Author here - amazing how this old post comes back around! I know this book is a bit divisive with the big time jump, but you can't argue with the opening line.
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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 about 2-3 times the m³ of the ISS with each launch (assuming a wet-workshop design for he upper stage where the empty fuel tanks are prepared to be made habitable).
assuming an "ISS" can host 10 people that means for 20k people in orbit you need 50 boosters launch 20 times each for a total of 1k launches. This is a very small amount for a larger country like the US on a war economy considering that the upper stages would be the somewhat easier to construct parts.
I would assume that basically every industralized country on earth put up at least as many.
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 lots of metal, but little else. The also had a set energy budget, there was no new nuclear power devices to be had, and they couldn't manufacture new solar cells - these would degrade over time.
- the diggers would be toast from heat. If the earth heated up as much and for as long as stated, they'd fry. If they dug deeper the earth gets hotter, if they are too close to the surface its gets hotter. Over time the surface heat would penetrate further and further in. There would be no place from them vent waste heat.
- the pingers would go first. The deep ocean environment allows no mistakes. Even minor failures would cascade into major ones.
I could get past their survival (if they didn't there would be no more story!) but the level of technological development really strained my imagination. I mean, are we supposed to witness a space-faring civilization that can hoist a fucking city block on carbon fibers (or whatever) and move it up to space and then back down on Earth, while simultaneously:
- It has no Cold War era level technology to build a dozen spy satellites to survey every square meter of the earth, with which most of the Part 3 plot would simply not happen;
- It cannot build a simple propeller plane, so the pilot has to instead strip naked (I think - it's been a while since I read it) and wear some kind of scifi haptic feedback suit that will tell you how the wind is blowing so that you can steer your unpowered glider in the correct direction.
Honestly the second point reads like the author's sexual fantasy leaking into the story.
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 you have 85% capacity after 15 years. So we are talking decades for cells once they have been manufactured here. Cells not in the sun would last forever so they do not degrade in storage.
In the case of the diggers I have not done the math on thermal propagation through bedrock but It would all depend on when the people in orbit start building a sunshade at L1.
the pingers are not in the deep ocean. They are whatever depth the water is below 30°. Some considerations of diving change if you cannot or not plan to surface - ever. We are talking open diving bell environments here and heh - topmarines or ü-boats :)
They have a very easy source of energy in the gradient between the very hot atmosphere and the cooler ocean water. no need for nukes for power. you distill oxygen as a byproduct of that snorkeling process. main issue would be metals.
> there is a source of volatiles "close" by - earth
The spacers weren't near earth, they were out at the (former) moon's orbit. Getting to and from Earth or anywhere not near moon's orbit would require considerable propellent. This is even assuming that the thrusters continue to work - they only have so many parts.
The book makes reference to hundreds if not a 1000 years before the spacers really started to develop things again - well past the base case for solar cells.
For the diggers, the sunshade would have been way after and even if in place would have provided no help as all the energy of consequence was coming from the bolides burning up in atmosphere and hitting ground. This worst of the hard rain lasted for at least a few hundred years in the book, although the OP analysis suggests maybe the peak hard rain may have been shorter.
For the pingers, another big issue would be corrosion. I imagine the ocean would eat away at most of their stuff long before they could develop the capacity to make more.
They only had a chance in space because they happened to have that iron asteroid in orbit to hide behind. I don’t think they could have fit a huge number of crafts or many bigger ones behind it.
I feel like all the folks (including myself) who really enjoyed the book believed that the "Seveneves" was an intentional palindrome, and the two distinct parts of the books were intentionally mirrors/foils of each other. Without that assumption, I can see how the second part of the book would feel arbitrary.
Maybe I'm not a reliable-enough reader, but I didn't particularly see a palindromic effect in the last part of the book.
(Which to me still feels like the last third - to me, the book feels like the book has three sections: the setup, the survival, and the aftermath. I haven't read it in long enough to see if it's actually split that way in any sort of specific "Part 1, Part 2, Part 3" way.)
I guess because it's the it's the "seven eves" that are the big bolides the moon breaks into, and the "seven eves" of the new species of humanity in the second part.
The third part is a complete change in tone, but it is actually necessary for the entire book because without it the ending would be implied to be extraordinary bleak.
That's exactly what ruined it for me. The few apparent survivors of the human race are huddled in a tin can, running out of resources - fade to black - and suddenly, by divine providence and author fiat, everything is fine. It kills the suspension of disbelief.
... and comes accross as a deus ex machina transition.
More authors should be brave and have their stories end bleakly.
Great examples that come to mind would be 'Death's End', 'Echopraxia' (to a lesser extent also the prior 'Blindsight'), 'Consider Phlebas', just to name a few.
