boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
The Day the Moon Blew Up
11–20 of 115 posts
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#12>Seveneves belongs in the subgenre of hard science fiction, which means it emphasizes scientific accuracy. Everything adheres to physical laws, so unlike Star Wars, no one travels anywhere near the speed of light. A pity then that a little basic chemistry eluded both the writer and the critic - there's no carbon on the moon. Rather difficult to support humans, and carry out feats of biotechnology, without it...
They did bring tons of comet with them. Which could theoretically be a source of carbon. It's a stretch, of course. But I think the story was that they kept the population in the Cleft down to a few hundred for many generations, only growing beyond that once people began venturing further afield. At that point, carbonaceous asteroids are not implausibly hard to get -- from high orbit, you've already paid most of the delta V needed to get elsewhere in the inner solar system, if you've got a lot of time to spend.
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#13My theory about the book, and the reason why there's such a tone change at the end is that this book is the kickoff to a much larger cycle. If it is, I think there's an authorial question -- when do you shift gears to the far future, and how? It makes some sense to me that readers might find the style transition jarring between volumes. Also, some of the cool stuff starts to happen later. So, perhaps -- hopefully --…
> it seems like every group of humans that went out on their own survived in some way
The survival of both the other two groups seemed pretty far fetched to me.
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#14>Seveneves belongs in the subgenre of hard science fiction, which means it emphasizes scientific accuracy. Everything adheres to physical laws, so unlike Star Wars, no one travels anywhere near the speed of light. A pity then that a little basic chemistry eluded both the writer and the critic - there's no carbon on the moon. Rather difficult to support humans, and carry out feats of biotechnology, without it...
The book goes into great depth and makes "rather difficult to support humans" the focus of the entire first 2 parts of the book. Space is indeed rather difficult to support humans. The third part of the book is a 'what if they actually survived and continued to survive, fast forward 5000 years".
In reality, there would be no survivors in left space, but I appreciated the final third part of the book all the same because I enjoy the fiction part of science fiction just as much as I do the science part.
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#15A couple of fun things hidden (or not exactly) in this video: There's no missing a couple of Neal's swordfighting buddies at 1:07. Wondering where the camera stand is? Look for its reflection in the window behind Bill at 1:52. What car did Bill drive to the meet-up? Probably not the Model X. My money is on the Porsche 959 shown at 2:17. (It's also a safe bet that the meet-up actually began at the Burgermaster, since…
Perhaps just a space-mining gag?
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#16>Seveneves belongs in the subgenre of hard science fiction, which means it emphasizes scientific accuracy. Everything adheres to physical laws, so unlike Star Wars, no one travels anywhere near the speed of light. A pity then that a little basic chemistry eluded both the writer and the critic - there's no carbon on the moon. Rather difficult to support humans, and carry out feats of biotechnology, without it...
Hard scifi usually has an unrealistic premise but everything else is constrained by real science that we know. If everything was exactly adherent to science and tech as it currently exists, it wouldn't be science fiction. It would just be fiction.
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#17The first third of Seveneves is a real gut punch. The only other world-ending story that comes close in terms of emotional impact for me was Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End".
Stephenson manages to show humanity in all its realistic messiness but still leave you proud -- on balance -- that humans mostly get our act together in a desperate attempt to preserve a seed of life and culture.
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#18A couple of fun things hidden (or not exactly) in this video: There's no missing a couple of Neal's swordfighting buddies at 1:07. Wondering where the camera stand is? Look for its reflection in the window behind Bill at 1:52. What car did Bill drive to the meet-up? Probably not the Model X. My money is on the Porsche 959 shown at 2:17. (It's also a safe bet that the meet-up actually began at the Burgermaster, since…
Why wouldn't gates drive a tesla x?
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#19boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
What do you mean? They thoroughly explained it -- it was an agent!
Re: The Day the Moon Blew Up
#20I was just getting into Kerbal Space Program at the same time I started reading this book, and it's amazing how well they tie together. I would learn something about orbital mechanics in KSP, and then see it applied in the book, and I really enjoyed that feeling.