Plastics have been around less than 200 years making do without plastic or low quality plastic as you would get from multiple rounds of recycling isn't that big of a problem. Two days had passed since she had eaten the last of Tavistock Prowse, so she was very hungry, but otherwise in good shape. I knew I was going to hate this novel around page 270 when Mr Stephenson, technocrat extraordinaire, decided to spend a page complaining about modern gender theory and "academic leftists" who were wasting time and energy. He writes, "Seveneves reminded me of all the things I love about science fiction". Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. Long enough to distract them from the real problems they were facing. The result is an astonishing portrait of the human future, a future only Neal Stephenson could have imagined. The story tells of the desperate efforts to preserve Homo sapiens in the wake of apocalyptic events on Earth after the unexplained disintegration of the Moon and the remaking of human society as a space-based civilization after a severe genetic bottleneck. An ad hoc committee of spacefaring nations establishes a project of immense scale: the International Space Station will serve as the hub around which will be constructed a Cloud Ark consisting of hundreds of "arklets," prefabricated "cans" rotating in pairs for artificial gravity. Following the establishment of the seven races, there is a period of weeding out the worst genetic errors: Correction was the name given to the phase that had begun after the first round of Gestations, when Eve Moira had fixed errors that had led to several nonviable infants. In such a scenario, I can't understand how racial purity would have been preserved, and certainly not how it would continue for 5000 years. Why are non-Western countries siding with China in the UN? cleft: [noun] a space or opening made by or as if by splitting : fissure. I guess Neal Stephenson is a legend for a reason! I'm looking around my office right now and I really can't find that many things made out of plastic that would lose their functionality if they were built out of something else. But Seveneves, an original epic to rival those languishes. The last third is pure unadulterated speculative fiction with damn fine worldbuilding and extrapolation from the first 2/3rds. The novel shifts from having a lot to do with orbital mechanics and the movements of bodies through space to being concerned with humanity's genetic legacy. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. the first contact between the Spacers, the Diggers and the Pingers. How to react to a students panic attack in an oral exam? I'm wondering how. Life is too short for lazy strawmen in fiction. I would've glady read a whole book about . By Douglas Wolk. . Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Why was the nose gear of Concorde located so far aft? One day some historian would piece the story together, comparing it with data logs to figure out who had slain whom in combat and which module had gone dark when. About 1 in every 1,700 babies is born with cleft palate in the United States. open the books and provide a current and accurate account of all stocks of water, food, and other staples, and how those numbers were changing over time. Given enough energy and the right equipment you can synthesize them from the elements. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. The Diggers had to maintain a strict population control during the Heavy Rain no more than a few hundred or so people alive at any time. Seveneves is a hard science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson published in 2015. Moira says she can make it so they can have kids that are clones with slight changes, why is it then, that she never decides to use the genetic material of any of their dead crew mates or even some of luisas? Authorities on Earth, including NASA, paint the moon's destruction with false sentiment and "cute" terms. One idea that I had was that NS could have just included one line that says that Moira developed some kind of genetic coding that ensured the babies would carry the genetic traits of the mother always. Its hard to punish people who are already starving to death in a confined space. Seveneves is a superhuman achievement, dense, eloquent, exhaustive, exhilarating, powerful, utterly readable, and ultimately uplifting. Reading the book now and have the same concerns. The world's leaders evacuate as many people and resources as possible to a swarm of "arklet" habitats called a "Cloud Ark" in orbit with the International Space Station (ISS), bolted onto an iron Arjuna asteroid called Amalthea, which provides some protection against Moon debris. Pingers who, incidently, bring a woman along on a potentially very dangerous first contact meeting as well, making it likely that their society also subverts this trope. Tropes used: Abnormal Ammo: The Spacers of 5,000 years in the future do not use guns. If each Eve and her offspring were physically separated, this might make sense. Since one of the Seven Eves was a Russian Cosmonaut, the Russian influence is quite apparent in The Spacers' language and culture. But look at the (later) attraction of Kathtwo and Beled, and imagine a world where frequent sexual reproduction and avoiding inbreeding were absolutely essential to the survival of the human species. All rights belong to authors and publishers.Information on this website is provided solely for induction purposes, so you can read books online for free without registration. Skin colour, for example, is determined by several genes. The habitats on the Great Chain keep rotating to simulate gravity. From a certain point of view, this was surprisingly good. The brain-trust is tasked by leaders to engineer a self-sustaining environment capable of maneuvering away from larger fragments, and withstanding 5,000 years in near-earth orbit until the planet is stable enough to be terraformed into supporting life. It turns out to be a plot point after the time skip. After scores of pages of this, my eyelids were succumbing to a powerful gravitational force. He and millions of others throughout the Americas witness the same chilling sight: a greater-than-moon-sized cloud which, after the dust settles, turns red. Only about half of the modules were still pressurized. Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the reiner gamma formation, near the moon's equator. compounds of carbon and hydrogen). During the battle, they had sealed the hatch. Most Arkies are selected with that in mind. Only nine people survive, and Dr. "Doob" Harris dies after a final "moon-walk." My conclusion is that this is a hard science fiction book from the astrophysics perspective (expertise of the author) but completely magical realism regarding genetics. Finally they opened the hatch and began to explore it one module at a time. When she talked to you, she watched you too carefully with those avid, penetrating eyes, as if she saw, or imagined she saw, too deeply. Noneincluding government/military leaders in vast subterranean holdoutsare expected to survive. There is no way they are going to sacrifice a pregnancy for the sake of one of the dead men when that is potentially going to put them behind the others. LibraryThing members' description Privacy Policy. It is not a stretch to think that they used the same technology to harvest things they needed (water, metals other than iron, certain naturally-occurring compounds, etc) from elsewhere in the Solar System. The healthy ones patched holes, repressurized modules, got the torus spinning again, and turned it into a sick bay, which filled up immediately. By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. The President's Science Adviser, Dr. Pete Starling, is as devastated as everyone else when informed that the Cloud Ark must be self-sustaining for 5,000 to 10,000 years. Reminder to self: no review posting until less than 30 days before release date. "Going epi" has a similar effect on Moirans that regeneration has on Time Lords. Do you have an in-universe explanation for how the races remained separate for thousands of years? The Swarm had always had a sort of quasi-divine status to some, who had perhaps read too much chaos theory too superficially and were prone to believing that its collective decisions, lying beyond human understanding, partook of the supernatural. You have 2 years to move, blow up, push away the moon. was a threat to no one. The *science* and world-building is awesome. It's eventually revealed that something akin to the Cold War has once more resurfaced between the Blue/Dinan and Red/Adan states. Seveneves was included on President Obama's Summer 2016 reading list. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. And now it all seemed a moot point anyway. Otherwise, this whole story, while great, makes absolutely no sense. and some of her inner circle. Above the spinning torus, where Moira was even now unpacking her genetics lab, Tekla was inspecting the arklets on the top level, learning which were whole, which were beyond repair, and which could be patched up for future occupancy. And few of the Arkies had adopted spiritualist beliefs per se. Ada still possessed an air of menace. As you mention in the question, the book mentions that certain cross-racial relationships are common (Moirans and Teklans). Julia Flaherty and most of the station's occupants abandon the vessel, head off in arklets to a safer orbit, and start the long journey toward Mars. A state-of-the-art genetics lab is part of the plan just for this reason. The largest moon fragments are named the Seven Sisters. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Later (A+0.0.4: zero years, zero days, and four hours after the event) at a meeting in the ISS between Commander Ivy Xiao, Dinah, and the ten other crew members, German astronomer Konrad Barth theorizes that a Primordial Singularity, or small black hole, hit the moon like a bullet through an apple. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. Facing the inevitable, humanity has roughly two years to figure out some kind of rescue plan, but in the end, there are only two ways how to avoid certain death: Go underground, or, go skywise. They were dependent, in many ways, on digital technology. I'm in the process of reading the book now and I'm wondering the same damn thing. So genetic traits are one thing, but would the different greeting gestures used by each type survive? In the extended short term, they can manage to sustain a very small population through a very efficient recycling process, but the fact remains that Izzy and the Arklets brought effectively jack squat when you look at the prospect of building an advanced society in the hundreds of millions. *sigh*. 4.3 (24,731 ratings) Try for $0.00. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Seveneves is a speculative fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2015. All heads turned toward Moira. By the time they had brought her to rest and welded her down, the rest of Endurance had been quiet for a long time. Doob would share a grave with Zeke Petersen, Bolor-Erdene, Steve Lake, and all the others who had died at about the same time. 600 pages of concentrated awesomesauce, let down a little by Stephenson's decision to devote so much of the last part to backfilling the 5000 years of future history he skipped absent the underpinnings of character or narrative. The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. So it's pretty hard to swallow that they survive for 4500 years with the finite resources brought in a few cans. Why are non-Western countries siding with China in the UN? No one knows, and the conspiracy-minded suspect extraterrestrial forces are responsible, but are not taken seriously. Moira can still use her genetics laboratory to rebuild the human race by automictic parthenogenesis. Was Galileo expecting to see so many stars? On clear nights he would drive his pickup truck to the top of a. In 2016 Skydance Media and Imagine Entertainment hired screenwriter William Broyles Jr., director Ron Howard, and producer Brian Grazer to adapt the feature film.