Point of View

While Seveneves (whose title is a palindrome, befitting the book's circular narrative) is written in third-person omniscient POV, its perspective is as ever-shifting as the uncertain hour-to-hour—occasionally moment-to-moment—existence of the characters. Science-Fiction readers will have an easier reading experience than will general readers, but Stephenson's hyper-visual eye manages to be both insightful and cuttingly entertaining.

The author's employing conventional past-tense (as opposed to the "edgy" present-tense of much recent speculative fiction) narrative anchors an already dangerously overloaded storytelling vessel. Perspectives jump from an asteroid-mining robot's live video-feed to a dying astronaut's battle against a misdirected thruster, to the Cloud Ark crew witnessing both while forced to maintain technical control. Unusual viewpoints are frequent: stars flaring beyond a dime-sized hull puncture seen by a character frantically searching for something to plug the hole. Champagne jetting from a christening bottle in the hard vacuum of...