Review: _Seveneves:_ A splendid, riveting science fiction tale.

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One of my favourite science fiction authors is Neal Stephenson, and I've been hooked on him since I read his book, _Snow Crash._ I've been keeping an eye out for anything new by him, and while it might take a little while to get around to reading it, it will be read. _Seveneves_ opens with a literal bang -- the Moon explodes, shattering into seven chunks. One of the shocked witnesses is a scientist named Doc Dubois in his public persona as a talking head on television. In reality, he's a well-respected astronomer, and in the fracturing of the moon, he sees something terrible in the future.. Aboard the International Space Station, irreverently known as Izzy, two women take a very focused interest in what has happened. There's not just the emotional impact, but real danger of being hit by the remnants. While Ivy runs the ISS, Dinah is busy with exploring the asteroid Amalthea, which is anchored to one end of the station. Her helpers are small robots that she keeps running and communicating with. On the Earth, the news becomes very grim, as the massive chunks of lunar rock collide and become smaller pieces, and start to rain down on the planet. Unfortunately for humanity, they have two years to try and save themselves before the White Sky event -- so much debris raining down that the sky will be ablaze with meteorites and the Earth catches fire... That is -all- that I am going to say about the plot here. In the opening pages, as the inevitable extinction of humanity and all life on Earth is assured, I couldn't put the book down. There are plenty of characters to keep track of -- from Moira, a fellow scientist on the ISS, Julia the President of the US and one of the most nasty characters that I have ever met, and Tekla, a Russian astronaut who is one of the best characters I've run into. Despite the quickly paced action, and the very involved plot, I didn't have any problem at all of keeping track of everyone. The science here is very solid, and while Stephenson does have a lot of sections where he steps back and explains what is going on, I didn't mind that at all. Yes, I am a bit of a nerd. Ahem. What I really enjoyed was that it all made sense, and is quite possible given our technology today. While we never do find out what caused the Moon to break up, it does not matter. The story takes a much more immediate turn as every character has a much more immediate problem -- survival. The conflicts do get to be shocking at times, and each step is very logical and inevitable. Depending on your fancy, you'll get plenty of character development, conflict, insights and some truly heartbreaking moments. In Summing up, this is the sort of science fiction novel that rocks. It had plenty of imagination and world building along with some truly unnerving events. The sheer size of the novel may be intimidating to some, coming in at close to 900 pages on my Nook, but it was worth it. Four and a half stars, rounding up to five, from me. This was nominated for the Hugo -- best science fiction novel of 2016 -- and sadly, didn't win. But it's one of the better books that I have read so far this year. Recommended. Seveneves Neal Stephenson 2015; William Morrow ISBN 978-0-06-219037-6