Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

I've been planning on reading Seveneves since late last year when I saw that it won second place in the Goodreads Choice Awards for science fiction. I had never read anything by Neal Stephenson before, but I considered this book a pretty safe bet for me; it won a reader's choice award and it's a space survival story. What's not to like there?  I loved The Martian and Aurora, so I thought this would be a great chance to find another author I would like in a genre I have traditionally enjoyed very much. 

I was wrong. I was so wrong. This was one of the most difficult reading experiences of my life.  I'm now questioning if I really even like science fiction.  I'm almost to the point of questioning whether I like reading in general.  Let's start at the beginning.

Seveneves contains three distinct parts.  The first section describes the moon exploding due to an unknowable natural incident (referred to simply as "The Agent), and the last few years of life on Earth as government leaders and scientists work together to try and save as much of humanity as possible. Utilizing the International Space Station as a hub, they design a kind of space-ark, and launch as many bright, young people up to it as possible before the earth is destroyed by falling moon rocks.  This sections covers around two years.  The second section details the difficulties that arise on the ark while trying to survive in space.  Scientific and political problems plague the crew and a fuel shortage leads a team of astronauts to embark on a dangerous mission to mine water from a passing asteroid. This section covers another five years or so.  By the end of this section, all that remains of humanity are eight women, only seven of whom are still young enough to bear children (hence the "Seven Eves").  The fate of the whole human race rests on their shoulders. 

Then the story jumps forward 5000 years.  Hope you didn't like any of the characters you had been following too much, because they're all dead now.

The last part of the novel is about how humanity, which has done a very impressive job reestablishing themselves in space, terraform and return to earth.  Political problems abound, due to the fact that the genetic engineering choices of the original Eves have created seven different "races" of people, each displaying the traits their Eve selected when they started rebuilding the human race.  Shockingly, not all of the races get along.  Also, there are some pretty big surprises waiting for everyone down on earth, which leads to further complications.  After a lot of exploring, negotiating and fighting, the whole story wraps up with a throwaway joke about plumbing.  The end.

Okay, so here's my disclaimer: I didn't completely hate this novel, and I understand that Neal Stephenson is a very famous author and has tons of fans that loved this book.  I turned out not to be one of those people, and that's fine.

Things I liked:

1. The last section of the book. The different "races" of people and situation that evolved when everyone traveled back to Earth was very interesting, and I thought this idea had great potential.  Sadly, this last section was quite short in comparison to the rest of the novel, so it wasn't explored as deeply as it could have been.  Honestly, I would have been happy if these events of this last section were the entire book.

2. The diverse cast of characters.  This was nice to see.  There were lots of female characters, characters of different cultural backgrounds, and characters of different sexualities included. 

3. The basic story.  Space!  Scary stuff!  Figuring out how to survive in crazy conditions!  There was a good book buried in here...somewhere.

Things I didn't like:

1. The amount of scientific explanations.  There were literally hundreds of pages throughout this book dedicated to explaining the complicated scientific principles behind everything that happened in the story.  It slowed the pace of the novel down tremendously, was difficult to understand, and very frustrating to read.  I don't mind science being included in a science fiction novel, (in fact, I liked it in The Martian) and this is an expected inclusion in a hard science fiction novel, but Stephenson's writing was dry and awful to get through.

2. Underdeveloped characters.  With all of the space dedicated to scientific explanations, the characters in this story were planted squarely in the backseat.  They were very flat, and as such, I was unable to bring myself to care about them very much.  I felt no emotional connection to any of them.  It almost feels like Stephenson doesn't understand how human beings function or interact with each other.  Complex characters are the biggest part of why I love reading, and with such a weak cast, I was unable to really get lost in this novel like I wanted to.

3. The SHAMEFUL amount of straight exposition.  You know that old saying about how writers should "show, not tell"?  Stephenson took this concept, lit it on fire, and shot the ashes out of a cannon.  It felt like 90% of the novel was backstory, narrator-delivered explanations and characters saying overly dumb statements in a transparent effort to explain things to readers.  Nothing felt organic.  It's this issue that really confuses me as to how Stephenson is so popular.  I have never noticed an exposition problem this major in a book before.

4. Characters that are transparent copies of real people.  One character in the book is very obviously meant to be Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Another is clearly Malala Yousafzai.  Rather than trying to create his own, likeable characters for readers to enjoy, Stephenson chose to try and draw on preexisting positive feelings people have towards actual human beings.  Some reviews I have read think this is "fun." I think it's lazy writing.

5. The length.  Simply put, this book was too long.  There was no reason this shouldn't have been either trimmed down significantly or split up into two or three different novels.  I love long books too. I have read a lot of them in my time.  This was over-the-top long. Does Stephenson have an editor?  Does he get a certain amount of free reign in this area based on his past successes?  I don't understand how this book got published in this form.  I don't understand why so many people loved this book.  I'm just lost here.

I finished all of Seveneves.  I kept thinking there would be some sort of profound ending that made the slog worth it, but there wasn't.  All I found at the ending was a weak joke about plumbing repair and a sense of sadness about the amount of time I wasted reading this.  After doing a little research around the internet, I read a lot of reviews acknowledging that this isn't Stephenson's best work (even though many reviewers still viewed this novel positively overall).  Perhaps people have a soft spot for this author based on his previous books.  Maybe I simply started off with the wrong Stephenson novel.  One thing I do know for certain is that I'm not reading another anytime soon to find out. This one was a disappointment to me, which is a shame, because I spent six months trying to carve out a good chunk of time to read it. 

I would stay far away from this one unless you are deeply into hard science fiction, value technical details over character and love the writing of Neal Stephenson.  I know that applies to a lot of readers out there, so I'm not trying to be glib.  It just turned out that, sadly, I am not one of those people.