts of the book. Space is indeed rather difficult to support humans. The third part of the book is a 'what if they actually survived and continued to survive, fast forward 5000 years". In reality, there would be no survivors in left space, but I appreciated the final third part of the book all the same because I enjoy the fiction part of science fiction just as much as I do the science part.
dingo_bat 10y ago
Hard scifi usually has an unrealistic premise but everything else is constrained by real science that we know. If everything was exactly adherent to science and tech as it currently exists, it wouldn't be science fiction. It would just be fiction.
a_bonobo 10y ago
IMHO, "hard SF" has developed as a term for books that have "hard physics", everything else like biology, chemistry, sometimes even mathematics is usually lacking. As an example: The Cheela, the microscopic intelligent life forms in the more famous hard SF Dragon's Egg, are described like eukaryotes with an eukaryotic life style, but they're so tiny that they don't need any of the complex "inventions" of eukaryotes, for example, they wouldn't need any "plumbing" in the body since they're small enough for diffusion to deliver nutrients. IRC their DNA is triple stranded; DNA is double stranded so that it's more safe from mutations as you can always read the opposite from the opposite strand, if you had a second backup in the form of a third strand you would have no stable chemical bonds between the bases. Triple helices exist but these doesn't help with stability and are implicated in transcription. Edit: Similarly, there should be massive problems in the later communication because the Cheela shouldn't have a base 10 mathematical system as they don't have 10 fingers, you could still display it as base 10 but there has to be a conversion (see https://www.quora.com/What-does-one-mean-by-Every-base-is-base-10 https://www.quora.com/What-does-one-mean-by-Every-base-is-ba... ).
rtkwe 10y ago
That was covered at least in passing. The comet they capture and use to reach the Cleft provides the sources of carbon and other elements that are hard to get. Presumably long enough to build and launch slow missions to capture and redirect other sources (happens 'off screen'). > "The black stuff has all kind of goodies on it. Carbon, obviously. But also nitrogen, ptoassium---" "Micronutrients," Markus said, "that the Cloud Ark will be needing."
- knodi123 10y ago
  but isn't it all poisoned by those pesky radioactive flea particles? Or was that problem only insurmountable due to the limited resources of the comet expedition?
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    The fleas caused a lot of problems even during the Great Ride but I imagine once they were in the Cleft they'd be able to figure out a way to process it to remove the contamination. it wasn't covered in the book though that I remember.
    - obbybreeden 10y ago
      There was a passage where they had rigged the robots to pick out debris from the ice. I think they would eventually be able to pick out the hotter bits out of the ice as well.
tlb 10y ago
There's some carbon on the moon. Rock samples are reported as having on the order of 100 ppm carbon [1]. That means that the amount of carbon in a human body is found in 100 m^3 of lunar soil. So if you extract all the carbon from the top meter of regolith, you could cover the moon with humans on a 10 meter grid spacing. [1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/LunarSampleCompendium15265.pdf https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/LunarSampleCompendium15265....
Symmetry 10y ago
I think we're supposed to assume they went out and got more carbon somehow. It would have made more sense if they'd carried the comet parts into the cleft but I'm willing to forgive it. Of course the physics of the moon blowing up are totally wrong but I'm willing to swallow a single impossible thing and keep going. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/06/seveneves-and-roche-limit.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/06/seveneves-an...

eganist 10y ago

Seveneves is one of my favorites, even though it gets mixed reactions from a lot of others who've read titles like Anathem. I can't compare it to Anathem (the only other Stephenson book I've read so far is Cryptonomicon; looking to change that), but I can say I love the technical depth. Perhaps it's because it helps me suspend disbelief much more easily, though Bill's point that "if you’re the sort of reader who doesn’t care how such a thing might work, you will find yourself skimming parts of Seveneves" is probably true for most lay readers. The only thing that somewhat frustrated me about it, as I suspect is the case for most people, is the fact that the last third of the book feels like it could (should?) stand on its own. That being said, there's enough room for Stephenson to explore in more depth some of the events leading up to the third act in subsequent novels... so here's hoping. I figure explaining why I feel this way would be a bit of a spoiler. Bill does enough to allude to it. Anyway, thumbs up from me. I enjoyed every bit of it, and Bill's review does a good job of selling the book without spoiling it.