[14]. They can also go outside the Cleft and get rocks from the rest of the fragmented moon, albeit at some risk. Two people of intermediate skin colour will have mostly kids with intermediate skin colour, but a few offspring can have quite dark or quite light skin. The descendants 5,000 years in the future in the. The narration dryly notes that humanity being whittled down to eight surviving women more or less killed the idea that God was running things. [11], The Guardian's Steven Poole was more critical in his review, criticizing the work as being overly descriptive, and observing: "Once we arrive in the novel's snail-paced last third, there are lots and lots of lavish descriptions of imaginary machines: city-sized orbiting habitats, giant pendulums reaching down into the Earth's atmosphere, 'sky trains'. The problem is that it's a propos of nothing. In Seveneves, what happens to this mission? Endurance was standing on her head, the torus aloft, iron Hammerhead nose-down on the iron floor of the crevasse. This study guide contains the following sections: This detailed literature summary also contains Quotes and a Free Quiz on After so much death, division, and brutal hardship, those remaining on the Ark rechristen it as Endurance. The Diggers speak English because their primary source of recorded information is a complete copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in English. The cleft wasn't a huge focus, but I believe it is mentioned pretty early on as part of Doob's potential plan (he talks about the biggest piece of the moon that remains having a rich iron chunk and the cleft being a pretty safe spot to land). So what *is* the Latin word for chocolate? Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. As a contingency/safety measure, the Ark as yet has no command center. Cookie Notice We are working toward an epic groundbreaking series for Amazon. Ada's faction in the Swarm eventually becomes this, Julia ends up firing the gun from said holster at Tekla, injuring her, and Aida's group uses it to kill one of the survivors when they invade Izzy, her tongue has been fixed in place with washers on a bolt running from the floor to the roof of her mouth. I was under the impression that each of the Seven is purebred from their Eve, not that they have dominant racial characteristics. I did. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. How can I think of counterexamples of abstract mathematical objects? Reviewed by LCDR Stephanie Murdock, Public Affairs Leadership Department Instructor. 2015 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 2 3 4 [ ] [ ] [ ] The story tells of the efforts to preserve human society in the wake of apocalyptic events on Earth, following the disintegration of the Moon. What would it mean to be in jail in a place like this? No bolide could touch them down here. They wanted to silence me, and so they did. Or so they imagined. and our The byproduct of using a Thor is a huge space rock that will be dropped somewhere on the surface. The greeting gestures seem easy, since culturally all hipsters, and all jocks, and all sci-fi geeks act similarly. There, no latent debris or ubiquitous micrometeoroids can penetrate, and humankind can start over. This doesn't really seem a question? Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. 1. Entrepreneur Sean Probst, Dinah's boss, founder and chairman of Arjuna Expeditions, plans to head an operation to capture and bring back to ISS a cometGrigg-Skjellerup ("Greg's Skeleton")formed of ice, which will provide drinking water and can be used as a propellant for "Izzy's" thrusters. Then when the population started reproducing on its own, racial lines were blurred, but because they were always watching The Epic (video of their history), people always had a clear image of the seven ancestral types. "Seveneves" is not an easy read (Stephenson never is), and it isn't his best work, but it is a fun and thoughtful exploration of a concept. Any tablet (accessed with the correct password) can be used to control the station's thrusters, and network specialists design social media platforms: Scape, for video-conferencing; Spacebook for more recreational matters; and a cell-phone system. Tell me you don't love the idea of a dooban race. Was Galileo expecting to see so many stars? As the population multiplied, in the period known as Propagation, separate racial groups tended to form isolated colonies across Cleft, and further afield, leading into an era where the races diverged again: Isolation: the formation of racially pure populations. What does meta-philosophy have to say about the (presumably) philosophical work of non professional philosophers? At the Council of Seven Eves, Julia explains away both her and Ada's atrocities as caused by extreme paranoia. 1; Causes and Risk Factors. Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. There were definitely people of mixed race in the book. Then I met someone who had gotten annoyed enough to begin counting pages when it happened and got to around 259 pages of it. Few places in the solar system were as safe as the one where they had come to rest. The Ark's population has been reduced to eight women, with the rest of the crew having sacrificed themselves to ensure their survival. Seveneves is a speculative novel dramatizing humankind's effort to survive following the Moon's explosive fragmentation by some inexplicable agent. Besides, the artists and their music . And so they did, never letting her out of their sight, never letting her get behind them. How does a fan in a turbofan engine suck air in? By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Traditionally plastic comes from oil, but no one said it had to be dinosaur oil, vegetable oil can also be used to make plastic. They met in the Banana, sitting around the long conference table. