Chi-SF: Seveneves

For September's meeting, the Chicago Speculative Fiction Community met up to discuss Neal Stephenson's newest: his 2015 novel "Seveneves".

"Seveneves" is Stephenson's hardest and most classically science fictional story to date; the first half of the book is survival-oriented, space-tech heavy, and has a thriller-ish page-flipping quality; the last section is a far-future tale that reminded us a bit of an updated golden age SF adventure, like something by Heinlein or Anderson or the like.

General consensus was that this is a smashingly good book, easily one of the best SF novels of recent years, at least.

So this isn't a spoiler, because it happens in the first sentence: THE MOON BLOWS UP! More substantial spoilers, and a really good discussion, after the jump:

Notes & Quotes from Neal Stephenson's Printer's Row Talk

Photo from the Printer's Row
Twitter feed.

This past weekend was my first time at the Printer's Row Lit Fest: a lovely affair downtown, lots of books & printed sundries, lots of authors, all kinda good stuff.

I was particularly excited to see Neal Stephenson; I've really dug a lot of his work and recently got a chance to read an advance copy of his new novel "Seveneves" through the good graces of City Lit Books (whose Weird & Wonderful club recently discussed Stephenson's "Snow Crash").

"Seveneves" is truly delightful, particularly for fans of Teh Hard Ess Eff: it opens with a huge bang, Earth basically doomed within a short timeframe, and humans rush to get a viable colony in space. That's the first 500 pages or so--then the narrative jumps five thousand years ahead to show how things are going. It's really gripping if you're into this kind of thing--high amounts of realism, long passages on bits of space tech & orbital maneuvers, lots of brutal/fatalistic/pragmatic bits. And ultimately pretty hopeful, with lots of pleasing weirdness and Stephenson's delightful style--sort of droll and gonzo in equal measures, with some eyeball-kicking metaphor mixed in.

Most of the questions from the audience and "conversation with"-ist Christopher Borrelli revolved around the new novel, with a few others. Just a couple paraphrased highlights:

Weird & Wonderful: Snow Crash

At last month's Weird & Wonderful discussion of Max Barry's "Lexicon" (2013), we decided we pretty much had to read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" (1992): "Lexicon"'s core mechanic of neuro-linguistic hacking seems to be borrowed or at least inspired by "Snow Crash", or at any rate from similar sources.

Furthermore, "Snow Crash" is just delightful, really bonkers, and either the apotheosis of the cyberpunk movement or its satiric denouement, one really can't tell. The novel is laughably hard to summarize: the search for the cure to an ancient alien mega-virus that manifests in biological, linguistic/religious, and computerized forms, set in a tech-filled, corporate-franchised/libertarian-anarchic vision of America (and also an elaborate virtual world, the Metaverse), by a hacker-prince/master swordsman named Hiro Protagonist and a 15 year-old skateboard courier named Yours Truly, all of which packaged with a hundred or so pages of Sumerian mythology and a healthy dose of early Christian (alt-?) history; other key players include a mutant obsidian knife-wielding superman named Raven, the Mafia (and they're the good guys!), and a supersonic radioactive pit bull cyborg . Whew! If that doesn't sell you, I don't know what to say. Possible spoilers below!