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Friday, August 14, 2015

Reading List: Seveneves

Stephenson, Neal. Seveneves. New York: William Morrow, 2015. ISBN 978-0-06-219037-6.
Fiction writers are often advised to try to immediately grab the attention of readers and involve them in the story. “If you haven't hooked them by the end of the first chapter, you've probably lost 'em.” Here, the author doesn't dawdle. The first line is “The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.” All right, now that's an interesting premise!

This massive novel (880 pages in the hardcover print edition) is divided into three parts. In the first, after the explosion of the Moon, scientist and media talking head Dubois Jerome Xavier Harris (“Doob”), a figure much like Neil deGrasse Tyson in real life, calculates that the seven large fragments of the exploded moon will collide with one another, setting off an exponential cascade of fragmentation and further collisions like the Kessler syndrome for objects in low Earth orbit, with enough the scattered debris bombarding the Earth to render its surface uninhabitable for on the order of five thousand years.

The story begins in the near future, when the International Space Station (“Izzy”) has been augmented with some additional facilities and a small nickel-iron asteroid retrieved and docked to it for asteroid mining experiments. Technology is much as at the present, but with space-based robotics having advanced significantly. Faced with what amounts to a death sentence for the Earth (the heat from the impacts was expected to boil off much of the oceans and eject the atmosphere into space), and having only around two years before the catastrophic bombardment begins, spacefaring nations make plans to re-purpose Izzy as a “Cloud Ark” to preserve the genetic heritage of the Earth and the intellectual capital of humanity against the time when the home planet can again be made habitable. Thus begins a furious technological crash project, described in detail, working against an inexorable deadline, to save what can be saved and launch it to the fragile ark in space.

Eventually the catastrophe arrives, and the second part of the novel chronicles the remnant of humanity on the Cloud Ark, with Izzy as its core, and most of the population in co-orbiting rudimentary habitats. From the start there are major technical challenges to overcome, with all involved knowing that high technology products from Earth such as silicon chips and laboratory equipment may not be able to be replaced for centuries, if ever. The habitat ecosystem must be closed, as there will be no resupply. And, people being people, the society of the survivors begins to fragment into factions, each with its own priorities and ideas about how to best proceed. Again, there is much technological derring-do, described in great detail (including one of the best explanations of the fundamentals of orbital mechanics I've encountered in fiction). The heroic exploits of the survivors are the stuff of legend, and become the legends of their descendents.

Part three of the novel picks up the story five thousand years later, when the descendants of the Cloud Ark have constructed a mature spacefaring civilisation, tapping resources of the solar system, and are engaged in restoring the Earth, now that the bombardment has abated, to habitability. The small population of the Cloud Ark has put the human race through a serious genetic bottleneck with the result that the species has differentiated into distinct races, each with its own traits and behavioural characteristics, partly determined by genetics and partly transmitted culturally. These races form alliances and conflict with one another, with humanity having sorted itself into two factions called Red and Blue (gee, how could such a thing happen?) which have largely separated into their own camps. But with possession of the Earth at stake, Red and Blue have much to dispute, especially when enigmatic events on that planet call into the question their shared history.

This is a rather curious book. It is so long and intricate that there's room for a lot in here, and that's what the reader gets. Some of it is the hardest of hard science fiction, with lengthy technical explanations which may make those looking for a fast moving story yawn or doze off. (In fact, there are parts where it seems like the kind of background notes science fiction authors make to flesh out their worlds and then include random portions as the story plays out have, instead, been dumped wholesale into the text. It's as if Obi-Wan shows Luke his father's light sabre, then spends ten minutes explaining the power pack, plasma containment system, field generator, and why it makes that cool sound when you wave it around.) The characters seem to be archetypes of particular personality traits and appear to be largely driven by them rather than developing as they face the extraordinary challenges with which they're presented, and these stereotypes become increasingly important as the story unfolds.

On balance, I'm glad I read this book. It's a solid, well-told yarn which will make you think about just how humans would respond faced with a near-term apocalypse and also whether, given how fractious and self-destructive they often are, whether they are likely to survive or, indeed, deserve to. I believe a good editor could have cut this manuscript in half, sacrificing nothing of importance, and making the story move along more compellingly.

And now there are a number of details about the novel which I cannot discuss without spoiling the plot and/or ending, so I'll take them behind the curtain. Do not read the following unless you've already read the novel or are certain you will never do so.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.  
At the start of the novel the nickel-iron asteroid “Amalthea” has been docked to Izzy for experiments in asteroid mining. This asteroid is described as if “laid to rest on a soccer field, it would have stretched from one penalty box to the other and completely covered the center circle.” Well, first of all, this is not the asteroid 113 Amalthea of our solar system, which is a much larger rocky main belt asteroid—46 km in size. Why one would name an asteroid brought to the space station the same as a very different asteroid known since 1871 escapes me. Given that the space station does various maneuvers in the course of the story, I was curious about the mass of the asteroid. Assuming it is a prolate ellipsoid of revolution with semi-principal axes of 9.15, 9.15, and 36 metres (taken from the dimensions of a standard soccer field), its volume would be 12625 m³ and, assuming the standard density of 5.32 g/cm³ for metallic asteroids, would have a mass of 67170 tonnes, which is 1.3 times the mass of the Titanic. This is around 150 times the present mass of the International Space Station, so it would make maneuvers, especially those done later in the book, rather challenging. I'm not saying it's impossible, because complete details of the propulsion used aren't given, but it sure looks dodgy, and even more after the “megaton of propellant” mentioned on p. 493 is delivered to the station.

On p. 365 Izzy is said to be in an orbit “angled at about fifty-six degrees to the equator”. Not so; its inclination is 51.6°.

On p. 74 the arklets are said to “draw power from a small, simple nuclear reactor fueled by isotopes so radioactive that they would throw off heat, and thereby generate electricity, for a few decades.” This is describing a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, not a nuclear reactor. Such generators are usually powered by plutonium-238, which has a half-life of 87.7 years. How would such a power source sustain life in the arklets for the five thousand years of exile in space? Note that after the Hard Rain, resources to build new nuclear reactors or solar panels would not be available to residents of the Cloud Ark.

When the Ymir makes its rendezvous with Izzy, it jettisons its nuclear reactor to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Why would you discard such an irreplaceable power source? If you're worried about radiation, place it into a high, stable orbit where it can be retrieved for use later if needed. Humans could expect no further source of nuclear fuel for thousands of years.

The differentiation of the races of humanity in the final part of the novel strikes me as odd and, in a way, almost racist. Now, granted, genetic manipulation was involved in the creation of these races, but there seems to be a degree of genetic (with some help from culture) predestination of behavioural traits which, if attributed to present-day human races, would exclude one from polite discourse. I think the story would have been made more interesting if one or more members of these races was forced by circumstances to transcend their racial stereotypes.

The technology, or lack thereof, in the final part of the book is curious. Five thousand years have elapsed, and the Cloud Ark population has recovered to become a multi-racial space-dwelling society of three billion people, capable of mega-engineering projects humans today can only dream of, utilising resources of the solar system out to the Kuiper belt. And yet their technology seems pretty much what we expect to see within this century, and in some ways inferior to our own. Some of this is explained by deliberate relinquishment of technology (“Amistics”, referring to the Amish), but how likely is it that all races and cultures would agree not to develop certain technologies, particularly when in conflict with one another?

I loved the “Srap Tasmaner”. You will too, once you figure it out.

Given that the Moon blew up, why would an advanced spacefaring civilisation with a multitude of habitats be so interested in returning to a planet, deep in a gravity well, which might itself blow up some day?

Spoilers end here.  

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