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Eve's Hollywood (New York Review Books Classics)

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But to answer my own question... Yes and No. The first novel could easily have turned into an ultimate bummer. The second novel could stand on its own. Left to itself, the first novel would have absolutely needed some sort of machinery of god or perhaps the triumphant return of the assholes who had raced to Mars. It would have needed something, anyway, to satisfy the readers. We aren't reading traditional fiction. It wasn't a character study. If the only way to give the reader what s/he wants is to give us a resolution that doubles as a whole second novel, then I say, "Hell yes!"

First Edition from David Eves Books - AbeBooks

Using the ice comet, the remaining third of the Cloud Ark and the ISS (now dubbed Endurance) take three years to reach the Cleft, a Grand Canyon–sized crevasse on the now-exposed iron core of the Moon. By this time, Flaherty's Swarm has been decimated, resorting to cannibalism to survive, while fallout from Probst's ship has killed most of Endurance 's crew. The 11 Swarm survivors, led by a woman named Aïda, negotiate reuniting the Swarm with Endurance. However, fearing ostracism by the crew, Aïda starts a battle for control of Endurance that fails, but reduces the population even further. I felt that this part of the book might've been very over-optimistic, as far as humanity's ability to pull together in a common cause. It's difficult to call a book that portrays a disaster of the scope that we eventually see here as 'optimistic' in any way - but I still had that feeling. As the story opens the moon explodes into a number of big chunks for reasons that are unclear, though most likely it was hit by some space object. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”Annoying characters which I wanted to kill with my bare hands. Arhg! I hated them so much. They exploit and manipulate the others for their own interest. And the worst part, since their highest concern is saving their own ass, is that they usually survive. While good, noble characters die because they make willing sacrifices for the benefit of the human race. Okay, so the first two thirds of this was shaping up to be pretty much my favorite book ever, like if someone had called me up and said, "okay, we will get any author you name, and they will write exactly the book you would like to read, just give us a list of what you want."

Christmas Books at Great Value | The Works Christmas Books at Great Value | The Works

My quarrel with the book would be that sometimes, Stephenson gets bogged down in the hard technical stuff that he understands so well. Actually, he's got an almost Aspergian obsession with technical minutiae. In that sense, this reminded me of "The Martian", although "Seveneves" is a much better book. Or put another way, I thought that sometimes the details got in the way of the story instead of advancing it.

How good old tribalism poisons a technologically highly developed future space population, the results of it, the psychological and sociological effects of long time living in space environments, and how a very far future could look like, make it one of the most detailed and astonishing future visions, a bit similar to Kim Stanley Robinson´s work Red Mars. Because usually, there is much more action in such genre works, fractions, aliens, war, space battles, etc., but by just focusing on the key elements, Stephenson wants to explore, it gets much denser than the conventional sci-fi. Wow. That was definitely an experience. I have to hand it to Neal Stephenson; the amount of research time that went into this must have been insane. I mean, I have no idea how accurate any of the science actually is but, I mean, it sounded good. After the first few info-dumps, however, I just kept thinking to myself, "Yes, I get it! You're smart! I'm convinced!" I'm sure there are people who are into the nitty-gritty details about astrophysics, robotics, orbital mechanics, genetics, etc. etc. etc., but I'm just not one of those people. Thus, I was occasionally (sometimes more than occasionally) bored out of my mind. Some of it was legitimately interesting, most of it was not. I always have new possibilities to mentally explore whenever I read a Neal Stephenson book. It has never crossed my mind that the moon would ever blow up. I’ve thought about the Earth shattering or falling into the sun or splitting in half, all of course due in some way to human stupidity, but I’d never considered the ramifications of the moon...exploding.

Eve by William Paul Young | Goodreads Eve by William Paul Young | Goodreads

Of course, Neal Stephenson has a whole catalog of some of my absolute favorite reading list, so I'm amazingly biased here. There was much about the first story I enjoyed. The characters we met were well-written and interesting. I only wish there had been more of them. The few descriptions of the island and the refuge piqued my interest as did the mentions of the various workers, none of whom, unfortunately, were ever seen. If life on the island had been expanded upon, I would have enjoyed this book so much more.Neal, Stepheson. "Writer" (Video). The Seveneves Notebook. Neal Stephenson . Retrieved 6 June 2015. Teklans: Descendants of cosmonaut Tekla Alekseyevna Ilushina. Teklans have increased discipline and physical capabilities.

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