Seveneves: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson Narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron

Overview

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic-a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years.

What would happen if the world were ending?

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny-seven distinct races now three billion strong-embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

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. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

Editorial Reviews

Boston Globe on ANATHEM

A daring feat of speculative fiction…ANATHEM offers the reader a luscious arrangement of words, jokes, and speculations.

New York Times Book Review on CRYPTONOMICON

Electrifying . . . hilarious...a picaresque novel about code making and code breaking, set both during World War II and during the present day.

Wired on CRYPTONOMICON

A hell of a read.

Tor.com on REAMDE

It’s hard to sum up a 1,000 page tome in a short review, so if you don’t feel like reading this rather long one, I’ll boil it down to three words: I loved it.

Kirkus Reviews

2015-03-02
No slim fables or nerdy novellas for Stephenson (Anathem, 2008, etc.): his visions are epic, and he requires whole worlds—and, in this case, solar systems—to accommodate them. His latest opens with a literal bang as the moon explodes "without warning and for no apparent reason." When the reason finally does become apparent, it's cause to enlist steely-jawed action hero Dubois Jerome Xavier Harris, Ph.D., a scientist who makes fat bread as a TV science popularizer and sucker-up to the rich and powerful. Easy street gives way to a very rocky galactic road as Doob has to figure out why the heavens are suddenly hurling mountains of space debris at Earth in a time already fraught with human-caused difficulty. Ever the optimist, Doob puts it this way: "The good news is that the Earth is one day going to have a beautiful system of rings, just like Saturn. The bad news is that it's going to be messy." The solution? Get off the planet fast, set up space colonies, perpetuate the human race using turkey basters—well, a "DNA sequence stored on a thumb drive," anyway—and multiple moms, whence the title. Stephenson takes his time doing so, layering on a perhaps not entirely necessary game of intrigue involving a sly-boots "dusky blonde" of a president. When the yarn moves into deep space thousands of years from now, however, it picks up both speed and depth, for while humans are more diverse than ever ("Each of the seven new races had embodied more than one Strain"), the gap between the haves and have-nots has widened, piles of gold and golden eyes and all. Stephenson does a fine job, à la H.G. Wells, of imaging a future in which troglodytes live just outside the titanium walls of civilization, and though the setup is an old one, he brings a fresh vision based on the latest science to the task. Meanwhile, all those exploding planetoids make a good argument for more STEM funding. Wise, witty, utterly well-crafted science fiction.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940174039810
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	05/19/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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