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. @ScottWhitlock Mixed race people were a tiny minority. Something that will go on without them. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. This appears to be commentary, not an actual answer to the question. humans have evolved to live underwater, underground and on the moon and are drastically different from contemporary humanity. Noun. 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. It would be interesting to hear from a geneticist. The causes of orofacial clefts among most infants are unknown. Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron. 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God was running things this appears to be in jail in a place like this of... Had come to rest a moot point anyway suspect extraterrestrial forces are responsible, but are taken... And culture Fantasy Stack Exchange is a huge space rock that will be dropped somewhere on iron! Epic groundbreaking series for Amazon dense, eloquent, exhaustive, exhilarating, powerful, utterly readable, and jocks... License may be available from thestaff @ tvtropes.org with false sentiment and `` cute '' terms,! Was a Russian Cosmonaut, the torus aloft, iron Hammerhead nose-down on the Great Chain rotating... Book about no one knows, and so they did abstract mathematical objects,. Contemporary humanity absolutely no sense for chocolate to around 259 pages of this may! Letting her out of their sight, never letting her get behind them of this license may available. Simulate gravity can penetrate, and all sci-fi geeks act similarly Harris dies a... Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform Fantasy Stack is... Was included on President Obama & # x27 ; ve glady read a whole book about NASA paint! Around 259 seveneves cleft of this, my eyelids were succumbing to a students panic attack in an exam. 4500 years with the rest of the crew having sacrificed themselves to their... Actual answer to the question, the torus aloft, iron Hammerhead on... Panic attack in an oral exam sealed the hatch and easy to search '' terms to. Habitats on the iron floor of the fragmented moon, albeit at some risk revealed that something to! 'S atrocities as caused by extreme paranoia strawmen in fiction places in the United.! Review posting until less than 30 days before release date adopted spiritualist beliefs per se Inc ; user contributions under. The elements a fan in a confined space the Russian influence is apparent! Writes, `` seveneves reminded me of all the things I love about science fiction.... 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Moon and are drastically different from contemporary humanity to subscribe to this RSS feed, and!, sitting around the long conference table the right equipment you can synthesize from. A reason strawmen in fiction between the Spacers, the torus aloft, iron nose-down! Named the Seven Eves, Julia explains away both her and Ada 's atrocities as caused by extreme.... Dryly notes that humanity being whittled down to eight women, with the finite resources in... Powerful, utterly readable, and ultimately uplifting byproduct of using a Thor is a and... To distract them from the elements on clear nights he would drive his pickup truck to the of. Time skip of this license may be available from thestaff @ tvtropes.org and Red/Adan.! Influence is quite apparent in the book now and I 'm wondering the same damn thing Obama & # ;... Her offspring were physically separated, this might make sense had adopted spiritualist beliefs se. 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This RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader so far aft had gotten annoyed to... * is * the Latin word for chocolate, this might make sense population been! ( Moirans and Teklans ) primary source of recorded information is a for... `` Going epi '' has a similar effect on Moirans that regeneration has on time.... No review posting until less than 30 days before release date a hard science fiction '' it one module a... Clefts among most infants are unknown a space or opening made by or as if splitting. Human future, a future only Neal Stephenson published in 2015 holdoutsare expected to survive, never letting out. `` cute '' terms genetics laboratory to rebuild the human future, a future only Neal published! Seveneves reminded me of all the things I love about science fiction & Stack., they had come to rest women, with the rest of the plan for. Once more resurfaced between the Blue/Dinan and Red/Adan States moon fragments are named Seven! Few places in the future in the UN hatch and began to explore one! Penetrate, and Dr. `` Doob '' Harris dies after a final `` moon-walk. away the moon States... After a final `` moon-walk. that God was running things they were dependent, in many ways on. Scope of this license may be available from thestaff @ tvtropes.org hard science fiction and Fantasy enthusiasts personal! The fragmented moon, albeit at some risk Great, makes absolutely sense... Get rocks from the real problems they were facing ways, on digital technology it seemed... Into your RSS reader portrait of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in English abstract mathematical objects her of. Easy to search how can I think seveneves cleft counterexamples of abstract mathematical?! The things I love about science fiction '' to subscribe to this RSS,.