wrs 10y ago
Like all Stephenson, this book is full of ideas that are just...huge. The frustrating thing is the feeling that it should be merely the first book in a long, rich series, like Niven's Known Space. But the guy has so many ideas he just has to crank out this giant book and move on to the next one...
- arethuza 10y ago
  Doesn't the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon count as a "long rich series"?
  - jeremysmyth 10y ago
    Only in the loosest possible sense. Having the same (or similar, or related) characters does not necessarily imply a "full rich series". The Baroque cycle, sure, because the characters share arcs. Cryptonomicon is a completely different story though. Stephenson said this about the relationship between Cryptonomicon and its different-timeline "sequels" (not yet written at this point): " I'm trying not to give the idea that it's a tightly locked together set of books... There are always a few strange little corners of the story that may not make sense outside of the context of the full series, but 99% of it can stand on its own reasonably well, I hope." http://www.locusmag.com/1999/Issues/08/Stephenson.html http://www.locusmag.com/1999/Issues/08/Stephenson.html

astrowilliam 10y ago

Definitely one of my favorite books. I bought a hard copy and read through it immediately. Then I got the audio book and listened to it in my car while commuting. What a great piece of work.

eric_arrr 10y ago

A couple of fun things hidden (or not exactly) in this video: There's no missing a couple of Neal's swordfighting buddies at 1:07. Wondering where the camera stand is? Look for its reflection in the window behind Bill at 1:52. What car did Bill drive to the meet-up? Probably not the Model X. My money is on the Porsche 959 shown at 2:17. (It's also a safe bet that the meet-up actually began at the Burgermaster, since that's in Bill's neighborhood. That way Bill only has to make one round-trip to Seattle instead of two.) I'm totally failing to get the joke with the shovels and pickaxes at the corner of Boyer & Howe at 2:40. (Surely not a macabre gag as they cross towards Lakeview cemetery...) And of course the gaggle of kids in Madison Park at 2:54 are observing the moon through a telescope.

dingo_bat 10y ago
Why wouldn't gates drive a tesla x?
- eric_arrr 10y ago
  Bill might well drive a Model X and any number of other cars -- his daily was an armored mid-90's Lexus LS for many years -- but if there's a Porsche 959 parked at the south Kirkland Burgermaster, the odds are overwhelming that it belongs to Bill. This because only 345 Porsche 959's were ever built, and none were eligible for import into the US. That is, until Bill made himself instrumental in the passage of the show and display importation exemption* so that he could buy one. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_or_Display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_or_Display
  - adventured 10y ago
    Gates owns a silver 959. This one: https://www.instagram.com/p/MgiOYcGyhI/ https://www.instagram.com/p/MgiOYcGyhI/
    - eric_arrr 10y ago
      The silver one was presumed his, but not confirmed as such. But Bill being Bill, he might be collecting them. :)

saadrizvi 10y ago

I enjoyed Seveneves but thought it wasn't Stephenson's best work by far. I'd rate Anathem and Snow Crash much higher than it.

scholia 10y ago
Same here, plus The Diamond Age. I read them all as they came out, and the shorter earlier books (The Big U, Snowcrash) had much more impact on me than the longer later ones. Or course, it's impossible to read Snowcrash today and feel anything like the same impact because ideas that were pretty far out way back then are commonplace today.
- saadrizvi 10y ago
  +1 on Diamond Age - awesome book.

vessenes 10y ago

My theory about the book, and the reason why there's such a tone change at the end is that this book is the kickoff to a much larger cycle. If it is, I think there's an authorial question -- when do you shift gears to the far future, and how? It makes some sense to me that readers might find the style transition jarring between volumes. Also, some of the cool stuff starts to happen later. So, perhaps -- hopefully -- we can look forward to more. There's plenty teed up in the novel; it seems like every group of humans that went out on their own survived in some way, (making me think the Mars folks are going to be around at some point), and we still haven't found out just who blew up the moon. Stephenson created the Hieroglyph project, trying to get sci fi authors to inspire more science, and I suppose more faith in humanity. I would be surprised if we don't get more of this story aimed at inspiring us in a variety of ways.

bostonpete 10y ago
> it seems like every group of humans that went out on their own survived in some way The survival of both the other two groups seemed pretty far fetched to me.
- vessenes 10y ago
  Just wait for Mars.. :) I had the same reaction at first. But, then I was thinking about dogs; dogs evolve really quickly under pressure. If that's not a high pressure evolution event, I don't know what is. I'm curious to read more about everyone in any event. Here's hoping.
  - obbybreeden 10y ago
    SPOILERSSSSSSS It's not even about evolution. Imagine if the 7 eves weren't playing some weird genetic metagame, but instead had one over-arching problem to solve. The main dilemma of the Pingers was how to survive underwater, and they had as much technology (if not more, there's more submarines in existence than ISS modules). They also had tons of food (think of how many whales died, and how long whale fall ecosystems last). And a nice natural shield consisting of the ocean. If the Aidans could bring back the Neanderthal, then the Pingers probably started their experiments early and often.

