Seveneves - by Neal Stephenson (Paperback)

About the Book

Five thousand years later after a catastropic event rendered the Earth a ticking time bomb, the progeny of a handful of outer space explorers--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.

Book Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking hard 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 a hastily built space ark.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges threaten the intrepid pioneers, turning their mission into a desperate survival story 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 post-apocalyptic 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.

Review Quotes

"Stephenson's remarkable novel is deceptively complex, a disaster story and transhumanism tale that serves as the delivery mechanism for a series of technical and sociological visions... there's a ton to digest, but Stephenson's lucid prose makes it worth the while." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Seveneves offers at once [Stephenson's] most conventional science-fiction scenario and a superb exploration of his abiding fascination with systems, philosophies and the limits of technology.... Stephenson's central characters, mostly women, serve as a welcome corrective to science-fiction clichés." - Chicago Tribune

"This is hard sci-fi in a real and welcome sense, ruled by unremitting physical laws, unlike the negotiable rules of the action thriller." - Nature

"Seveneves can be fascinating. . . . Insights into the human character shine like occasional full moons." - Boston Globe

"No slim fables or nerdy novellas for Stephenson: his visions are epic, and he requires whole worlds-and, in this case, solar systems-to accommodate them....Wise, witty, utterly well-crafted science fiction." - Kirkus Reviews

"Written in a wry, erudite voice...Seveneves will please fans of hard science fiction, but this witty, epic tale is also sure to win over readers new to Stephenson's work." - Washington Post

"Well-paced over three parts covering 5,000 years of humanity's future, Stephenson's monster of a book is likely to dominate your 2015 sf-reading experience." - Booklist

"Stephenson's storytelling style combines the conversational and the panoramic, allowing him to turn his piercing gaze on the familiar aspects of a strange future, encompassing the barely conceivable detail by detail, striking vista by sweat-covered heroic gambit, and telling us how it might be possible to regain what we could so easily lose in so many heartbreaking ways." - Seattle Times

"Stephenson's storytelling style combines the conversational and the panoramic, allowing him to turn his piercing gaze on the familiar aspects of a strange future, encompassing the barely conceivable detail by detail." - Seattle Times

"Stephenson... knows the life-sustaining power of storytelling, since storytelling is what he does...Today's post-apocalyptic stories routinely aim to convey the loss of the old world through the personal losses of a few characters. Stephenson makes you feel the loss of Earth on the scale it deserves." - Salon

"[Stephenson] plays with hard ballistics, hard genetics, hard sociology. And what thrills me, is that he makes it interesting. That he makes life and death in space about actual life and death ." - NPR Books

"[A] novel of big ideas, but it's also a novel of personalities, of heart, and of a particular kind of hope that only comes from a Stephenson story. Science fiction fans everywhere will love this book." - BookPage

"The huge scope and enormous depth of the latest novel from Stephenson is impressive... a major work of hard sf that all fans of the genre should read." - Library Journal (starred review)