Seveneves: A Novel

"In the first line of Neal Stephenson’s newest epic, Seveneves, he goes old-school mad scientist and blows up the moon. Then he spends 900 pages tracking what that one moment means for the following 5,000 years of human history. Though at times dry and overly technical (you will never again be the fella at the party who knows the least about Soviet spacesuit design), Stephenson is writing a true hard sci-fi novel here. His science is thrillingly merciless, and he makes life and death in space about actual life and death — about the million things that will kill you and the two or three things that really smart people can do to stay alive."