Hacker News Reader

Comment by surprisetalk | Hacker News Reader

Link to the simulation code: https://github.com/jasmcole/Blog

And if you haven't read Seveneves yet, it's definitely a Neal Stephenson book and will not disappoint.

I agree with the first two thirds of what you've said, but not the last third - which parallels my feelings about the book.

The third part of the book felt like it was meant to be a full-length sequel to Seveneves, but was cut down to a novella-length post-script.

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.

I didn't even notice that the name (let alone the novel) was a palindrome, that makes a lot more sense.

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.

It might age like fine wine once the current political situation passes. The self insert part is also very uncharitable.

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.

I liked the part where one of the tech CEOs ate a bit of radioactive nickel or whatever and diarrhead to death.

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 5000 years! That's 2.5 Jesus's of time and distance.

... 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.

Well, it's two Neal Stevenson books wedged together. You might prefer on half over the other.

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com