Neal Stephenson is, I think it's fair to say, one of the most frustratingly variable authors working today. At his best he produces works of the quality of Cryptonomicon, Anathem and Snow Crash. At his worst he gets so excited by an idea that he seems to forget to build a plot around it and, if you're feeling uncharitable, could even be said to fall into author tract territory.
The final third of the book, which moves from hard SF to more speculative themes, just adds to the structural problems. I found many of the speculations to be highly questionable, but that's subjective. Less subjective is the assertion that it's simply too short for the ground that needs to be covered and just kind of peters out, as if Stephenson had lost interest by that point. It probably could have been improved by either telling the story in anachronic order or putting the third part into a sequel where it would have more space to breath.
In summary then a flawed but interesting book that will, I think, give people much to argue about (I'm very interested to see what others think of it). I doubt it will win Stephenson any new fans but old ones will probably be happy.
Hard SF, shame about the plot
Neal Stephenson is, I think it's fair to say, one of the most frustratingly variable authors working today. At his best he produces works of the quality of Cryptonomicon, Anathem and Snow Crash. At his worst he gets so excited by an idea that he seems to forget to build a plot around it and, if you're feeling uncharitable, could even be said to fall into author tract territory.
Unfortunatley Seveneves (IMO as this is a review) tends more towards the latter. It's not that it's a bad book exactly, but it could be so much better. As it's been out less than a week at time of writing I'm going to try to avoid anything even vaguely spoilerish so can't discuss the problems in detail but as the title of this review hints, it's very hard SF - specifically Stephenson is very keen to share what he's learnt about orbital mechanics (think the orbital ascent section in Anathem expanded to over 500 pages) - but the plot leaves a lot to be desired. Almost every cliché of humans trapped in space is here. The central conflict is one that anyone familiar with this SF sub-genre will see coming a mile off and, rather than attempt to deconstruct or subvert the trope as he often does, Stephenson runs with it in such a predictable manner that huge chunks of the central section of the book can be skimmed or skipped altogether without missing much. It's made worse that one of the central characters speculates about this happening but, when the event which will obviously cause it occurs, does absolutely nothing when he has the chance, almost to the point of making it an idiot plot.
The final third of the book, which moves from hard SF to more speculative themes, just adds to the structural problems. I found many of the speculations to be highly questionable, but that's subjective. Less subjective is the assertion that it's simply too short for the ground that needs to be covered and just kind of peters out, as if Stephenson had lost interest by that point. It probably could have been improved by either telling the story in anachronic order or putting the third part into a sequel where it would have more space to breath.
In summary then a flawed but interesting book that will, I think, give people much to argue about (I'm very interested to see what others think of it). I doubt it will win Stephenson any new fans but old ones will probably be happy.