Cory’s story is available on BB at http://boingboing.net/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon.html .
Huh. I found the whole thing quite gripping. There is definitely a lot left to talk about, so I’d love to see a sequel. The main character in this book is the human race, and the other main character is science/technology. I don’t really know how to relate to the “not enough humanity” thing. This novel was all about humanity.
It seems to me that giving this novel a bad review because it doesn’t revolve around how the characters feel about the events that occur in it is an example of a kind of myopia that is quite unfortunate. Novels are ways of talking about how we could be, and what we could do. This novel very much does that. The hard rain is an obvious controversy-free stand-in for the worst possible outcome of global climate change: the elimination of the ecosphere.
This novel is just about as relevant as it’s possible to be, and talking about human beings solving problems, and about the cognitive biases that prevent us from doing so, is not only important, but extremely interesting, at least to me. I’m sorry for you that it wasn’t the next Moby Dick, but this is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Of course, I hated the Baroque Cycle and never got past the first book, so maybe that says as much about me as it does about the book…
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It feels like since an early reviewer felt as though the character development was flat, subsequent reviews fell in line with this perspective. I tend to agree with your perspective that plot was more focused, and rightly so, on the sociological and technical achievements required to persevere through calamity.I certainly would have preferred much more focus upon the biotechnical aspects as opposed to the orbital mechanics, but perhaps a subsequent volume will address these.
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I loved the man-rating rules being thrown out and shortcuts to LEO(but where were Orion nuke ships?) and the real orbital mechanics, but when it got to the 5000 years future the yawn set in, and the tricks pulled off with a glider were between implausible to impossible in a book which is so damn careful earlier with orbital mechanics. Also agree with the implausible energy density, longevity of an improvised moon colony, and that the radionuclide death suddenly stopping at the seven.
I think the review reflects my feelings of what I missed form previous NS novels, good SF but less well developed characters though more technically fun than even Big U.
Oh, cool! It had never occurred to me to search for him outside of kuro5hin.
It’s better than it’s antonym though …
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Neal has written two very good books, “Snow Crash” and “The Diamond Age”. Both mixed far-out speculative fiction with some interesting and colorful characters.
This book, however, doesn’t rank up there with his best. The characters are all dull and two-dimensional. There’s nothing mind-blowing about the speculative fiction here, it entirely lacks the outrageous quality that made his best novels pop, frankly half of it reads as a robotics or physics primer. Frankly, I was bored reading the book. Which is not a good thing. Especially when I can go back and re-read “Snow Crash” or “The Diamond Age” even today and be fascinated and entertained.
If Neal ever writes a good book again, I will read it. But this is the last time I’m going to buy a book just because his name is on it. Bored is not what I want to feel when reading a book!
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tl;dr 
Funny, I read it and it was all about orbital mechanics.
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It looked to me like Stevenson had taken a few glider lessons while writing the book and was stoked with his new hobby. It is a pretty standard aeronautical term for the tail surfaces.
He also worked for a space startup and was so psyched by it that he included over 250 pages of orbital mechanics references.
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Damnit, that sounded just plausible enough I had to go look.
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Prof. Lewis is absolutely on the mark with this review: particularly the last third of the novel gives us caricatures, not characters: the most interesting character in that section, Kath Two, goes into what is essentially a coma during the action, and is little more than a ghost for the rest of the novel. I too found there to be far too much about orbital mechanics (even for me, a serious fan of hard SF). One point I haven’t seen noted in any of the reviews is how badly Stephenson gets some of the science wrong: historical linguistics is one of the best developed fields in linguistics, and it is completely implausible that two populations separated for 5000 years would still be speaking anything remotely mutually intelligible. Something like 5-8K years is a conventional date for the latest splits from Indo-European: Hindi, Irish, Greek, Persian, Russian, and English all developed from a common ancestor in something like that time frame. I realize it’s convenient for the narrative for the resulting populations to be able to understand each other pretty much, but it’s not what the science tells us. Linguistic drift, like genetic drift, is a fact, and even the Diggers would not be speaking anything like our English.
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He actually explains it, at least partially. He states the the space dudes specifically speak a non-english language that is rooted in English and Russian. However, all the space people all know modern day English because that is a language they specifically learn so that they can watch old video footage of their ancestors and understand WTF is happening. Presumably, the cave dudes also kept English around if not as a primary language than like Catholics keeping around Latin.
People jumping on the science are grasping at straws. The genetics he hand waves away almost instantly and says something along the lines of “all this stuff was sci-fi a couple of years ago” in a book set in the future. That is author speak for, “fuck off while I write a plot and take a couple of liberties”. The orbital mechanics are all solid enough I couldn’t see anything wrong and I think I have played enough Kerbal Space Program to consider myself an expert. The only things that really stuck out for me was Earth losing its water (though maybe there is a mechnism I don’t know about), and some skepticism that the cave dudes could have not become crispy critters stuck between a very hot surface and a very hot underground.
Either way, poking a hole in the science of a sci-fi novel is just petty. Nearly all sci-fi has holes. Some try and fill the holes better than others, and this one did vastly more hole filling than most. Get over
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I pretty much agree with the review. It is a good piece of work, though a bit disappointing because it is coming from Stephenson.
One thing I will add is that I thought the destruction of Earth and the behavior of humanity up to the end was fucking awesome. It was so nice to read a sci-fi book where humanity faces its destruction with a little dignity. The really boringly common trope is that the second the end is announced humans just go bat shit and start killing each other. I really like that humanity more or less faced the end with dignity, did the best the could, and made whatever sacrifices they could to see humanity further on. I personally found the entire end of the world scene to also be wonderfully gut wrenching.
I think the thing that disappointed me the absolute most about Seveneves is the fact that as soon as the world ended, humanity went from noble folks facing the end with dignity to shit flinging apes intent on self destruction. I really could have done with a novel that didn’t have to have the last few humans trying to kill each other and was disappointed when it took that traditional turn. The plot wouldn’t of even had to of changed much. You could have gotten to seven eves bit without the humans murdering each other; space was doing a fine job of it without their help.
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I am afraid that, with the pack of chimps we pretty much still are, not turning into shit-flinging apes intent of self destruction would be rather implausible…
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That is the boringly common trope that is in vogue these days. I wonder how many more stories of adversity are going to be ruined by insisting humans need to start killing each other even when it makes absolutely no god damn sense. Most humans I know can refrain from murder on a good day, and tend to get even more cooperative when they are in danger.
Human social systems, especially ones as small as in Seveneves, and with such a united common purpose are actually pretty strong. We really don’t like murdering people we know, especially when we feel united with them. The idea that some of the world’s best and brightest would break up right at the height of crisis, when all hands were needed, and the death of literally every single human not in space is still fresh was just goofy and flew in the face of the rest of the novel.
Sure, give us time and we develop factions and fissure, but seriously, Earth just got nuked, a crisis is incoming, and that is when everyone decides the best course of action is to divide the hilariously small and limited resources they have? Further, they divide so thoroughly that they stop talking to each other and are so set on their course that they will literally die of very slow starvation rather than chat with the other side?
I can be cynical about human nature, but I think we are getting a bit ridiculous with the cynicism. I liked Seveneves, but that split was stupid and forced. If they had come to that split after years of factionalism and infighting, I could have maybe bought it. That, and people should have defected the second they realized that starvation sucks. That split was, in my mind, easily the worst part of that book, which was sad, because I really enjoyed everything right up to that moment.
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It did point out quite handily with Ma’am Preznit exactly how authoritarians are swayed by venal sociopathic shitheads in search of power though. Overall I was disappointed with it too, mind. Should have been a trilogy like Quicksilver.
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