skybridge

daisywolf.bsky.social · @daisywolf.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Seveneves 2/10

Purest garbage. I'd give zero stars if possible. I rarely write long reviews, but here goes.
I've enjoyed Stephenson's work in the past, but his books always have some sort of compensation for intellectual insecurity in them - needlessly complicated crap, included with the sole intent to make the reader think "Holy shit! this Neal Stephenson guy is, like, really really ridiculously smart!!". Snow Crash went a notch too deep with the Sumerian language stuff. Cryptonomicon has working Perl Scripts in the back. Seveneves takes this sort of compensating to new heights. In-depth descriptions of orbital mechanics get broken out at every possible opportunity. It's like, enough man, we get it! You did a some research into how things work in space, and you're really proud of yourself for it. Hidden in the incessant beating to death of orbital mechanics, and assorted technical gobbledygook, are some interesting ideas. Most of the cool stuff surfaces in the 3rd Part of the book . The Thor's hammer concept is totally bananas. The problem with the technical nonsense is that the level of realism is not consistent. We get this huge attention to detail on the orbital mechanics front, but then we're supposed to believe that some humans survived the Hard Rain on submarines, and over the course of only 5000 years evolved into a race of aqua-men. Throw in some really hokey moments, like the guy staring through his wedding ring, up the hatch of his submarine toward the burning sky overhead, and your eyes are simple going to roll past their physical limits. Did I mention that there's some barely veiled social commentary? Well... there is, and it can basically be boiled down to this:
- Neil Degrasse Tyson, and people like him, are the best!
- Elon Musk sorts are going to save humanity. But they're intellectually threatening to Stephenson, so they get to die painfully by bleeding out of their asses (not joking).
- Politicians (Hilary Clinton analogs in this case) are - wait for it - evil, manipulative, and totally self interested.
And there you have it. If you absolutely have to read this book, I'd recommend lightly skimming the first two parts. The third part felt shorter, but not nearly as crap as the first two.

#book

Published 2026-09-20 17:38 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere