Neal Stephenson, Seveneves ***

The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.

Seveneves is a a typically ambitious epic from Neal Stephenson. Scientists determine that the breakup of the moon will make the surface of Earth uninhabitable starting two years hence, and the world comes together to plan for the continuation of the human race in space. Most of the action takes place on the International Space Station, which serves as the seed for an orbiting civilization.

Seveneves is definitely hard sci-fi, with more of its 800+ pages dedicated to technological explanations than to story. All of the world's scientists work together seamlessly to make amazing progress in two years, while politicians are all corrupt.

Half way through Part I, I started wondering why the scientific community hadn't applied their ingenuity to repairing the Moon. They made amazing progress on the much harder problem of building a sustainable civilization. Even I had some ideas about how to "fix" the moon (similar to the asteroid capture caper). Stephenson probably could have explained why it wouldn't work, but he didn't, and the missed option tempered my enjoyment a bit.

I also had issues with Part III, which (spoiler alert) takes place five thousand years later. Human civilization consists of seven races, each descended from one of the eponymous seven Eves. I had a hard time believing that the races would have stayed as distinct as they did given that they've lived (essentially) together for thousands of years. The sociology didn't feel realistic to me. Also, the story in Part III felt rushed by comparison to the previous parts and ends with an incident that felt like the start of something rather than the end. If I'd been Stephenson's editor, I would have recommended publishing Part III as a second book along with a Part IV that continues the story for another hundred pages and several years.