Hard SF discussion

Hi!

Just fishing for opinions about Stephenson's book.
Pamela Gay mentionned it on Astronomy Cast, which caught my attention. But I'm not going to start reading such a long book on impulse.

The author's website states that he wanted to be physically-correct.
That's nice but lots of implausible things aren't in contempt of physics. And the book's premise didn't encourage me. I haven't looked at it in detail because I don't want to spoil myself too much but... humanity surviving the loss of Earth in the near future? I expect a lot of handwaving is involved. But maybe I misunderstood the premise.

Anything else that's noteworthy about the book on the hardness front?
Fresh and yet plausible SF ideas perhaps?

I did check the reviews posted by group members such as Tim Hicks: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
So thank you if you've already posted something, even if it didn't deal with hardness.

It's pretty hard SF in my view. I'm about 82% of the way through it on Kindle. It's been taking me awhile because I've been having a busy time at work.

However, there's no question there's a heckuva lot of science and exhaustive (and exhausting) detail about maneuvering in space. The ideas are compelling but I would have to agree that it's probably a tad too long. I'm hoping it ends as well as it starts, the plot is mostly engrossing but due to the time scale of the book it's hard to be invested in a single central character, since they keep changing.

The only thing that bothered me, hardness wise, was in Phase 2 of the book.

(view spoiler)[Did I miss an explanation as to why children of the 7 evens didn't interbreed from the get-go? It was mentioned that a person in some scene was of mixed race, between two of the 7 eves' children, so I don't think it's a purely biological/technical problem.
It seemed like Stephenson came up with a premise (7 future races stemmed from 7 individuals) and was dedicated to having it, despite this glaring oversight. (hide spoiler)]

I loved Seveneves .... it's getting my Hugo vote. But yes, it does go on a bit too long. Could've easily (and maybe would have been better) been a trilogy. And again yes, some of the weakness lies in the end ... but still an amazing and exhaustively researched hard science fiction story.