Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/12/neal-stephensons-seveneves-k.html
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Now ya’ tell me…
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The cover art is misleading. 880 pages for NTS is basically a short story.
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FYI, It is also at apple books store at the same price.
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Yeaaah. I hope he comes back to explore more of the last part.
But I guess we are going to go back and see what Dodge is up too?
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Am I alone in coming away from this read significantly unimpressed?
I’m a big fan of Stephenson - but man did this thing drag on after the main players escaped Earth
Yearning for the Snow Crash era of tight narratives to return.
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Was anyone else kind of weirded out by how many of the main characters in the first half of the book were so obviously based on real-life people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Malala Yousavzai and Hillary-Clinton-but-if-she-won-and-was-even-less-likable?
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The worst book I read last year.
I like so much of Stephenson’s work, but Seveneves was terrible. It could be fleshed out into several books, possibly not even interrelated. Instead, characters get dropped (it was blazingly easy to tell who he would kill off), plot lines summarized after 100 pages of setup, and the main thesis of the 2nd half never fully explained.
I am so glad I bought it used.
Any boinger can have my printed copy for the cost of shipping - but you’re still getting a bad deal.
If you are needing a Neal Stephenson fix, reread pretty much anything else he ever wrote. Masterpieces some, fun almost all. Except this one.
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I enjoyed my read through of this book, probably not as much as I enjoyed his other stuff though. To be perfectly honest, the end scenario sounded almost like he had written the entire thing as a tie-in to some unannounced MMO project that never came to fruition.
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I have to say you are being a bit rough on Chelsea.
But this is the Stephenson book I haven’t re-read, and may never re-read. I think its because the scenario in the first half is just so depressing, and quite well presented. I just don’t want to go there again.
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“Me too”.
His first ten books made Stephenson my absolute favourite author.
‘Anathem’ was hard going, but I’d read it again (though it’s ominous that I haven’t felt the urge yet!).
‘Reamde’ was… dreadful. Unlikeable characters and would have been better at half the length.
‘Seveneves’… meh and, again, overlong.
If I read anything more from him, it’ll be via a Kindle offer like this. Not least because I really don’t want another of his paper bricks in my small house.
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Stephenson’s last really good book was Diamond Age.
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I am so with you on REAMDE - until that point I’d thought he was unbeatable. It felt like he’d published a filing cabinet full of notes without writing a book out of them.
I did wholeheartedly love Anathem though…
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The book was published mid 2015. Hillary Clinton may have been an inspiration for the character, but I don’t think Stephenson owned a working crystal ball. If he did, I would like to think he may have written something a little different.
I listened to it (shout out to libro.fm) and have some conflicting feelings on the book. I agree that it was quite depressing especially the first half. But that is to be expected somewhat with the premise.
This was my first Neal Stephenson’s book and listening to it I didn’t really have a idea of how much there was left so that the story continued after the first half was a bit of a surprise to me.
However there were a few things that really broke the believability for me in the second half.
Spoilers follow: Alright, so at one point, after the seven eves have created some offspring, some of them men even, there are like 100, maybe a 1000 people in Cleft? In this really cramped space a few generations away from the eves I don’t believe for one minute that all races would remain separate. If only for genetic diversity they would intermix so much that the races would be indistinguishable. And really, people are attracted to exotic features right? Teenagers will fall in love with and have sex with who they love, whether or not they are classed as dangerous by their mothers. I get the feeling this was important for the rest of the story, to introduce conflict needed in the second half but I just can’t believe it.
Also just the constant conflict and unnecessary killing of people when only a few hundred humans still remain alive? I have a hard time buying that too.
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I feel your pain. Stephenson’s getting sloppier with each new book.
Hillary had already run one unsuccessful Presidential campaign by 2015. Knowledge of future events was unnecessary.
When I was a kid I wanted to become an astronaut, this is the book that made adult me not ever want to go to space for any prolonged period of time.
I guess as long as we’re all piling on poor Neal there’s one more thing I want to get off my chest:
Tossing in an actual, magical, ageless wizard as a minor supporting character in the otherwise non-supernatural Cryptonomicon was a big immersion-busting distraction for me. Especially since that character wasn’t even particularly important to the plot.
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