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Comment by simondotau | Hacker News Reader

In all seriousness, I don’t believe a collision with the moon is something we need to be concerned about.

Concerned about in a "this is going to kill us" sort of way, of course not.

Concerned about in a "it would suck to miss this scientific opportunity" sort of way though... We've gone to great expense to crash things into asteroids much farther away from earth so we can study the impacts... I have to imagine there are many scientists who would love to see a collision between the moon and a large asteroid through the right instruments.

Someone didn't read Neal Stephenson's book.

Unless what hits it is a miniature black hole or is made of solid metal, the moon should be fine. It gets hit by much bigger thing is on the regular - geologically speaking.

Seveneves was a fun book!

Many asteroids are made of solid metal.

But the moon has handled much bigger collisions without a single fatality!

This is my regular reminder to stop reading 2/3 of the way through the book. It will feel like a traditional, abrupt Stephenson ending, but you will save yourself hours of time and potentially blindness-inducing eye-rolling.

I don't know why everyone seems to hate the last 1/3 so much. I find it a very interesting, fresh take on things. I enjoy it every time.

The last third should have been a short epilogue or a full sequel. It's too much of a pivot in terms of tone and focus, and feels incongruous and mismatched with the first two sections (which are excellent). He clearly had a bunch of ideas that didn't fit into the main body of the work and grafted them on anyway; it wasn't bad, it just didn't fit.

The comparison would be Orson Scott Card writing Ender's Game to set up the universe of Speaker for the Dead, but instead making Speaker for the Dead a third of its size and calling it the last few chapters of Ender's Game. They should just be different works in the same setting.

For me I skipped the 4th third. Like I always do.

For me, it was the middle third I skipped. Seemed to drag forever.

You know it’s a great book when everyone seems to dislike it in a different way!

Same, I enjoyed that book beginning to end.

But you had to read past 2/3 to find out how the book got its title. The bit in the beginning about the moon breaking into 7 pieces was just a bit of subterfuge.

Man I have exactly the opposite reaction: the last third at least has some nifty high-concept worldbuilding even though it doesn't have nearly enough room to get really explored. The first two-thirds are an absolutely cringe-worthy example of "if only the idiot normies would shut up and let the engineers run everything" nerd supremacy at its very worst, including a painfully obvious Elon Musk stand-in character saving humanity, which was a bad idea in 2015 and has aged even more horribly since.

Likewise. I thought the last third was kind of fun science fiction. The first two thirds were a huge downer.

Huh, interesting. I never re-read it, but noped out of Termination Shock for the same reason.

Seveneves was mild, diluted nerd supremacy. Anathem, was absolute, unhinged nerd supremacy.

I loved them both.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Ita's version of the internet and the garbage data they have to contend with.

It wouldn't even make a top-100 craters-of-the-moon-by-size crater if it hit.

Which one specifically?

Mentioned in other comments, but to be explicit since the title is odd: "Seveneves"

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