book 34 – The Seveneves
The book is actually divided up into three separate stories, each one book-sized in and of itself. The first is the story of a coming apocalypse and humanity’s two-year deadline to establish a genetically diverse human colony in space, capable of sustaining itself for at least 5,000 years. The second is the post-apocalyptic stage of settling the space colony into a collaborative and cooperative community despite divisive differences that threaten to destroy everything. The third takes place 5,000 years in the future and provides a look at what humanity has become as the surviving races start to terraform and repopulate the earth.
Most interesting (to me) is that the book settles eventually on seven women who ultimately provide the genetic origins for the evolution of seven ‘new’ human races (the Seven Eves). This has parallels to the book The Seven Daughters of Eve, which traces the (known) genetic origins of all human life on earth back to seven original women, the “daughters of eve”. I would like to believe that this is cannot be a coincidence, but Stephenson doesn’t reference the book in his epilogue. (By the way, if you ever read seven daughers, don’t read the last 7 chapters where the author tries to “imagine” the lives of each of these seven daughters, even so far as how many children they each had and how long they lived. He kind of goes off the rails at that point).
My only complaint about Stephenson’s book is that he seems to rush the ending, which is unexpected after 900 pages. It’s unfortunate, because after setting up a climax (that you sort of do see coming if you are paying attention), he just kind of leaves things in a strange state that feels incomplete.
Rating: Borrow it if you know you like scifi and Neil Stephenson.
