When “Star Wars Episode 1” arrived in the cinemas many fans were shocked and some came up with a conspiracy theory in which George Lucas had been kidnapped and replaced by an imposter.
When I look at Neal Stephenson’s books after “Anathem” I fear a similar conspiracy is taking place here.
I didn’t like “Reamde” and I don’t like “Seveneves”.
The setup of “Seveneves” isn’t overly exciting. One day the moon breaks apart into seven pieces and scientist predict that within two years it will split into many more small pieces that will produce a “hard rain”, which in turn will burn Earth and extinguish all life on it.
Similar scenarios have been used and reused for movies with beautifully rendered catastrophes.
But this is a book by Neal Stephenson and I believed in him doing something special with this. And he probably does. The book consists of three parts. In the first part the world prepares for the catastrophe by sending selected people to the ISS and creating a “Cloud Ark” with the ISS at its center. The second part shows the catastrophe and the third part takes place 5000 years afterwards.
I gave up at the start of the second part which is after 1/3 of the book. The problem is that the story is broken into little chunks by overly detailed descriptions of all sorts. It seems like Stephenson is trying to make sure some scientists will be inspired to actually build the things he describes. With that those descriptions look like small technically detailed essays.
The book is likely a contribution to his Project Hieroglyph. The project wants to bring together big ideas, real science and great stories.
The big idea in Seveneves is how humanity will deal with a catastrophe destroying all life on Earth. I’m convinced that Stephenson did a detailed research on all the topics he talks about in his essay-like descriptions.
The last one — great stories — is where the book is sorely lacking. Where is the engaging, exciting storytelling from “Diamond Age”, “Snow Crash” and the “Baroque Cycle”?
Is this an imposter at work? So sad. I really miss the old Neal Stephenson.