I found Seveneves to be a grim commentary on how horrible humanity is, that even as the species is facing extinction we still get people literally and figuratively backstabbing each other for individual gain.
I find this a really cynical way to read Seveneves. As I said in my review, as I see it the book is about the way choices have consequences that ripple down the generations... and that includes those grim legacies you talk about, how the tensions and divisions among the seven Eves perpetuated through the generations. But it also includes much more beautiful legacies: Moiran reinvention, Ivyan dedication to history and logic and reason and self-questioning, Dinan heroism, Teklan discipline, Julian self-reflection, Camillan accommodation, Aidan guile and will to survive. The whole reseeding of the Earth narrative I found really beautiful and inspiring, even as it reawoke the spectres of Rufus and Cal and the complicated legacies they entailed.
the nuclear power was to melt the comet for thrust, but if so, that wasn't sufficiently explained in the book for me.
That seemed reasonably clear to me. The rocket principle- to move forward, you need to send equal and opposite amounts of mass backward. There were slower, safer methods that could have EVENTUALLY brought an icy asteroid to the Ark, but in order to get it there in time to be of use in saving the Ark from the Hard Rain, Probst felt he needed to use the fastest way possible, and that meant using the largest heat source possible to propel the largest amount of fuel as quickly as possible.
In general, as an engineer, I felt like Stephenson was consistently good at presenting the tradeoffs between engineering choices and showing why humanity would make inferior choices on the occasions when they did.
And I was unbothered by the lack of explanation for the Agent because it's completely besides the point. It doesn't matter one whit- the whole gambit is for Stephenson to make up a story about what would happen if the Moon did, for whatever reason, break up.
For me the big inexplicable plot hole is why JBF would try to go to space at great personal risk if there were a US undersea plan that she presumably also knew about.
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Date: 2015-09-30 03:13 am (UTC)I find this a really cynical way to read Seveneves. As I said in my review, as I see it the book is about the way choices have consequences that ripple down the generations... and that includes those grim legacies you talk about, how the tensions and divisions among the seven Eves perpetuated through the generations. But it also includes much more beautiful legacies: Moiran reinvention, Ivyan dedication to history and logic and reason and self-questioning, Dinan heroism, Teklan discipline, Julian self-reflection, Camillan accommodation, Aidan guile and will to survive. The whole reseeding of the Earth narrative I found really beautiful and inspiring, even as it reawoke the spectres of Rufus and Cal and the complicated legacies they entailed.
the nuclear power was to melt the comet for thrust, but if so, that wasn't sufficiently explained in the book for me.
That seemed reasonably clear to me. The rocket principle- to move forward, you need to send equal and opposite amounts of mass backward. There were slower, safer methods that could have EVENTUALLY brought an icy asteroid to the Ark, but in order to get it there in time to be of use in saving the Ark from the Hard Rain, Probst felt he needed to use the fastest way possible, and that meant using the largest heat source possible to propel the largest amount of fuel as quickly as possible.
In general, as an engineer, I felt like Stephenson was consistently good at presenting the tradeoffs between engineering choices and showing why humanity would make inferior choices on the occasions when they did.
And I was unbothered by the lack of explanation for the Agent because it's completely besides the point. It doesn't matter one whit- the whole gambit is for Stephenson to make up a story about what would happen if the Moon did, for whatever reason, break up.
For me the big inexplicable plot hole is why JBF would try to go to space at great personal risk if there were a US undersea plan that she presumably also knew about.