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It's A Monday
Jan. 11th, 2016 08:47 amAfter my New Year's Eve adventures in prepaid "fun" and given the time of arrival of the latest snow in Chicago (3 PM Saturday) I stayed in all weekend. I did get some useful stuff done, namely, the latest rewrite of The Mars Run, in which I incorporated all the feedback I got from a Facebook group set up by my new editor, Charles Sheehan-Miles. I also read and enjoyed the 2015 novel SevenEves. Further thoughts below.
Seveneves
As mentioned in other reviews, this is really two books in one. Book 1 is a near-future adventure in which an unknown object, possibly a black hole fragment, destroys Earth's moon, causing the "Hard Rain" of a sizable portion of same on the Earth. Life as we know it will not be possible. The world attempts to create a lifeboat on the International Space Station, but after a few years and many disasters, that population is reduced to eight women, only seven of which can bear children. Of that population, two had made serious efforts to kill the other six. It's not exactly a promising situation.
Book 2 opens 5,000 years later. This seven has expanded to 3 billion, all living in orbital habitats over Earth and speaking a Russian-English hybrid language. (Not, as per some reviews, our version of English, although at least one character, a historian, can read it.) Re-terraforming is well underway, and a group of seven is (rather slowly) formed to investigate various anomalies on the surface.
This truly could have been two stand-alone books, and I imagine there were some discussions on the business viability of same. Stephenson, the author, does tend to wax long on his technical descriptions - I skimmed many of them, finding I didn't need the information - and until the very end there's a lot of characters to keep track of. So, although the book could have been a bit tighter, overall I found it well worth my time.
Seveneves
As mentioned in other reviews, this is really two books in one. Book 1 is a near-future adventure in which an unknown object, possibly a black hole fragment, destroys Earth's moon, causing the "Hard Rain" of a sizable portion of same on the Earth. Life as we know it will not be possible. The world attempts to create a lifeboat on the International Space Station, but after a few years and many disasters, that population is reduced to eight women, only seven of which can bear children. Of that population, two had made serious efforts to kill the other six. It's not exactly a promising situation.
Book 2 opens 5,000 years later. This seven has expanded to 3 billion, all living in orbital habitats over Earth and speaking a Russian-English hybrid language. (Not, as per some reviews, our version of English, although at least one character, a historian, can read it.) Re-terraforming is well underway, and a group of seven is (rather slowly) formed to investigate various anomalies on the surface.
This truly could have been two stand-alone books, and I imagine there were some discussions on the business viability of same. Stephenson, the author, does tend to wax long on his technical descriptions - I skimmed many of them, finding I didn't need the information - and until the very end there's a lot of characters to keep track of. So, although the book could have been a bit tighter, overall I found it well worth my time.
