Seveneves

Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves is a hard science fiction novel published in 2015. The story is this: after an unexplained event shatters the Moon into fragments, the Earth becomes uninhabitable. Humankind must enter space to find a new means of survival. Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of science fiction, steampunk, and cyberpunk. His other notable works include Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.

The novel is set sometime in the near future, though the exact date is not specified. An unknown phenomenon causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. The fragments collide with each other, and astronomer “Doc” Dubois Harris explains that the collisions will increase. Soon, smaller fragments of the Moon will enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Within two years, those fragments will form what he calls a “Hard Rain” of meteors that will burn up in the atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere will become so hot, the oceans will boil away and the planet will become inhospitable to life.

As a result of Harris’s calculations, a decision is made to build a “Cloud Ark” that will evacuate 1,500 of the Earth’s people. This Ark may be a means of preserving the human race and preventing worldwide chaos. Every country draws lots for a small group of its young people to join the Ark. The Ark will take the form of “arklet” vessels small enough to avoid the debris from the Moon.



The Cloud Ark is constructed around the International Space Station, currently headed by astronaut Ivy Xiao. The space station is already bolted onto an asteroid called Amalthea and is partially protected from the Moon fragments. Engineer Dinah MacQuarie uses robots to excavate Amalthea to provide further protection for the station. The Ark must become self-sufficient enough to endure for 5,000 years—at which point Earth should be stable enough to be terraformed and turned into a habitable planet once more. There are hints, however, that the entire project is not really feasible; that it’s only intended to pacify people and give false hope.

A billionaire named Sean Probst, Dinah’s boss, realizes the Cloud Ark will need a source of water for its inhabitants to drink and to continue propelling the space station and preventing it from falling out of orbit. He starts a personal mission to extract ice from a comet, Greg’s Skeleton. He uses a nuclear reactor to power the mission and to heat the ice into steam.

As Doc Harris predicted, the Hard Rain begins two years after the Moon is destroyed. Some are able to find shelter, such as Dinah’s father, who takes shelter in an underground fortress, and Ivy’s fiancé, in an underwater bunker. All life left on the surface of the Earth is wiped out. US President Julia Flaherty gets herself on the Cloud Ark at the last minute, defying an agreement that world leaders were not to go. A man named Markus Leuker takes command of the ISS, wresting it from Ivy, and declares martial law.



The Human Genetic Archive had been sent to the Cloud Ark for preservation, but a nearby arklet passes too close to where it is stored and destroys most of it. Only the samples distributed among some of the arklets remain.

Residents of the Cloud Ark disagree about the best way to organize their new society. One faction wants to break away from the central hub of the ISS in favor of a decentralized swarm of arklets. They will occupy a higher orbit well out of the range of the Moon debris. Doc Harris suggests taking refuge in the “Cleft,” a crevasse on what remains of the Moon. Julia Flaherty starts to draw followers to her and raises support for the decentralization plan.

Sean Probst is on his way back from his mission. He has harnessed a comet and is bringing it back towards Earth’s orbit. However, fallout from the nuclear reactor causes radiation sickness, and he and his crew die aboard their vessel. Markus Leuker and Dinah travel to the comet, hoping to bring it back to the Cloud Ark themselves. The mission is successful, but Dinah is the sole survivor.



As she returns, Julia Flaherty persuades the other denizens to leave the ISS, adopt the decentralization plan, and send an expedition to Mars. Their impulsive departure causes damage to many parts of the ISS. These people also accidentally discard the remaining portions of the Human Genetic Archive. A digital version survives on the ISS. What remains of the station and the Cloud Ark are combined into one vessel, the Endurance, which sets course for the Cleft.

It takes three years for the Endurance to reach the Cleft. In that time, nearly all the population dies, whether from radiation-induced cancer, suicide, or meteor strikes. Meanwhile, Flaherty’s Swarm splits into further factions, which fight with each other. Flaherty’s faction is defeated. The Swarm runs out of food and the survivors resort to cannibalism. The leader of the victorious faction, Aïda, requests that the Endurance and the Swarm reunite, but secretly she plots to take control of the vessel. That battle reduces the population to just eight people, all women.

One woman is past menopause; the others are christened the “Seven Eves.” They have a genetics laboratory and enough resources to rebuild the human race through parthogenesis. Each “Eve” is given control over how to genetically modify her own offspring. Eventually, they predict they will form seven new races.



Part 3 takes place 5,000 years later. Three billion humans live in Earth’s orbit and are comprised of seven distinct races. These races have divided into two main factions, Red and Blue, engaged in a cold war. They are in the process of terraforming Earth and are able to recreate a breathable atmosphere and life-sustaining conditions. When they arrive, they discover they are not alone. Those members of Earth who burrowed beneath the surface were able to reproduce and sustain themselves. These form two additional races, “Diggers,” who mined beneath the Earth, and “Pingers,” who lived in submarines in ocean trenches.

This discovery causes chaos among the orbiting “Spacers.” Dinah’s descendants form an alliance with the Red faction, while descendants of Ivy’s fiancé team up with Blue. But other Diggers claim the Earth for their own, scorning the Spacers for having fled.

An epilogue reveals that a secret underwater ark was created along with the Cloud Ark that led to the Pingers. Ivy’s fiancé built this ark using the top-secret information in the backgrounds of the selfie photos she sent him. A man named Ty, who runs a bar in the Cleft, invites a representative from each of the Seven space races, along with one each from the Diggers and Pingers, to his apartments, hoping to form the first Nine.



The book was well-received, though some readers noted the science of the novel was much better than the plot and characterizations. Seveneves was nominated for a Hugo Award and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.