Neal Stephenson's previous books include Snow Crash and Anathem. It's a drier world, a rigidly mapped and exhaustively cataloged one where the first 565 pages read less like the script for an awesome moon-wrecking Michael Bay blow-em-up than a primer on global disaster preparedness. Everything that comes after matters, but none of it will ever be the same.īut then, this is a Neal Stephenson book (a modern Stephenson book, meaning post- Snow Crash/Diamond Age and, therefore, kind of post-fun) which means that the world as presented, moon or no moon, isn't really the same as ours anyway. Which is apt, I suppose, since every following action on every following page (all 900 of them) over the course of the 5,000 years of human future history that Seveneves covers (from the wonder of the moment, through the panic of realizing that earth is doomed, to the desperation of flight and survival and, finally, in a weak part three, a jump into the future to see what has become of humanity) is spawned by that opening line. No, Stephenson goes old-school mad scientist - straight for the pulp main vein and buried Saturday morning memories of Thundarr the Barbarian still ticking along in the heads of his audience, and blows up the moon.
I mean, he isn't destroying LA or merely reducing some single nation to slag. And in terms of opening hooks, it's up there. That's the beginning of Neal Stephenson's newest epic, Seveneves. "The moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason." Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Seveneves Author Neal Stephenson
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