The last part is not as frantic as the first one, for good reasons. Nevertheless there are a lot of huge orbital machines and political plots that keep it going. Maybe there is some unbalance of tension between the two parts but I enjoyed the last one too.
Unfortunately the political plot is “Hillary Clinton fails to engage with reality and it falls to genius billionaire Elon Musk and a self-insert modelled on Neil deGrasse Tyson and a self-insert to save the day.” which has, and I think this is an understatement, aged extremely badly.
Uncharitable, yes, but bluntly, he’s got form. Look at Dodge in Reamde.
And I dunno about age improving it. Niven and Pournelle’s politics just looks kind of ridiculous now, even if you don’t know exactly who they had a bee in their bonnet about.
> and a self-insert modelled on Neil deGrasse Tyson
I don't think that's horribly unrealistic, is it? He's pretty much a scientist the media picked to represent the topic, like Dr. Fauci in real life. They could have picked a coronavirologist, but they didn't.
Well, I have to disagree regarding Seveneves. I was always a Stephenson fan, until I tried to read that book. Gave up in part three. It also left a sour taste, which resulted in me no longer caring about further books from him.
Yeah, it’s where I stopped as well. Although honestly I should have stopped when it became clear the Baroque cycle was just going to be him talking about stuff he found interesting with no coherent narrative.
I had Quicksilver as audiobook on a mp3 player during my 2 month trip through south america in 2006. Found the history lessons kind of interesting, but never managed to finish the book despite having a lot of time on my hands. Its just too fucking long winded without a real narrative. Apparently it was more interesting to sit still in a bus driving 48 hours through Peru, then to listen to this long-winded never-ending story...
There's a recent (2022) game called Ixion with an exploding moon premise. I initially saw it promo'd during a Steam sale, didn't buy it based on some very critical reviews regarding gameplay, and then forgot about it until seeing it mentioned in the 1d6chan Grimdark article.
I spoiled as much as I could short of playing the game, and then skipped through a full play-through on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvPyoPRgrFQ is a good synopsis (full game spoilers). The main writer did an AMA on Reddit with some questions answered, but also made it clear that some things were simply unfinished, or just left up to interpretation.
Seveneves is my favourite book, it’s excellent and, unlike most people, not only do I like the last third it’s actually my favourite part. The world building, the reimagining, the what-if is incredible to me.
If you don’t like the last third of Seveneves and haven’t read Anathem then you’ll struggle with the first 150 pages of that book. It’s like Seveneves flipped, starts mega slow and turns into an action fantasy book.
I enjoyed it but I never understood why the seven races didn’t interbreed. That made a lot of far future stuff less enjoyable to me. Even Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred. Did the genetic modifications to each race make them completely incompatible?
Generally I'm a huge Stephenson fan (I own all of his major works in first editions), but I hated Seveneves. The third part is the only bit I can claim to have really enjoyed.
That said, I loved Anathem, so perhaps something of your theory tracks :)
I'm not the person you're asking, but my answers would be "not really" and "no".
When or if to give up on a book is a personal decision. Personally I try to allow an author 20% of the page count if the book is well written, less if it isn't. I wish I'd applied that rule to Seveneves, but I didn't because it had been so heavily recommended. By the time I'd finished it I actually felt angry for having my time wasted.
My opinion of Stephenson is that he is smart guy and an able writer (particularly of non fiction), but also that he is an undisciplined writer.
I think the problems started with Cryptonomicon. The book is great, but it’s very apparent the final act of the book is just missing. He clearly ran out of time and just slapped something together and it was hugely well received (and with good reason, there’s lots to like). But the success of a book that frankly got away from him made him near untouchable. So yeah, undisciplined is what happens next.
The last part is so different from the rest, that it may as well be an unauthorised sequel written by a different author with a different personality, because they didn't like how the previous bits ended.
In my experience, how you like reading a book is hugely influenced by your state of mind and situation when you read it. You might love a book this month but have found it boring six months ago. It's just something you need to bear in mind (I loved Seveneves).
Honestly hated Seveneves, it marked the point where I stopped reading Stephenson. With that said, I agree the final part of the book is the most interesting by far.
Personally I thought Seveneves was pretty good ... the most recent Neal Stephenson novel I read was "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O." and I loved it. As with Snowcrash, it'd make an awesome movie (if done right)!
The last third is actually not that bad ... if you just accept that it's more or less a separate novel loosely set in the same universe. But about 5000 years later. The first two parts are pretty awesome. I enjoy the last bit as well. It gets better on re-reading.
I don’t think it was very good, it probably because it was too short. It’s basically a novella that severed as a kind of extended epilogue. It would have been better as a fully extended book two with space to develop all the characters and themes.
