Seveneves

When a novel has the premise that everyone on Earth is going to die in two years, it's strange to feel that it's somehow timely. Yet I certainly thought it was apt for current affairs when reading the rapid reaction, or sometimes failure to react well, of the characters in this book when confronted with an all consuming crisis. At least for someone who loves detailed descriptions of propellant use, the most exciting and heartening parts of the novel are the technical challenges in keeping people alive. The most disconcerting are the political dynamics that threaten to upend the entire project. At a time when I'd love to think that we can exert some collective, coordinated action to address pressing problems, it's a reminder that there's a lot of potential and a lot of challenges remaining.

As a story, Seveneves benefits from tremendous imagination and beautiful description of the unfamiliar environments and the ways that characters navigate them. The characters themselves are sometimes hard to follow (there are many!) but it's compelling enough to keep you page-turning. I think if there was one weakness, it'd be that the neatness is just a bit overdone. By the end, it feels like everything tied together in a way that could be amazing, but feels a little bit forced. I take it as a reminder that while plotlines can resolve themselves in an elegant way in fiction, it rarely will in reality.