Big-Ass Delta VEE: “Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson
Published May 19th 2015.
When I read the first 25 pages, my first objection was to how the moon was broken up into so few large pieces. The verisimilitude hangs on the likelihood of meteor bombardment coming down to what the Agent was, and I'm not aware of anything we currently know of that could break apart the moon like that. I had huge problems with this premise right at the beginning of the book.To get through it without getting hung up on this hypothesis, I just told myself that maybe it was some weird high energy particle or quantum bullshit, because theoretically anything is possible, just varying levels of likely.
When do I decide that I’m reading something impossible? There are no ghosts, dragons, goblins, leprechauns, hobbits, or any kind of magical transitions between worlds. Even when magical events and beings show up in SF, I expect the writer will keep everything under control. A work of fiction that piles impossibilities upon impossibilities would be extremely tiresome on my endurance capacity and in the end likely lead toward me giving up on it forever. In the same way, a work of fiction that is remarkably rich in invention and in which the terms of impossibility in the SF world are not made clear until late in the narrative is apt to be also tiresome. On the other hand, a clear explanation of the limits of the impossible (in this case, the disappearance of the moon and its effects, e.g., the end of all Lunar calenders, shorter work days due to tidal friction…) can provide a convenient setting for the telling of the story:
“The lack of a moon meant that New Earth’s tides were caused entirely by the gravity of the sun, which made them weaker and more closely synchnonized with the cycle of night and day.“
The rest of this review can be found elsewhere.
5
