First 26 pages of Neal Stephenson's new novel Seveneves

[ceequof]

It seems like my first knee-jerk impression of every Stephenson novel of the last decade has been "ugh, terrible", gradually replaced by a retrospective fondness after finishing it.

The first couple pages of Seveneves certainly does not impress, but maybe I'll like it better after reading the whole thing.

[MagicWishMonkey]

Anathem was kind of a slog for the first 200-250 pages, but then it started to get good, and then awesome, by the end of the book my mind was thoroughly blown.

[toby]

That's interesting... my reaction to "Snow Crash", "Diamond Age" and "Cryptonomicon" was that the premise set up was interesting but the ending always descended into a lame Hollywood action sequence. I'm sure I'm not the only one?

[bkcooper]

The first couple pages of Seveneves certainly does not impress

Man, no kidding. It feels like a very inelegant info dump. While I realize those tend to show up in Stephenson books at some point or another, it's a rough way to start.

I liked a lot about Anathem but found Reamde unmemorable. I'd love to see a return to form.

[atmosx]

That's absolutely true. I remember the first 100 pages of 'Cryptonomicon'. I was just trying to make sense of that blabber I wasn't used to. Since English is not my mother-tongue, I had to use the Kindle to search through the dictionary all too often, otherwise it was impossible to follow. After a 250 pages, I was familiar with most words, even saw some patterns emerging. The novel became increasingly more and more interesting as the pages flew by.

[msielski]

This helped make reading this a little easier. Copy and paste to your URL bar. You may have to retype the javascript: as it appears to get stripped for security.

  javascript:$('.entry').css({ "background":"#fff","color":"#333","padding":"10px","font-family":"Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif","font-size":"14px","font-style":"normal","font-variant":"normal","font-weight":"400","line-height":"20px" })

[jefurii]

You can also just turn styles off ("View > Page Style > No Style" in Firefox).

[ceequof]

     “Most black holes are formed when stars collapse,” Ivy said. 
     “But there’s a theory that some of them were created shortly 
     after the Big Bang. The universe was lumpy. Some of the lumps 
     might have been dense enough to undergo gravitational 
     collapse. They could form black holes that instead of 
     weighing what a star weighs could be a lot smaller.”
     “How small?”
     “I don’t think there’s a lower limit.”

Yes there is. Black holes lose mass by Hawking radiation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

A black hole smaller than 0.8% Earth masses loses more mass than it gains from the cosmic microwave background, and will eventually evaporate.

[Tloewald]

That doesn't create a lower limit, just a life expectancy. And the life expectancy is still very long — "within the lifespan of the universe" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole

[allworknoplay]

I love this on his page about the novel:

"The only part that gave me any trouble was calibrating an ending that would leave the reader satisfied that the story had concluded while leaving the impression of an open-ended world."

Surprise! Still can't write endings. It's okay Neal, it's what we've come to expect, and we totally love you anyway.

[nissimk]

I liked it, but I am a big Stephenson fan. I skipped Anathem and the baroque cycle books, but Diamond Age is one of my favorite books and I also like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon a lot.

Reamde was pretty good, and this is an interesting setup.

Edit: Anathem not Anathema (thanks __david__ and lmm)

[__david__]

Yeah, just let me repeat what the other replies to you have said, Anathem is very much worth reading. It starts out kind of confined and a little slow. But it starts picking up steam and then goes off in a wonderful direction I never ever expected.

For me it's in his top three books along with Snow Crash and Diamond Age. It's also on a very short list of "books I will definitely read again at some point".

If the Baroque Cycle doesn't appeal up front, you're probably fine skipping it. I liked them, but I really had to push myself through large parts of each book. I kind of felt like they needed to be edited down a bit.

[etrautmann]

I'm a huge Stephenson fan but tend to disagree with a number of others on Anathem. I found it to be a slog, that did pick up towards the end, but only by virtue of numerous deus-ex contrivances and somewhat ridiculous jumps of reasoning by the characters as they work through the central mystery.

[acheron]

Anathem is my favorite Stephenson book, and one of my favorites overall. Especially if you're a fan of his other work, I'd really recommend going back and checking it out.

[searine]

> I skipped Anathema

You my friend, have missed out big time.

[bryanlarsen]

Reamde was very mediocre compared to the ones you skipped.

[e12e]

I liked Snow Crash and loved Diamond Age - but Cryptonomicon I couldn't be bothered to finish. Maybe having just read Singh's The Code Book highlighted how bad (subjectively) Cryptonomicon was.

