Seveneves discussion

People used to love it when Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo or someone else would write very, very long tangents of descriptive material in their novels. In Seveneves, Neal Stephenson does the same thing on a modern topic: lots of text and background on orbital trajectories, physics, spacecraft design, and space exploration. What was your response to this? If you didn't like it, then who do you think would?

I'm a hard science fiction fan. I want the scientific background details on what makes what is being proposed in the novel possible.

Stephenson does this in all of his novels, even when it's not a space sci fi novel, which is why all of his novels are 800+ pages. For me, good in-depth descriptions draw me further into the plot by revealing the nuances of the storyline and characters.

I love hard science fiction and plenty of realistic detail - BUT this was WAY too much for me. The endless descriptions of the ISS modules and how they fit together bored me to tears. I literally skipped dozens of pages since it all seemed repetitive.

I love information. I loved it in Dan Simmons' The Terror and many of his other novels. I loved it in Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. But this, this is just torture. It reads like a manual, not a novel. Seveneves gets the Throw At The Wall prize for 2016 (which is when I tried to read it).

Finished reading this book a few weeks ago. Phew! But I found that, by the time the real information dumps were in full swing, I had already changed gears to be able to read the book at the pace it needed to be read without, well, throwing it at the wall :) So I kind of liked it. In the second section I sped up through some of the repetition, and promptly had to slam on the breaks when Round 3 kicked in and you needed to pay attention again. But I still enjoyed it!

Martine wrote: "Finished reading this book a few weeks ago. Phew! But I found that, by the time the real information dumps were in full swing, I had already changed gears to be able to read the book at the pace it..."

I'm glad you found a way to manage the book! What you describe really reminds me of how I read older books like something from Charles Dickens. I think this kind of writing used to be a lot more popular.

I don't have any trouble with Dickens. His writing is elaborate and descriptive, and a modern editor would probably give it a thorough pruning for length, but Seveneves is just excessive boring detail that doesn't move the story along; in fact it brings it to a stumbling halt. In my opinion.

Definitely not for everyone! In other news, I am halfway through the Satanic Verses and am finding that the gear I had to drop down to for Seveneves has stood me in amazing stead - I've never wallowed so much in every single sentence! Love it.

Stephenson usually does this to a certain degree. It isn't usually 1/3 of the longer than normal book, or it is more weaved into the narrative. I don't think that the depth he went to was beneficial to the story, he could have left a lot of it out and the story would not have suffered. He also tells us all the information instead of showing us this info. He could have showed us interaction between the races and left it for us to make the connections with their ancestors characters, Because of the explanations the characters come off as one dimensional and the future races are just extensions of that one dimensionalism.

Stephenson is one of my favorite authors. I am fine with info dumping as it fits the way I think. Having said this I expect a good payoff for time invested in a novel and Stephenson has not disappointed me with any of his books.

Nope, Seveneves is where I stopped trusting Neal Stephenson. He's no longer an automatic purchase for me now. I'll wait for at least a year of reviews from now on. If there's any whiff of boredom, I'll pass. Life is far too short for this.

I stopped reading the Wheel of Time series, because it seemed like so much time was spent describing EVERYTHING that the story didn't move along.

I think you have to treat it like a friend who tends to go on in more detail than you'd like, but whose presence you enjoy enough to put up with it. That it, it goes with the territory.

And it's not like authors from Michener* to Clancy (as well as Dickens who the OP mentions) haven't done this forever.

It's a forgivable sin for Hard SF. In this book, though, it's often SO transparently based on somebody's white paper or some technical drawing that it's almost comical. But the basic approach of "the world is ending and billions are dying; let's talk about the dimensions of a docking port for a page or two" actually resonates pretty well with the theme of the novel.

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*The first chapter of Michener's Hawaii has this book beat by a few million years.

I appreciate loving technical detail in authors like Dickens and Simmons, and even Stephenson's earlier novels. But when I have to ask myself, "when will this interminable technical manual end and the story begin again?" it's time to give up. Technical detail is part of science fiction but it's clumsily, even pedantically, handled here.

Neal Stephenson has a lot on his mind. He works it out on the page. I'm absolutely humbled by his intellect. That said, my strategy is to get both the book and the audiobook so I can keep up the momentum when he goes down the far path. I've been curious for years about how many fist fights between N.S. and his editors. Baroque Cycle is mind blowing...if you have the time.

I loved the Baroque Cycle.

Look, I don't care if Stephenson has a lot on his mind. And sure, he's a smart guy. But I read novels for entertainment, not to wade through tiresome details that bog everything down.

That said, he can write whatever he wants, and I can choose not to read it. And I do.