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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

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!

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.

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!

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

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.

Same, I enjoyed that book beginning to end.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Many asteroids are made of solid metal.

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

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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