Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

[Ambo Suno]

I have posted bits about this extraordinary science fiction book and this luminously imaginative and knowledgable author on the happy hour thread. Now that I am about 2/3 through it, I am thinking that Neal and this book, Seveneves, is significant enough to warrant a separate thread.

Below, I post the comments I have made, and if I have further, I will post them here:


http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/happy-hour?com...
B, regarding Golems, I should read some reviews too - see what people say.

I don't know what Stephenson has written lately, but up to 10-15 years ago, I had read most of what he had written. The trilogy Baroque Cycle is very rich on early science in Europe. He mixes science, technology, high and basic, humanities, plot, and a little woowoo. I trusted his historical accuracies generally, though as fiction he took liberties.

One of my favorites was the first one I read which was Snowcrash. I wasn't skateboarding then, but now that I do I am tempted to retread it. The book opens with some extraordinary, mildly sci-if skating - I smiled then and I still smile at the thought of it.

Cryptonomicron (sp?) was also a rich science and tech-dense imagining.

Neal, by my memory, is an amazing writer. I hope you get time to enjoy some fiction :)

Have you read anything by Neal Stephenson before? I haven't yet, but his books sound similarly mind-bending and philosophically rich (I'm curious about his forthcoming book, Seveneves).



http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/happy-hour?com...
Hi, David. Yes, I saw Martian and read the book maybe a year ago. I thought it was a very tight science fiction story and the movie, though understandably condensed, seemed pretty faithful to the book.

I don't know what the review said, but to me, the movie is mainly inspirational and entertaining not instructive on the solution to man's big earth-based problems. Well, maybe daah.

I've read a number of hi tech sci fi stories in the last few years and the strong presence of these themes does suggest some ripenesses for some real world manifestations.

I'm now reading Neal Stephenson's latest book, Seveneves. It proposes a catastrophic destruction of earth's moon and the death of life on earth within a few years. There is a scramble to escape to space for a few people to save humanity.

For me, it evokes death and related fears in me as an individual and for mankind's continuation. Death, mortality, impermanence writ BIG. It's powerful.

The Martian was powerful too in evoking death, sense of aloneness, and other existential basics.

Just sayin.

(Seveneves is well written and conceived already - I'm curious how the story will unfold.)



http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/happy-hour?com...
Thinking for a few moments, wondering if I should back-pedal, curb my enthusiasm, qualify my extravagant claims for "most integral", yeah, ok, he emphasizes the right hand quadrants. I suppose since the left side is my fave already, and since I read between the lines or fill in the blanks for myself, I didn't critique him and this, re "integral" as carefully as I might.

Hah - ok. He is a big thinker and tells a quite comprehensive story. He's amazingly knowledgable in broad deep ways. He's a hell f a sci fi writer. I extoll him!

[Ambo Suno]

I am now at about page 569 out of 867.

Seveneves has been epic - life on earth having been destroyed by a shattered moon, in roughly 6 years, of the roughly 1500 escapees in a variety of sketchy space craft, 7 remain alive, all women, as they manage to nestle into the cleft of a protective asteroid, and the storehouses of sperm and ova through which to propagate the human race with sufficient heterozygosity have been destroyed. It has been a full adventure full of astrophysics, mathematics, swarming dynamics, bio-science, hi and lo tech, human relations at approximate baselines and especially under severe stress, sociology, and psychological activity and types and behavior, affecting the many being emphasized more than the individual.

Of course there is conflict, mutual vision, intensive cooperation and collaboration, sex, and some bits of aberrant from plain-to-see-necessity individuality and schemings.

There is some high level and nuanced discussion of application of ethics and philosophy, by the current survivors, around genetic management, fixing of medically defined DNA flaws of body and mind, and how the human race might work. So aggression is looked at, individualisms, bi-polarities, cooperativeness.

I know this book will continue to be epic because the title initiating part three of the book is, Five Thousand Years Later. This blew my mind, on the heals of a mind already blown. So I have stopped for a day to give time and psychoactive honor to the profoundly life and death story that has gone to this point. It has been a hero's journey already. If the book wanted to end as an existential daring-do heart-bender-heart-breaker, it could end now.

Of course I thought of Timothy Leary and his proposed space exploration and travel to unify man. We post-post-whatevers probably could imagine complexities and story without end, as long as consciousness is on the loose, so no final unity for many of us for very long. Hah.

But, let me go back to my favorite slicing, my favorite aroma, my favorite most moving theme, dying, and living. I confess that I have sobbed a time or two, teared up even more, grieved in tension and collapse the loss of myself as one of 7 billion people, loss of a 'home', and an orientation almost at the core of our lifetime's developed life-knowings and identification.

And the challenge to survive continues, along with other human trajectories.

Personally, this existential-perhaps-spiritual-perhaps-religious journey seems to resonate with a couple of other thematic journeys in my mind and life that have been whispering trajectories and endpoints that feel the heat and chill of latent nihilism, and nihilism's invisible neighbors.

Five Thousand Years Later - may I not lose the beauty and poignancy of the feeling death and life in the gap or in the future vision or in the losing of memory of man's recent struggle and of myself, at least virtually.

I suspect that Neal baby will hold this together into further transportation of readership and self.

[andrew]

Sounds like a darn good read Ambo:)

[Ambo Suno]

Uhm, yeah, A.
:)



andrew said:

Sounds like a darn good read Ambo:)

[Balder]

Thank you for these teasers, Ambo.  It has been a long time since I've read any science fiction, but this book -- and two others, Aurora and The Abolition of Species -- have definitely enticed me at different times over the last year to pick up a sci-fi book again.  I haven't done it yet, but your posts here give me an extra push.  I look forward to whatever else you have to share about Seveneves (as long as there aren't too many spoilers!).

[Ambo Suno]

Cool, B.

It could make it tricky to report and comment more without spoilers since the story unfolds, even as a gross outline, in surprising to me ways.

Unless I hear otherwise from you, why don't I end my commentary without further plot sketch and with a couple of new themes introduced.

Game theory is being introduced - I won't say in what regard.

Well, I need to restrain myself from talking about what a detailed job he does in imagining future, along various lines.

As for the first part that I have already spoken a bit about, yes, there was strong personal psychological-plus resonance within me as to dying. Readers of course will differ in how they hear the story and in what inner realms and levels they are able to allow resonance.

Other primal stirrings might move in different degrees for different people. Physical space constraints of travel and bodily movement in activity may be an evoker or trigger - me, perhaps some echoes of archaic, prenatal, intrauterine, and birth process may have been stimulated. Is claustrophobia a felt sense in parts of this virtual living? Are some sorts of feelings of loss-of-limits-boundaries-contact dread brought foreground in other contexts of the story?

The question of human trait inheritance (the human genome archive as part of this) is elaborated with emphasis on epigenetics that 'unlocks' genetic potentials. Furthermore, selection processes are looked at, conscious-intentional and unconscious. Cultural narratives constitute one level of selection. And such. The novel makes a good vehicle for musing and learning.

Let me know if and when you get into it, Bruce, and others. It would be fun to hear if others are moved, or not, and in what ways.

[Ambo Suno]

Part of the Seveneves rendering of a space-craft-dwelling cluster or colony included some inflatable spaces. Here below from a news article is a quote that includes what is probably a related technology. Reality and fiction sometimes orbiting very closely around one another:

"The delivery vehicle was packed with about 7,000 pounds of food, supplies and science experiments, including a prototype inflatable habitat, bound for the orbital outpost."

The celebration of accomplishments noticed by news article itself point to solid space adventuring breakthroughs now happening.
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/spacex-launches-first-space-...