{"id":12642,"date":"2015-05-24T14:26:15","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T14:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/nprbooks-neal-stephenson-can-be-a-divisive\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T17:27:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T00:27:15","slug":"nprbooks-neal-stephenson-can-be-a-divisive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/nprbooks-neal-stephenson-can-be-a-divisive\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-12642 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/nprbooks-neal-stephenson-can-be-a-divisive\/attachment\/12643\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_nopiah98MA1scp23ko1_640-100x100.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/nprbooks-neal-stephenson-can-be-a-divisive\/attachment\/12644\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_nopiah98MA1scp23ko2_1280-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nprbooks.tumblr.com\/post\/119616084208\/neal-stephenson-can-be-a-divisive-writer-his\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">nprbooks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Neal Stephenson can be a divisive writer \u2013 his science is, indeed, merciless, but some readers feel it can overwhelm his storytelling. Our reviewer Jason Sheehan has some choice thoughts:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the beginning of Neal Stephenson\u2019s newest epic,Seveneves. And in terms of opening hooks, it\u2019s up there. I mean, he isn\u2019t destroying L.A. or merely reducing some single nation to slag. No, Stephenson goes old-school mad scientist \u2014 straight for the pulp main vein and buried Saturday morning memories of Thundarr the Barbarian still ticking along in the heads of his audience, and blows up the moon.<\/p>\n<p>But then, this is a Neal Stephenson book (a modernStephenson book, meaning post-Snow Crash\/Diamond Age and, therefore, kind of post-fun) which means that the world as presented, moon or no moon, isn\u2019t really the same as ours anyway. It\u2019s a drier world, a rigidly mapped and exhaustively cataloged one where the first 565 pages read less like the script for an awesome moon-wrecking Michael Bay blow-em-up than a primer on global disaster preparedness.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Still, he says,\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>While most hard science fiction writers would concern themselves solely with explaining something like how their star destroyers make the jump to light speed, Stephenson is discussing (likely for 20 pages) how to keep the janitors on the Death Star from getting osteoporosis. His science is merciless. Hard like diamonds, and murderous in the extreme. Where most hard SF really means \u201ca bunch of ray guns, then some talk about wormholes,\u201d he plays with hard ballistics, hard genetics, hard sociology. And what thrills me, is that he makes it interesting. That he makes life and death in space about actual life and death \u2014 about the million things that will kill you and the two or three things that really smart people can do to stay alive.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Check out the whole review:<b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2015\/05\/20\/407079232\/seveneves-blows-up-the-moon-and-thats-just-the-beginning?utm_source=tumblr.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=business&amp;utm_term=nprnews&amp;utm_content=20150522\">\u2018Seveneves\u2019 Blows Up The Moon \u2014 And That\u2019s Just The Beginning<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Petra<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>nprbooks: Neal Stephenson can be a divisive writer \u2013 his science is, indeed, merciless, but some readers feel it can overwhelm his storytelling. Our reviewer Jason Sheehan has some choice thoughts: \u201cThe moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason.\u201d That\u2019s the beginning of Neal Stephenson\u2019s newest epic,Seveneves. And in terms of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3hU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12645,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12642\/revisions\/12645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}