I read snow crash, loved the first half, the end was really weird to me.
I get the sense that Stephenson is really good at starting a novel, setting the scene and building a world that's ripe for some great storytelling. But from my limited experience the end is a total cascade of craziness that leaves the reader frustrated.
Interesting; this is reminiscent of the TV show "Space: 1999" about the Moon being blasted out of orbit and across the galaxy. While the premise was ridiculous, the show's first season was very quirky and quite enjoyable and explored some interesting themes. The second season, not so much.
I also enjoyed Space: 1999; seen as a kid when it was first aired then watched again years later. Yes, it lost a lot in the 2nd season, but the 1st was really good with bleak and less cheesy plots compared to other series. Of course one must ignore science and suspend their belief to a zeppelin to watch it, still it was really enjoyable. One of the old series, along with UFO (by the same creators) of which I'd love to see a modern reboot.
I have to disagree about a modern reboot (of Space: 1999; I haven't seen UFO). The entire premise is just so ridiculous that I don't see how to reboot it at all. It's fun to watch as a product of the 1970s, and knowing that standards for realism were much, much lower back then, but in the 2020s, a show with such bad science, I think won't fly, especially after we've seen The Expanse. Campy stuff from the 1970s is fine, because the 70s were famous for campy sci-fi (and everything else), but not now.
Marvel is pretty soft scifi even when it doesn't have actual magic, so it's probably fine.
Just change it from "all the nukes exploded and pushed the moon into interstellar space" to "experimental warp drive exploded on launch pad", and you're set.
Hmm… just realised, the basic setup of Space 1999 is kinda what happened with Stargate Universe; I'd say the latter's problem was aping BSG with grit and drama, as there was plenty of room for silly fun scifi in all three Stargate series.
> Possible fragmentation of bodies – in this case one of the masses breaks into 2 equally-sized pieces, which fly off into different directions.
This is the stuff I have a huge question mark about in my head. If two pieces that move very slowly relative to another collide and fragment, why should the pieces fly of in arbitrary different directions and not continue on their trajectory?
So, gravitational pull increases the velocity of bodies relative to another. That's already an exchange of energy, the piece ahead gets slowed down, the piece behind will speed up. Then they collide, exchanging the energy difference again, speeding up the piece ahead and slowing down the one behind. The relative speeds will be tiny initially, because the distances are small, so fragmentation is unlikely. Where does that process run off?
The impact is not necessarily very slow but even so the exact geometries of the impact area with respect to center of masses etc. would change the trajectories in different ways. Since these would be effectively random, the resulting trajectory changes would also be random: some would continue is near the same stable orbital trajectory, some out into space, and some in a decaying orbit that eventually hits earth.
I really couldn’t enjoy this book because the biotech stuff was so stupid… Stephenson is usually spot on with his hard scifi, but in this case I think he trusted some friends to advise him, and they didn’t know as much biology as he thought they did.
I recall when the book originally came out a lot of people said the scenario was implausible, so I have questions:
* If you’ve only simulated 1000 pieces, what is the likelihood they just don’t hit each other? (Space is pretty big.)
* How big does a chunk have to be to not burn up on hitting the atmosphere? (This energy would obviously go somewhere, just not necessarily into impact.)
As explained in the book, it was simply “The Premise.” Like a lot of my favorite sci-fi, it tried to run through a speculative scenario as faithfully as it can to science, engineering and sociology. But was there any reason for it to happen in the first place? No. Stephenson explicitly says so and doesn’t bother cooking up some contrived reason. He wrote the book because the premise was entertaining to him.
Yeah I get that. And I also understand that, given their predicament, the characters in the story have little time or opportunity to consider the matter for us.
What annoyed me was that the "premise" is (a) extraordinarily unlikely and (b) its causation doesn't form any part of the plot. Building a hard SF work on such a foundation is a big ask of the reader - although I'm sure it was entertaining for the writer. Thats my problem with the book.
If you take it as given that the moon is going to explode, it's guaranteed to happen without warning, for the simple reason that we do not know of anything that might cause that to happen, so even if warning signs were present, we wouldn't understand them.
We do actually have a theory of someething that might cause it to happen; primordial black holes zipping through space, randomly going through the moon (and continuing their way as if nothing happened, because that's how physics would work out). However, it's only a theory and depends on in-flux research on early universe cosmology — and the black hole could equally randomly zip through Earth rather than the moon. Or pass in the space between. Or pass between Earth and the sun. Or…
The book AFAIR does point out it "might have been a primordial black hole but they don't know", which matches what the situation would be IRL.
Shameless plug - I've become a better engineer since then, and if you'd like to work with me check out this role I'm hiring for:
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