hyperpallium 10y ago

boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

bostonpete 10y ago
What do you mean? They thoroughly explained it -- it was an agent!
- rspeer 10y ago
  It's a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (In particular, what the band Disaster Area's songs are about.)

ef4 10y ago

The first third of Seveneves is a real gut punch. The only other world-ending story that comes close in terms of emotional impact for me was Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End". Stephenson manages to show humanity in all its realistic messiness but still leave you proud -- on balance -- that humans mostly get our act together in a desperate attempt to preserve a seed of life and culture.

agf 10y ago
I found Childhood's End an extremely unpleasant read, and so that comparison makes it hard for me to even think about reading Seveneves. It was just so depressing, taking the concept of isolation to such an extreme it felt abusive. Or maybe I shouldn't have read it while isolated myself (literally living and working in the middle of nowhere without transportation and minimal contact with anyone I was close to). Maybe if I'd read Seveneves without ever having heard this comparison, I would have made it through to the part that makes you proud, but at this point I doubt that's possible. Going to skip this one, and I'd suggest everyone else skip Childhood's End.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  I haven't read Childhood's End. I really enjoyed Seveneves, though. But there's just a lot of cool stuff in the story that is worth the exposition. As others note, the book is written in sections; if you really don't want to go through the triumph and heartbreak of the outplaying story, it wouldn't be awful to jump to a later section. I may be a bit heretical saying so, but some ideas later in the book are just wonderful. You'll lose out fast forwarding, but I'd recommend that over skipping it :)
- ido 10y ago
  It's been a couple yeas since I read it, but I recall it being a pretty interesting read that didn't trigger any of the above feelings (just as a counter experience, that I wouldn't suggest people avoid it). SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER . . . . . . was it the guy's experience going to the alien planet that triggered you? I actually didn't realize that might have been the reason upon first reading your comment.

Tyr42 10y ago

I was just getting into Kerbal Space Program at the same time I started reading this book, and it's amazing how well they tie together. I would learn something about orbital mechanics in KSP, and then see it applied in the book, and I really enjoyed that feeling.

blisterpeanuts 10y ago

I greatly enjoyed some of Stephenson's other works, but I was actually a bit disappointed with Seveneves. The narrative is well crafted, but unfortunately I just got stuck on the whole space ark concept and couldn't suspend disbelief enough to continue. Maybe someone else can explain why it made sense to focus on an orbiting refuge, right in the path of the Moon's fragments, rather than dig a bunch of underground cities that would have saved many times more people. Midway through the first unit, I basically decided they should have dug tunnels ten miles long, one mile deep at bottom, lay tracks, and just go full steam carting rocks out while digging massive caverns. They could move entire hospitals, schools, factories, labs, etc. into these places, store tons of food and supplies, lay pipes to connect to underground water supplies, set up parks, farms, and animal preserves using artificial solar lighting. Makes so much more sense to me than this nutty space station idea. And with gravity, access to minerals, oxygen, etc. I love space as much as the next geek, but if you want to save millions of humans, you've got to dig.

p_eter_p 10y ago
You might like Hugh Howie's "Wool" series...
- huslage 10y ago
  I read this series right after I read Seveneves. The connections were impressive.
- blisterpeanuts 10y ago
  Yup, loved Wool.
aetherson 10y ago
Well...... You'd clearly be right if you were looking at a timeframe of a few years, or a few decades, or maybe a century or two. But if you successfully establish a long term presence in space, you've got access to a lot of resources. If you're stuck in a hole in the ground for 5,000 years, and the surface is considerably more hostile than space, I think there's at least a colorable argument that space is the way to go. Spoilers for the end of the book follow. As it happens, remnants of humanity survive in space, underground, and underwater. This was the part of the story that broke my suspension of disbelief. I just couldn't really buy the end-third societies. It's like Stephenson couldn't get his mind around how long 5,000 years actually is. Just as a for-example, language: In 3,000 BC, there might have been an unknown language that we designate proto-Indo-European because we don't actually have any texts that reference it. Proto-Indo-European might have begat another language that is still so ancient that we can only guess at it that we designate proto-Germanic which begat a family of West-German languages that begat Old English that begat Middle English that begat modern English. Meanwhile, in 7,000 AD, apparently they speak a light pidgin of modern English that's pretty understandable to modern English speakers. I get Stephenson's argument for why his far-future cultures are so directly related to the action in the first two thirds of the book, I just can't quite buy it.

