5 ms·

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

by 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.
- fsloth 10y ago
  I read Childhood's End over 20 years ago but from what I recall I felt it was just an awesome book. I do not recall it being particularly depressing.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It's an awesome book either way, but it can be read very much either in a hopeful vein, or a very depressing one: (Spoiler warning; for various works for the rest of this comment - assume that if I mention a work, there'll be a spoiler later in the sentence...) Humanity stagnates before ending as the last of humanity's children transforms and are isolated from their parents. The parents generation slowly or not so slowly die out and no more children are born. The transformed children become one single collective intelligence, and that too is subsumed into a greater mind. In the end, the last actual human stays on an earth that evaporates. On one hand humanity has "ascended" to a higher stage. On the other hand what is left bears no resemblance to humanity. It belongs to a peculiar and I think quite rare strand of scifi where humanity abandoned humanity and was in the end entirely gone (as opposed to e.g. post-apocalyptic settings where there are still humans left, and where most of the stories tend to end on a hopeful note for repopulation), set in the near-ish future (as opposed to e.g. books like Stapledons Last and First Men, which also describes the end of humanity, but where the end is set millions of years into the future). I don't think that strand is seen very often any more. There's been plenty, both then and later, where Earth has been abandoned and forgotten by a human diaspora that lives on elsewhere (e.g. Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation universe goes there), but that tends to have a very different feel to the stories where humanity just "fades away" or transforms. My other favourite equally definitive end would be Clifford D. Simak's "City" which is told in the form of legends told by talking dogs of how humans left to transform into something else and eventually disappear. Another, of sorts, would be Clarke's "City and the Stars", where there are still humans, but only two cities left on Earth after everyone else left and likely ascended. That difference, though, gives it a very different, more hopeful feel (but the last few pages of City and the Stars is the only book to have ever given me the chills), similar to the post-apocalyptic stories of small groups that endures. Many others have gone with the "humanity almost wiped out, but not quite, oh and here's redeeming factors" theme, such as the various incarnations of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where one becomes increasingly callous about the repeated destructions of variations of earth as the series progresses to the point where it's more of a regular event to cheer on safe in the knowledge earth will pop back into existence somehow sooner or later (even Douglas Adams attempt at getting his publisher to shut up about another sequel by ending Mostly Harmless with the destruction of Earth in every reality in the entire multiverse and then going ahead and dying on us didn't stop another sequel from being written ("And another thing..." by Eoin Colfer; surprisingly good for falling in the "lets try to repeatedly murder this story with Vogon death rays" category)). Titan A.E. is another of the modern dark-ish depictions that gets close to finality, where humanity for most of it is depicted as just a few scattered remnants, but there is hope and not a definitive line drawn under it that in the end makes it quite a hopeful story. Battlestar Galactica (both incarnations) falls in a similar category where the impending doom starts, gets nasty, and then you reach a steady-state of sorts (though the regular updates on the dwindling number of colonists does help to keep it dark), but then is never drawn to its conclusion, and that fails to make it as solemn. There are of course other "nearly but not quite the end" stories. Iain M Banks last Culture novel - The Hydrogen Sonata - has a similar theme, but set on an alien planet where the civilization has decided to ascend. It's a great book, but it too doesn't feel as dark, I guess, because it isn't the end of humanity. The solemn feeling that this is the end, and not an end set in a very far distant future, but not that far from now is present in Childhoods End and City. The atmosphere in those are also aided by describing the aftermath, including descriptions of the pain of many of those who feel left behind. I'm sure there are others that I should remember, but I'm too tired to think of any right now. And I'm sure there are some I'm entirely unaware of. I'd be very interested in similar stories, and especially if there are any modern ones that are as "final" (as in: conclusively end with the end of mankind in the near future, instead of copping out with the existence of some small remaining group, or dragging it out into the far future).
- piva00 10y ago
  Childhood's End was one of the best books I've read last year, maybe your own isolation created this and I don't think it's fair to suggest everyone else to skip it, it's a really great book around an interesting concept.
haikuginger 10y ago
For me, it had a touch of "Alas, Babylon" or "Earth Abides".
davidw 10y ago
> The first third of Seveneves is a real gut punch. I found the first two thirds of it to be pretty depressing to the point where I didn't really enjoy the whole book that much. I wish he'd just kind of jumped right into the "future world" bit and made some references to what had taken place when the moon blew up.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
Stephenson can really bring a world to life, and apparently, snuff it out too.
eric_arrr 10y ago
I kept thinking Seveneves would adapt wonderfully as a three-season television series, with one season for each part of the book. Oh, those season finales!
e12e 10y ago
I've yet to read "Seveneves", but I felt the prologue to Alastair Reynolds' "Blue Remembered Earth" was very moving too. It involves our protagonists coming across a left-over AI tank, long buried. A sort of futuristic take on land-mines disguised as toys. There's also some rather nightmarish scenarios in Richard Morgan's series about Takeshi Kovacs (I enjoyed beginning in the middle, with "Woken Furies") involving weaponized nano technology. Neither are world-ending, but touches IMHO on some of the same things.

