Ever wonder how Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk—you know, supercool and competent guys worth celebrating—would fare in an apocalyptic event? Boy do I have the novel for you!
I kept contrasting this with Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem trilogy. Both are interested in how humanity responds to extinction, but whereas Liu is preoccupied with questions of sociology and psychology—how societies, and not just human ones, might evolve in reaction to such a threat—Stephenson just wants to describe a dang girder. His heroes are all the same plucky, fundamentally uncomplicated doers with not-so-subtle Galtian undertones. But Stephenson is not interested in people. He is interested in systems, and particularly the kind of systems that large accumulations of capital located within a few hundred miles of his hometown Seattle might create. As ever, he is their once and truest muse.
Actually: I gave up and stopped reading this.
