Book Log 2015 #28: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

If you ever wondered what would happen if the moon suddenly broke into several large pieces, this book is for you.

As it turns out, having the moon break into several large pieces would be a bad thing. The large pieces, as they collide with each other, would create smaller pieces, and at some point in that process the smaller pieces would start to fall to Earth. And not stop for several hundred years (if not longer). In this case, the people of Earth have comparatively little time - two or three years at most - to figure out the best way to save whatever remnant of humanity it can.

That takes up a majority of the book, with the eventual plan threatened at every turn by the venality of politicians and the dangers of living and working in space. Orbital mechanics is involved. A lot.

Move forward 5000 years. A new human civilization (or, maybe more accurately, seven new human civilizations) based in space is beginning to reinhabit an Earth. But it's not going as smoothly as it appears, as seen when a landing party investigates what's behind some mysterious sightings in one part of the planet.

It's an epic work on an epic scale (what was the last book Stephenson wrote that was under 800 pages?), and it is very entertaining. Still not sure I fully buy how things turned out in the future (that the seven Eves of the title would lead to seven human races with noticeable distinctions between the seven), but the combination of genetic engineering and time (and Stephenson's imagination) doesn't put that out of reach. Probably his best book since Cryptonomicon.