Neal Stephenson
William Morrow Publishing
May 19, 2015
The world looks to the skies, stunned, as the moon explodes. Now there’s a race to save humanity–or at least, some of it.
Seveneves follows the story of people involved in creating a modular space station to orbit the Earth after a cataclysm causes the moon to break into pieces. The pieces will rain down from the sky and extinguish all life on Earth, so scientists and politicians put together lists of people of various specialties to create a modular ark to wait out the Earth’s destruction until it’s safe to re-populate.
Predictably, nothing quite goes to plan. Disasters happen, people go crazy, and it’s a minor miracle that humanity survives at all. The last third of the book launches forward by generations to the re-population of Earth. The shift from near present to far future is a bit jarring, and the two sections read like two completely different books. Both are good, but they don’t quite feel like the same book.
All of Stephenson’s books are excellent reads, but I don’t think it’ll be this year’s Hugo.
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.