peteretep 10y ago

The character identification bit is interesting. I had assumed the president was meant to be Hillary Clinton until I read someone angrily complaining about his take-down of Sarah Palin...

mseebach 10y ago
Well, the book was written in the age of Palin more than Clinton, so the parallel is inviting - but isn't JBF a pretty well read big city liberal, generally well respected in Doobs circles? It's a very subtle dig. However, I read JBF as a catch-all figure for everything bad about politicians (generally useless, except to ferment conflict to serve their own path to power), so it's not surprising that people would project whatever politician they don't like onto her. In other words, she's both Palin and Hillary.
- pavedwalden 10y ago
  When asked about the Hillary comparison at a book signing, Stephenson said that he hadn't wanted the character to represent Hillary and thought it was unfortunate that many readers would make that assumption just because there were so few alternative public figures to map the character to. He gave no hint as to there being anyone in particular she was supposed to be.

kaonashi 10y ago

Some not-so-hard science fiction on the same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI

CurtMonash 10y ago

Larry Niven was awesome at apocalypses. The short story Inconstant Moon is one of the greats, plus he did a couple of thick novels on the theme with Pournelle -- Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall.

j1vms 10y ago

360° video interview at the parent link (also works with mobile phone VR headsets - though didn't try it) is surprisingly pleasant, effective and amusing too. For example, when they are in the car, it's nice to be able to look elsewhere if you already get bored staring at the two of them. The director was a bit quirky I guess: there is even a play sword battle between two anonymous dudes on the side of the road, early on in the video (!) Edit: Someone did already post about the above.

smpetrey 10y ago

I love that Mr. Gates drives a Tesla :)

Jedd 10y ago

I believe I've read all of Stephenson's books (yes, even The Big U) Seveneves is in the top 5, but only just -- the Baroque Cycle (though not sci-fi) takes up three of the first five spots. In terms of can't-put-down-once-started, Reamde tops the list, but, again, not sci-fi. People seem to want to compare the content to Anathem, even suggesting it may fit into the same universe - though I can't see it myself. For what it's worth, both his SF and non-SF works are enjoyed by my other half, who usually eschews anything SF - so despite the alleged 'science-heavy style', there's one data point that suggests it's not as problematic as some reviewers expect it would be.

mirimir 10y ago
I also loved The Baroque Cycle, and Mongoliad (which also, now that I think of it, features that immortal mystic). It's hard to explain the connection with Anathem without too many spoilers. So I'll just note that Earth does explicitly exist in the Anathem universe.
- Jedd 10y ago
  Oh, I've read both Anathem and Seveneves, and while I appreciate that Earth is referenced in the former, I don't recall anything that felt like it may connect (no hint of a multiverse in Seveneves, f.e.). I think I read some interview with Neal a while back where he said he hadn't considered writing anything else in the same universe as Seveneves, but if there was interest, he may come up with something. Obviously there's quite a few ways such a follow-up could go. Probably time, and a good excuse, to re-read Anathem.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    It's the Purpose vibe. Plus all the mystery about the Agent. But then, I didn't get the Hitchhikers' Guide joke about that :(
    - rtkwe 10y ago
      Many of Stephenson's books have some hint of Purpose to them. Either the characters are working towards their own purpose a la Avi and HEAP + Crypt or are being guided by people with a purpose like Fraa Erasmas in Anathem or Hacksworth in Diamond Age.

redthrowaway 10y ago

$('#ArticleDropUpshareHolder').remove()

kristianp 10y ago
Thanks, that's handy. I wish there was a complement to adblock that removed useless things that cover text, like email harvesting popups and other things that have to be closed manually.
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  The problem is that most of these things are hand-rolled. It's not like ads, where you can just block iframes that point at blacklisted domains. The ids and classes of those annoying things will be specific to each site, so it's hard to target. You could probably remove anything that had onscroll functionality defined, and just accept that it would break some websites.

jonathankoren 10y ago

Note to future VR directors: Don't do edits, and God don't change the default orientation of the camera! I know that goes against against 127 years of cinematic history, but moving the camera's default focus seriously confused my spatial awareness. I've turned so I can see them both, but oh no now I'm outside on the street, and now I'm back inside, but suddenly I'm rotated 60 degrees. If this wasn't VR, it would t matter but in VR, it's putting the audience on teacup ride.

