Part Two begins with the Hard Rain watching the destruction of Earth and transitioning into a new beginning for humanity. Who gets to be saved, how they get to be saved, and their role in the future of mankind becomes the driving storyline for most of this section.
The International Space Station becomes the heart of a structure called the Cloud Ark – a system of many small spaceships which will hopefully survive catastrophe.
It’s a terrifying scenario, and considering the Hard Rain is supposed to begin within two years, one that will spell the end of humanity.įrom here the book is split into three parts: Part One is preparing for the end, with the resources of the entire planet expended to put as many people up into space as possible. These will eventually succumb to Earth’s gravity as a “Hard Rain” - burning the entire surface of the planet, and destroying all life. Just a frightening curiosity at first, it soon becomes clear that the pieces of moon are going to continue spinning, colliding, and breaking into smaller pieces. An unknown “agent” (it’s never discovered if it’s manmade, natural, or alien in origin) splits the moon into seven large chunks. The book begins in our very near future, when our moon…breaks up. It’s the kind of book where it’s an investment of time that you hope pays off. Even then, I listened to the audio version, read by two different performers and clocking in at 32 hours. I saw other reviews of this 880-page monster from people I trusted, but with a busy summer I didn’t get around to reading this before now. That moment happened to me so often in Neal Stephenson’s “Seveneves” that I was starting to worry I had a problem. One of my favorite moments is when a science fiction book has immersed you so completely in that world that when you look up from it, you’re startled to see that the world you’re actually in is still…well, exactly what it was when you started reading.
Audio read by Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron, 32 hours.
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