My theory has been that after Diamond Age he got to famous and/or no longer had an editor that said: this is OK. Cut from 1500 pages down to 450 and this could be great.

Judging from this thread Anathem might be worth a look. And this excerpt doesn't look half-bad either.

[davidw]

I liked the Baroque Cycle books a lot. I like Anathema too, but it kind of lurched along; some of the philosophy portions were a bit dull.

[bryanlarsen]

Warning: publishing date is May 19th so you'll be left hanging for a month if it sucks you in.

[elevensies]

That reminds me, I really hate how they start promoting books a few weeks before they are released. I see the promotion, and then when I go to buy it "pre-order" ??!?! Like it isn't a fucking yacht, I give you the money you give me the book, I'm not interested in a more complicated transaction. I'd be happier if they did the promotion during a time frame where I could actually buy it.

[jacquesm]

At a guess the moon will turn into a ring surrounding the earth in the longer term, curious how it will continue.

[3am]

It will turn into a cloud of asteroids surrounding the earth intended to prevent the human race from unleashing whatever hell we create with those autonomous mining robots on the ISS (would be my guess, at least). Feel like the agent/patient distinction is pretty blunt foreshadowing against it being a survival/resilience story against and abstract antagonist like a random natural disaster.

edit: http://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0... gives a bit more detail and it is likely it will not become a ring. Probably a lot of highly energetic reentrant debris capable of generating a lot of atmospheric heat.

edit: @jaquesm - i'm allowing for creative license, and was making guess explaining what would happened based on my gut feel for the plot direction. you're probably correct on the physics.

[wiredfool]

Right towards the end, it seemed that he was implying that some other non-newtonian stuff was happening with kidney bean and the other one of the 7 sisters. (And that the threat is clearly not over)

[pronoiac]

Oh right, this is coming out next month! He's going on tour to support the release:

http://www.nealstephenson.com/tour.html

[brerlapn]

Thank you for mentioning this. I would have likely never heard about the tour in time otherwise; an upvote isn't enough good karma for you, sir/madame!

[tormeh]

US only. Lame.

[classicsnoot]

The first time i read Cryptonomicon it was a pleasure the whole way through, from page 01 to page >9000. This may have been because it was almost entirely news to me; i had little to no experience with anything it covered. I finished it in 3-4 days. What a delight. Each reread i learn something new. Conversely, I went into Snow Crash with high expectations only to find the story somewhat silly. Not that there weren't really great moments.

[2close4comfort]

19th May will not get here soon enough. Always good sometime challenging but I never get sick of reading his books!!

[jefurii]

astronomicalbodiesformerlyknownasthemoon.com was registered by someone on 2015-03-12.

[thundt]

http://www.nealstephenson.com/news/2015/04/13/seveneves-exce...

[zkhalique]

It's always so hard to read things on a dark background on a backlit screen. And especially looking at light backgrounds after that. Why is that?

[jff]

I don't know, but the white text started sort of "flickering" between bright and dark after a while; a paragraph might look pretty bright, then it would suddenly seem darker again while the paragraph above looked brighter. It messed with my head and eventually I had to stop.

[slashnull]

     “Not now, Pa, I know the moon’s pretty, I’m right in the middle of debugging this method . . .”

[tonetheman]

My eyes... dear god. Everywhere I look I see false images of letters.

[CamperBob2]

The moon blew up with out warning and for no apparent reason.

TIL that "with out" is two words.

(I mean, seriously. How do you screw up your very first sentence?)

[joshschreuder]

It appears to be fixed.

[robodale]

my eyes

[plg]

jesus god, what awful typesetting

[grey-area]

The entire body is letterspaced and bold, that's the main problem. If you're in chrome you can edit styles on the fly, so try adding:

    letter-spacing: 0;
    font-weight: 300;
    line-height: 1.5em;

[expert]

Man, no kidding. It feels like a very inelegant info dump. While I realize those tend to show up in Stephenson books at some point or another, it's a rough way to start. I liked a lot about Anathem but found Reamde unmemorable. I'd love to see a return to form

[pinewurst]

I appreciate his consideration in saving me a future time investment. Plus everyone else now gets moved up a slot on the library reserve list. A win-win.

[ChrisClark]

Wow, what a horribly self-righteous way to tell everyone about your personal tastes. I feel enlightened already.