Seveneves in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Dec 21, 2015 Claudia Recinos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Someone described this book to me as follows: "Stephenson has done his research, and he's going to make sure you know it." That was dead on. This book was incredibly scientifically detailed, which made it a good brain read. But all the human relationships were completely glossed over, which made it a very unsatisfying heart read. I'd say read this if you loved The Martian and want something ten times more technical. Or if you love space. This book did make me fall in love with outer space. But b ...more

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Jun 30, 2018 Alison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, dcpl_elibrary

This was great - I liked the conceit, and I thought the first half of the book in particular was extepremely well done. The second half was good as well, but in a lot of ways was very different from the first. I almost wish it had been broken into two novels, I think that would have helped with the transition a bit. Overall, excellent characters and very engrossing.

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Oct 07, 2015 Natalie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, audio, plch, physical, audible, 2016, mine, 2017, favorites, 2018

This is one of my favorite books ever. The narration for the audiobook is great. The author describes the story in Tolkienesque detail. This is in a short stack of books that I regularly reread whenever I need something familiar and comforting, and it always pulls me out of whatever reading funk I've fallen into. ...more

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May 17, 2016 Sarah left GR rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, ebooks

Haiku review:

Awesome on gender!
Problematic on race, though.
Everybody dies.

Longer review after the spoiler tag.

(view spoiler) Haiku review:

Awesome on gender!
Problematic on race, though.
Everybody dies.

Longer review after the spoiler tag.

(view spoiler)[Based on what I've seen on Goodreads, I'm not alone in feeling that this is two very different books. It begins with a sudden cataclysmic astronomical event that renders the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. Not immediately, though. The astrophysicists (including a character that must have been inspired by Neil DeGrasse Tyson), have done the math, and predict that humankind has about three years left. Thus begins the Cloud Ark - a global project to send people and supplies into orbit in the hopes that humanity can survive long enough to return to the surface in a millennium or three.

As one might imagine, there is a lot of science. But there are also many rich and complex characters (many of them women! who talk to other women! about topics other than men!). We accompany them as they prepare for the literal end of the world, and begin their new, space-based life. We see the scientific and moral struggles - how do you decide who to save? How do you govern the survivors, especially as their numbers dwindle alarmingly?

Here's where things get interesting - if you have a small population of humans, you're going to have to tinker with the gene pool in order to avoid inbreeding. Any moral qualms seem small when the compared to the prospect of extinction. There's an excellent scene as the surviving humans (exactly eight women, seven of them of childbearing age - thus the title) argue about what modifications to make to their future embryos. What do we value? Strength? Intelligence? Creativity? Psychological stability? Eventually they decide that each woman will get to choose which traits to emphasize in her offspring. The result? Seven distinct human... tribes? families? No, races. That's the word the characters use, which the geneticist never corrects.

And this is where Stephenson loses me. Race is a social construct, not a biological one. The author spent countless hours researching every minute detail of what it would take to support humanity in space for generations (my favorite example - sending an eyeglass-making machine to the Cloud Ark, because the zero-gee environment will change people's prescriptions, not to mention the vision-correcting needs of humans yet to be born). And yet this, THIS he gets wrong.

So I'm already irritated about the race thing, and then we fast forward three thousand years. Everyone we know is dead. Granted, there were only eight people left, but at least we knew them. In the future, we're introduced to a brand-new society in a brand-new environment, in that horrendously tedious "let me describe every single thing in excruciating detail because look at all the cool things I imagined" style that is so off-putting to anyone other than a hard core science fiction reader. We're introduced to a whole host of characters, none of whom I cared about. Anyway, stuff happens. The end. I could have stopped reading before the flash forward.

In Stephenson's afterword, he describes the final third section as hopeful. I don't see it that way at all. His future world, where humankind is divided by an ethnic cold war... that's not progress. Yes, Neal, the science was cool. But your vision of the future makes me question whether humanity was worth saving at all. (hide spoiler)]
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Added to my to-read list because of the following:

From Bill Gates' summer reading list:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill...

Also highly recommend by Felicia Day. ...more

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Jul 16, 2015 Julia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is because sometimes the story got lost in too much technical description. But if you love science fiction this is not to be missed! ...more

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