So much depends on how these fragments interact and inevitably collide (in turn creating more fragments, thereby increasing the complexity of the required calculations exponentially).

Individual fragments of the moon are described in loving detail, many even getting their own names, a creative choice the reader comes to realize is both necessary and appropriate, given how important these moon pieces are to the plot. But for the first 600 pages or so, what he mainly seems interested in are the most literal kinds of ramifications, setting up his initial conditions and then meticulously working out the particulars of his invented premise. Stephenson does eventually get around to some of those ideas, especially in later sections of the book. What would be the ramifications for every aspect of society, including economics, governance, the rule of law, privacy and security, not to mention even more fundamental matters like reproductive rights, religion and belief? In his latest, “Seveneves,” Stephenson applies his skills to a scenario like the one described above: What if Earth’s moon suddenly and spontaneously broke apart into seven large pieces? What would happen to life on Earth? It’s an intriguing premise, one that could conceivably go in any number of interesting directions. If that gauge also applies to writers, then Stephenson hits the mark: His novels are actually comparable to phone books and they still manage to be entertaining.

Sometimes it is said of an actor that he is so skilled, he could read from the phone book and make it interesting. Which is not to say the sheer quantity of his work implies anything negative about the quality. The author of “Snow Crash” and “Cryptonomicon,” and many other similarly imposing books in the past couple of decades, Stephenson seems to know how to do things in exactly one way: all the way. This is not a writer who does things in half-measures. Readers of Stephenson’s previous work definitely know what I mean. There’s just no way he wouldn’t do a good job, you know what I mean? Or, at the very least, an astoundingly thorough job. If the moon ever disintegrates, causing Earth to become a fiery hellscape for several thousand years, and we can select only a few hundred humans to entrust with the survival and repropagation of the species, I vote for Neal Stephenson to be one of those humans.

Pearls pastis