Any novel that spans over five thousand years if going to have to leave a lot out. Whether or not you enjoy Seveneves will depend on whether you agree with the author’s choices of what gets to stay in the book and what gets jettisoned. For me I thought that the book might have worked better as a trilogy rather than a single over-long book with a gaping five-thousand year hole in the middle, but your mileage may vary. Spoilers ahead…
Seveneves is a book in two distinct halves. The first half is a hard sci-fi disaster tale following the crew of the International Space Station (among many, many others) when they become the focus of efforts to save the human race after the mysterious explosion of the Moon. This part of the book was quite entertaining and offered up plenty of technical details for those who like that sort of thing. However, I found it strangely unemotional. The author deliberately shows us only those saved from the apocalypse with the vast bulk of the human race condemned to die off camera. Seven billion people seem quite content to work around the clock to save a few thousand and the masses are strangely accepting of their fate. This seemed unrealistic.
The science of the “Hard Rain” has been dissected elsewhere. Suffice to say that it is a fudge. The explosion of the Moon as described at the start of the book would not lead to the destruction of the Earth. The fragments would simply re-combine, drawn back together by their mutual gravity. But you kind of have to go along with it otherwise the whole premise of the book doesn’t work.
The second half of the book is distinctly odd. After the entire human race has been whittled down to eight individuals (all female but only seven of them fertile—the Seven Eves of the title) we then leap forward five thousand years to a time when a world-circling civilisation has been built in orbit and the Earth is habitable once more. For me, this seemed to skip over the interesting bit—how to build a civilisation. Humanity has been given a second chance, an opportunity to do things right with the benefit of hindsight and a good technical library. What choices would they make differently? I felt that a trilogy structure, much like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, would have worked better here.
As it is, the civilisation that the author creates is quite strange. They are technologically advanced, but seem to be mired in the past. Each of the Seven Eves genetically modified their offspring leading to seven distinct races. And there seems to have been very little inter-racial breeding over the millennia (although it is hinted at and so must be biologically possible). Bizarrely in this day and age, the author says that individuals’ personalities, their preferences in friends and lovers, their choice of intellectual pursuits are largely controlled by their race. Teklans are all doughty warriors. Julians are natural politicians and Aidans are still fighting against five-thousand year old slights to their ancestor. I found this to be odd, like an old book from the fifties where races are little more than stereotypes.
In five thousand years, through such drastic changes in the human experience, I doubted that Moirans would still name their children after historical details of their long dead ancestor. It would be like a modern European naming their kid Hammurabi because much of modern civilisation grew from the Indus Valley many thousand years ago.
There’s not much story in the second half either. There is a cold war between the “Red” and “Blue” sides of humanity which again seems to exist only because five thousand years ago, their respective Eves didn’t get along. (Aren’t these archaic details swamped by more recent economic/technical/social factors?) More “races” are found on Earth, emerging from five thousand year old bunkers and deep-sea habitats and there is a brief conflict at a flashpoint between Red and Blue territory but this all seemed a bit petty and parochial set against the massive canvas that this book had given itself.
Ultimately, this is a very ambitious book that falls short of its goals. There are quibbles to be had with the technical details in the first half. (Why launch arks into space with all the expense and technical difficulties when it is revealed later that much less-prepared humans can ride out the hard rain in underground bunkers?) And the odd stylistic choices in the second half seem to be hinting at some allegorical meaning which is never clearly realised. It’s an interesting read, but not the author’s best work.
Seveneves is a book in two distinct halves. The first half is a hard sci-fi disaster tale following the crew of the International Space Station (among many, many others) when they become the focus of efforts to save the human race after the mysterious explosion of the Moon. This part of the book was quite entertaining and offered up plenty of technical details for those who like that sort of thing. However, I found it strangely unemotional. The author deliberately shows us only those saved from the apocalypse with the vast bulk of the human race condemned to die off camera. Seven billion people seem quite content to work around the clock to save a few thousand and the masses are strangely accepting of their fate. This seemed unrealistic.
The science of the “Hard Rain” has been dissected elsewhere. Suffice to say that it is a fudge. The explosion of the Moon as described at the start of the book would not lead to the destruction of the Earth. The fragments would simply re-combine, drawn back together by their mutual gravity. But you kind of have to go along with it otherwise the whole premise of the book doesn’t work.
The second half of the book is distinctly odd. After the entire human race has been whittled down to eight individuals (all female but only seven of them fertile—the Seven Eves of the title) we then leap forward five thousand years to a time when a world-circling civilisation has been built in orbit and the Earth is habitable once more. For me, this seemed to skip over the interesting bit—how to build a civilisation. Humanity has been given a second chance, an opportunity to do things right with the benefit of hindsight and a good technical library. What choices would they make differently? I felt that a trilogy structure, much like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, would have worked better here.
As it is, the civilisation that the author creates is quite strange. They are technologically advanced, but seem to be mired in the past. Each of the Seven Eves genetically modified their offspring leading to seven distinct races. And there seems to have been very little inter-racial breeding over the millennia (although it is hinted at and so must be biologically possible). Bizarrely in this day and age, the author says that individuals’ personalities, their preferences in friends and lovers, their choice of intellectual pursuits are largely controlled by their race. Teklans are all doughty warriors. Julians are natural politicians and Aidans are still fighting against five-thousand year old slights to their ancestor. I found this to be odd, like an old book from the fifties where races are little more than stereotypes.
In five thousand years, through such drastic changes in the human experience, I doubted that Moirans would still name their children after historical details of their long dead ancestor. It would be like a modern European naming their kid Hammurabi because much of modern civilisation grew from the Indus Valley many thousand years ago.
There’s not much story in the second half either. There is a cold war between the “Red” and “Blue” sides of humanity which again seems to exist only because five thousand years ago, their respective Eves didn’t get along. (Aren’t these archaic details swamped by more recent economic/technical/social factors?) More “races” are found on Earth, emerging from five thousand year old bunkers and deep-sea habitats and there is a brief conflict at a flashpoint between Red and Blue territory but this all seemed a bit petty and parochial set against the massive canvas that this book had given itself.
Ultimately, this is a very ambitious book that falls short of its goals. There are quibbles to be had with the technical details in the first half. (Why launch arks into space with all the expense and technical difficulties when it is revealed later that much less-prepared humans can ride out the hard rain in underground bunkers?) And the odd stylistic choices in the second half seem to be hinting at some allegorical meaning which is never clearly realised. It’s an interesting read, but not the author’s best work.