by ef4 10y ago

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.
fsloth 10y ago
I read Childhood's End over 20 years ago but from what I recall I felt it was just an awesome book. I do not recall it being particularly depressing.
- vidarh 10y ago
  It's an awesome book either way, but it can be read very much either in a hopeful vein, or a very depressing one: (Spoiler warning; for various works for the rest of this comment - assume that if I mention a work, there'll be a spoiler later in the sentence...) Humanity stagnates before ending as the last of humanity's children transforms and are isolated from their parents. The parents generation slowly or not so slowly die out and no more children are born. The transformed children become one single collective intelligence, and that too is subsumed into a greater mind. In the end, the last actual human stays on an earth that evaporates. On one hand humanity has "ascended" to a higher stage. On the other hand what is left bears no resemblance to humanity. It belongs to a peculiar and I think quite rare strand of scifi where humanity abandoned humanity and was in the end entirely gone (as opposed to e.g. post-apocalyptic settings where there are still humans left, and where most of the stories tend to end on a hopeful note for repopulation), set in the near-ish future (as opposed to e.g. books like Stapledons Last and First Men, which also describes the end of humanity, but where the end is set millions of years into the future). I don't think that strand is seen very often any more. There's been plenty, both then and later, where Earth has been abandoned and forgotten by a human diaspora that lives on elsewhere (e.g. Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation universe goes there), but that tends to have a very different feel to the stories where humanity just "fades away" or transforms. My other favourite equally definitive end would be Clifford D. Simak's "City" which is told in the form of legends told by talking dogs of how humans left to transform into something else and eventually disappear. Another, of sorts, would be Clarke's "City and the Stars", where there are still humans, but only two cities left on Earth after everyone else left and likely ascended. That difference, though, gives it a very different, more hopeful feel (but the last few pages of City and the Stars is the only book to have ever given me the chills), similar to the post-apocalyptic stories of small groups that endures. Many others have gone with the "humanity almost wiped out, but not quite, oh and here's redeeming factors" theme, such as the various incarnations of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where one becomes increasingly callous about the repeated destructions of variations of earth as the series progresses to the point where it's more of a regular event to cheer on safe in the knowledge earth will pop back into existence somehow sooner or later (even Douglas Adams attempt at getting his publisher to shut up about another sequel by ending Mostly Harmless with the destruction of Earth in every reality in the entire multiverse and then going ahead and dying on us didn't stop another sequel from being written ("And another thing..." by Eoin Colfer; surprisingly good for falling in the "lets try to repeatedly murder this story with Vogon death rays" category)). Titan A.E. is another of the modern dark-ish depictions that gets close to finality, where humanity for most of it is depicted as just a few scattered remnants, but there is hope and not a definitive line drawn under it that in the end makes it quite a hopeful story. Battlestar Galactica (both incarnations) falls in a similar category where the impending doom starts, gets nasty, and then you reach a steady-state of sorts (though the regular updates on the dwindling number of colonists does help to keep it dark), but then is never drawn to its conclusion, and that fails to make it as solemn. There are of course other "nearly but not quite the end" stories. Iain M Banks last Culture novel - The Hydrogen Sonata - has a similar theme, but set on an alien planet where the civilization has decided to ascend. It's a great book, but it too doesn't feel as dark, I guess, because it isn't the end of humanity. The solemn feeling that this is the end, and not an end set in a very far distant future, but not that far from now is present in Childhoods End and City. The atmosphere in those are also aided by describing the aftermath, including descriptions of the pain of many of those who feel left behind. I'm sure there are others that I should remember, but I'm too tired to think of any right now. And I'm sure there are some I'm entirely unaware of. I'd be very interested in similar stories, and especially if there are any modern ones that are as "final" (as in: conclusively end with the end of mankind in the near future, instead of copping out with the existence of some small remaining group, or dragging it out into the far future).
piva00 10y ago
Childhood's End was one of the best books I've read last year, maybe your own isolation created this and I don't think it's fair to suggest everyone else to skip it, it's a really great book around an interesting concept.

haikuginger 10y ago

For me, it had a touch of "Alas, Babylon" or "Earth Abides".

davidw 10y ago

> The first third of Seveneves is a real gut punch. I found the first two thirds of it to be pretty depressing to the point where I didn't really enjoy the whole book that much. I wish he'd just kind of jumped right into the "future world" bit and made some references to what had taken place when the moon blew up.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

Stephenson can really bring a world to life, and apparently, snuff it out too.

eric_arrr 10y ago

I kept thinking Seveneves would adapt wonderfully as a three-season television series, with one season for each part of the book. Oh, those season finales!

e12e 10y ago

I've yet to read "Seveneves", but I felt the prologue to Alastair Reynolds' "Blue Remembered Earth" was very moving too. It involves our protagonists coming across a left-over AI tank, long buried. A sort of futuristic take on land-mines disguised as toys. There's also some rather nightmarish scenarios in Richard Morgan's series about Takeshi Kovacs (I enjoyed beginning in the middle, with "Woken Furies") involving weaponized nano technology. Neither are world-ending, but touches IMHO on some of the same things.