In the first sentence of the book, the Moon blew up. And soon everyone knew
what kind of disaster would happen next. It is a shocking first chapter
indeed, but the book only gets better from here. Like a thought experiment,
here is the initial condition and here is a systemic shock, and now let’s
see how the system will go and change from here, in great detail. Actually
Neal Stephenson went on for 800+ of pages of detailed world-building, with
some brilliant twists and turns of the plot as well.
The book is definitely sci-fi, but it is kind of funny that the technologies
described in 2 of the 3 sections of the book are not speculative or
futuristic. They are actually today’s existing tech put into a hypothetical
disaster scenario. Stephenson showed us what amazing things those
technologies can achieve, e.g. bringing the ice core of a solar comet back
using some nuclear steam-punk set-up. The name of the book is awesome too; a
blatant spoiler right in front of the reader’s eyes, but all secrets are
kept well until the reader realizes what it actually means... And then, BOOM
~ 5000 years later...Despite the book is all about details, still a lot of
details in the book are in fact left out unsubstantiated (let's say ... half
?). Well, the world is built, maybe more books about that world will come
later. I certainly hope.
Behind his 800+ pages of technical calculations and space maneuvers, and
5000+ years of disaster, survival, evolution and development (all logically
deducted from scientific facts and theories), Stephenson was actually an
extreme optimist of the capacity of human race. The Spacers, the Pingers,
and the Diggers all survived the hard rain. This puts the success rate of
the types of “arks” to at least 75%. And if the Martians somehow managed
as well (for some reason we were not told whether they made it or not), the
rate will be a mind-blowing 100%. That, together with that there were no
major conflicts/wars/chaos before the Hard Rain (yeah, Venezuelan Navy was
nuked, but it was sort of OK...), are something only the most optimistic of
human race could write.
Another thing interesting is that at the beginning of the book, Stephenson
gave the “power” that broke the Moon into pieces a name – “Agent”. And
then 5000 years later it was resonated by a movement of the spacers called
“Purpose”. The words don’t appear often in the story, just mentioned a
few times here and there. While reading, I felt there was something behind
these names – something either conspiracy-like or alien-related. But in the
end there was not. I don't feel cheated though. The truth is that shit
happens. Good or bad, disaster or miracle, they are simply results of
randomness of our universe. People sometimes find it hard to accept the
randomness and want to find some “reason” or “purpose” behind them. They
coin terms and develop theories to satisfy their minds and direct their
efforts and behaviors. All these are just human nature and there might not
be much more than that, though Stephenson did subtly acknowledge some of the
benefit of this reason/purpose-seeking in the book. Being a sort of an
atheist, I found myself in agreement with him on this part.
Rating: 5/5.
Favorite details of the book: Dinah bringing Ymir back alone. Moirans’
ability of going “epi”.
