Seveneves

Locations
Call Number: Science Fiction / Stephenson, Neal, Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Stephenson, Neal
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Stephenson, Neal	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Stephenson, Neal	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Stephenson, Neal	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Stephenson, Neal	4-week checkout	Due 05-05-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Stephenson, Neal	4-week checkout	Due 05-04-2024

Illustrations also on lining pages.
Subtitle from dust jacket.
Five thousand years later after a catastrophic event rendered the Earth a ticking time bomb, the progeny of a handful of outer space explorers--seven distinct races now three billion strong--embark on yet another audacious journey: to return to Earth.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
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Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Enjoyed this submitted by Judeyblu on August 18, 2015, 9:02pm Interesting and gripping new way to look at human nature.
The beginning of the book draws you towards a climactic scene: you know something is coming and you can't tear yourself away.
The writing is powerful.

Long but engaging submitted by thatssuper1 on August 27, 2015, 9:49pm This book is the first Stephenson I have read and I will definitely be going back and reading his other books. Loved this.

Takes an idea and runs with it wonderfully submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on July 21, 2018, 10:20am Stephenson's great strength is finding a wild idea and taking it to it's scientific limits. In this book, the idea is that the moon cracks to pieces and eventually rains down on the Earth, and humans had better get some portion of themselves up into space if they want to survive as a species. 5000 years later, who and what is around is really quite unexpected.

The first 2/3rds of the book held my interest quite well. It was scientific and technical, with massive descriptive dumps, as is Stephenson's penchant. But there was enough storyline and just enough character-driven narrative to hold my interest well. That last bit, though, when the survivors/descendents are heading back to Earth? That felt to me like Stephenson was trying to write a character-driven narrative story, and that he just couldn't pull it off. The engineer/ physicist tried to write a story that was about sociology/ psychology, and he couldn't do it in a sufficiently believable way for me.

I still liked the book, because his ideas are fascinating and worth the read. But it is long and you have to like his style, and the ending didn't hold for me.

great world building submitted by atpierce on July 25, 2018, 7:00pm Stephenson excels at world building. Seemed a bit rushed at the end to wrap it all up.

Amazing book submitted by noahjb1309 on August 18, 2019, 10:10pm This book was incredible- lots of detail.

a little pretentious, a lot of action, a leap of imagination submitted by FordAlpha on August 26, 2023, 11:06pm This book was recommended to me by friends when I confessed to having read "Moby-Dick" twice because I enjoyed the digression chapters so much. Neal Stephenson certainly has a bit of Melville in him. When I asked my brother -- a genuine astronautical engineer specializing in orbital mechanics -- whether he'd read the book, he said that he found it pretentious and over-written. I can't disagree with that assessment. Still, with all the pretension and multiplication of words, I enjoyed reading Seveneves. There's plenty of action stirred up with the lengthy technical flights of fancy, and some of the characters are engaging. I'd heard before reading the book that it featured characters transparently modeled on Neil deGrasse Tyson, Elon Musk, and others. I wasn't expecting one modeled on Malala Yousafzai, and I very much disliked what Stephenson did with that character. Further, the third act (5000 years after the world-ending event) fell flat for me, with characters that just weren't engaging and a strained quality to the technical speculation. Where my brother might have objected to Stephenson's orbital mechanics, I (a biologist) objected to his genetics. All that being said, I do highly recommend Seveneves for readers who enjoy hard sci-fi and/or epochal narratives.