100k 10y ago

"If Stephenson wrote Huckleberry Finn it would be 4,000 pages long and mostly about paddlewheel design" -- https://twitter.com/baconmeteor/status/663076130077802496 https://twitter.com/baconmeteor/status/663076130077802496 I have heard good things about this book, but it has been a while since I could get into Neal Stephenson's work. My favorite is one of his earliest, Zodiac. It's the only book of his I've read that doesn't just...end.

yoodenvranx 10y ago
> "If Stephenson wrote Huckleberry Finn it would be 4,000 pages long and mostly about paddlewheel design" And this is the exact reason why Stephenson is one of my favorite authors.

ChicagoDave 10y ago

I started reading Seveneves about 4 days ago. Been sitting on my nightstand for months. It's dry, but scary/sad as fuck.

GantzGraf 10y ago

Was anybody else turned off by the author's approach to characterisation in this book? I feel like he's over-explaining their reasoning/motivation for doing the things they do to the point where it's irritating. It's like he's trying to tell you everything about a character in the shortest time possible. No subtlety. Am I overreacting? I'm still within the first third but I don't think I'll be able to get through the book if it's entirely like this.

dsr_ 10y ago
Characterization is not one of Stephenson's strong points. Try an experiment: skip to 2/3 through the book, where it says "Five thousand years later..." and pick it up as though it were a new book. I think you might be happier.
dboshardy 10y ago
No, you're not. Stephenson is bad at character writing and development. His books just feel like ways for him to mentally masturbate onto the reader. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, once I slog through the first quarter of the book, I can't bring myself to stop reading. But at the same time I can't help but be frustrated by his "look how smart I am and all the things I know" writing.

pointernil 10y ago

I love how the book manages to tell just 1/3 of the whole story ;)

mirimir 10y ago
Actually, it's more like a quarter, or a fifth ;)
- pointernil 10y ago
  Hard to discuss without spoilers but do you mean story-time-wise or story-line-wise?
  - mirimir 10y ago
    I mean story-line-wise. Specifically, group-wise.
    - pointernil 10y ago
      Ah, so true! Thanks for reminding me.

ShardPhoenix 10y ago

The meeting seemed a little content-free, I wonder if there was some other discussion happening off-camera? Like, "I'll fund the movie version" or something. Or maybe Gates is really just like "Hey I liked your book, let's get hamburgers in VR".

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago

> I should get back to reading sci-fi again. Tsk. Old enough to know that you read SF, watch sci-fi. Card, please.

RangerScience 10y ago

I devoured Seveness. The first third of the book - the consideration of what I might do if faced with such a reality - was perhaps the most I've ever felt reading a book. (The contender for that would be Wise Man's Fear) I find that question waaay more effective than "what would you do with a billion dollars?". Everything you know and love will be gone, completely, with the barest chance that you can contribute to something surviving... But you have time enough left to love it. Or contribute to something surviving. It's pretty intense.

RangerScience 10y ago

The whole last third of the book makes waaay more sense when you think of it as an MMO backstory: - Two factions (literally, red and blue) with mostly the same but kinda different everything - Thirteen-plus subspecies of human, with their own unique racial bonuses and skills (chain whip thing!). - Pristine, empty, Earth-like local, ripe for building... - ...and with monsters! And treasure! Right?!

usrusr 10y ago
Or a fanfic playground, where writers are free to reuse the same basic cast of predefined stereotypes without interfering with each other's characters. I think it's typical Stephenson: start with a clearly identifiable grand idea, get wildly sidetracked working towards it until the digressions are something much better, leave a skeletal version of the original idea for the end.

Houshalter 10y ago

Talk about misleading titles.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Seveneves is one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read. It was a hard emotional ride. (small spoiler follows) One of the interesting gems I remember: the surviving humans looked back at the recordings of their ancestors, in particular about how their behaviour was affected by social networks - and collectively decided not to pursue that aspect of the Internet. (This may actually be a plausible in-universe answer for why there's no Facebook in Star Trek.)

pavedwalden 10y ago
Watching people fight on Facebook and Twitter, I frequently recall Stephenson's vision of the human race nearly destroying itself with flame wars.

ctvo 10y ago

I enjoyed Seveneves. I'd recommend Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald as another recent moon-based book that's enjoyable sci-if. Mega corporations rule the moon and the government largely ignores what they do as long as raw materials are still delivered to Earth.

perseusprime11 10y ago

Dude! this is 880 pages long.