I loved Snow Crash (top 5 personal favourite book) and Cryptonomicon (I haven't read Seveneves yet), but I didn't like Anathem that much? (POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW) Especially the sort of quantum-ex-machina "twist" near the end was kind of off-putting to me. Everything so far was very well crafted and researched, but this part was a lot like "yeah multiple universes or something", but I'm not sure if it even works that way, if true. Also I found the constant back-translating of scientific discoveries and theorems with-a-different-name kind of tedious. I caught a lot of them, but many also…
It did feel like the last part was Stephenson deciding that he had far too many ideas about how this would all turn out in the end to leave it that way, or even with a short epilogue, so he expanded it into an extended epilogue, which is what it feels like in the end. Add in him wanting to throw in what he thinks are some cool technologies, or how weapons would develop when carried through an arc that largely bypasses gunpowder, or when satellites are ubiquitous, and you get the filler segments we ended up with. I largely enjoyed that part, but not as much as the first two parts. I would…
>The first part was too long and the second too short ....and no one ever mentions the third part because it was so long and poor that the book would be better without it. Seveneves wasn't bad, but part 3 dropped it well down my list of favorites, maybe below Zodiac. For context, an informal off-the-cuff ranking of his books for me: Anathem (epic world building, I love the philosophy and the theory) Cryptonomicon (I've always been interested in WWII, Cryptography, and Computers) Baroque Cycle (taught me a lot of history I didn't know and somehow made finance interesting) Diamond…
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…
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…
Similarly, I wanted to love Stephenson. I even enjoy the intense technical details in a good sci-fi story (I'm talking to you Red Mars). I started with Seveneves and could not finish it. After 20 pages I wanted to quit, but I stuck it out for another 150 pages before folding. The premise of the story was fantastic, but the writing was not enjoyable to me, and IMO, not very good. Where Robinson and authors like Weir and Clarke weave the technical details into the story in a fascinating way and show understanding of the topic, I felt Stephenson was copy-pasting Wikipedia articles into the…
there is a source of volatiles "close" by - earth. with all that water in the atmosphere you can build satellites that orbit low and siphon it and other valuable gases like nitrogen off. The Satellites would use aerodynamic effects and the siphoned atmosphere for propulsion. As for Solar cells there are factors to consider - they would degrade differently than cells in low earth orbit since factors like atomic oxygen and thermal cycling are less of an issue while I imagine micrometeorites are just terrible. Modern cells degrade at at 0.5% per year in LEO. At 1%/year degradation that means…
I think the biggest technological assumption, and the one I simply couldn't get past, was that the technology from pre-zero time would last long enough for very small groups of people with very limited resources could keep functioning for long enough for the society to develop its own capacity for fabricating new parts. The stuff they have would wear out long before that could happen. - the spacers would run out of enough water as there would always be a small loses that accumulate, but a growing population would mean less available for propulsion needed to get at new comets. The cleft had…
I find most interesting about Seveneves is how the technological assumptions have changed since the book predates the first landing of a falcon 9 booster stage. Getting the tin cans into orbit is described as using traditional use-once rockets. Assuming that you can reuse the first stage 20 times alone would enormously scale up the avaible cargo and m³ you can get into orbit since the upper stages would need not nearly as many rocket engines (and those would be the limiting factor in onstruction really). if you could get a starship booster to work with similar reliability you could put up…
First, spoilers for the first few chapters below, if you care about such things. This (neat!) article and the comments here (so far) miss/skip a few details (or my mind is making fake memories again). 1. Regarding the destruction of Earth - IIRC, while the pounding (and subsequent geological and atmospheric responses) the Earth was to receive was an ELE, the real kick in the teeth was the cumulative heat generated as much of a moon's worth of mass burned up in the atmosphere. 2. Regarding whether the moon would just sit there fragmented or mirror the descriptions of the book - IIRC, the…