Seveneves

"LOOK AT THE MOON OR WHAT USED TO BE IT"

- Rufus MacQuarie, over Morse Code

Seveneves, a 2015 novel by Neal Stephenson, details the disintegration of the Moon and humanity's efforts to preserve humanity in its aftermath.


 * Abnormal Ammo: "ambots", or small robots designed to provide maximum damage to targets but none to the space habitats they may be in, prove invaluable during the five thousand years humanity is residing entirely in space. Some are even programmed to return to their shooter.


 * Adam and Eve Plot:


 * Apocalypse How: Class 5/Planetary Extinction, caused by the moon blowing up, but due to careful management and general science, is turned into a Class 2/Societal Collapse.


 * Alien Space Bats: The moon explodes "for no apparent reason", but this is glossed over (and justified) since the main concern isn't "why did this happen", but "what happens next".


 * Arc Number: Seven(eves)


 * Auto Cannibalism:


 * Brand X: Played with, since they also exist in their real-life counterparts back on Earth. For example, Skape (skype), and Spacebook (guess).


 * Bread and Circuses: It's generally accepted by the higher-ups that the Cloud Ark program is simply to placate the masses back on Earth to prevent riots with the promise that they will live on in their data and ethnic groups.


 * Cannibal Tribe:


 * Cloudcuckoolander: Sonar Taxlaw, although justified because


 * Cool Spaceship: Two examples - the Ymir, which was effectively a nuclear reactor strapped to a comet, which is fuelled with water from the comet itself and Endurance, which is an ice-composite shell containing the entirety of the ISS and an asteroid.


 * Cool Old Guy: Dr. Hu Noah


 * Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The Seven Races - Dinans are blue, Ivyns are green, Moirans are purple, Teklans are cyan, Camites are yellow, Julians are orange, Aïdans are red.


 * Cozy Catastrophe: Justified given that exponential things (like the moon blowing up) are fairly uneventful until they reach breaking point. Bread and Circuses are mostly successful in preventing riots in the buildup.


 * Culture Chop Suey: Downplayed, but the culture of the Seven Races in general is an amalgamation of Anglophone Western societies with a significant Russian influence.


 * Death From Above: The breakup of the Moon leads to the "Hard Rain", where countless bolides wipe out all life on earth.


 * Designer Babies: Justified in that it's required to prevent loss of heterozygosity.

"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
 * Detonation Moon: The driver for the plot. The novel even begins with


 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Two factions, one of which is "Red" and shown as the evil one, are locked in a cold war, including propaganda, proxy warfare, et cetera.


 * Evil All Along:


 * Evil Counterpart Race: The Aïdan subraces are made specifically to counteract the other races -
 * Aretaics are charming leaders, to combat Dinans,
 * Jinns are incredibly smart, to combat Ivyns,
 * Neoanders are natural-born brutes, to combat Teklans,
 * Extats are crazy, to combat Julians.


 * Eternal English: Played with. The "English" used by the Seven Races, even after thousands of years would still be recognizable to the original Eves, albeit with a decidedly Slavic bent and Cyrillic lettering.


 * Face Death with Dignity: Instead of committing mass suicide (although that does happen), humanity works to preserve as much of itself as possible in the two years before life on Earth is wiped out.


 * Fantastic Fighting Style: The Teklans and Neoanders are both well-versed in zero-gravity combat.


 * Fantastic Racism: Completely inevitable and somewhat justified/prophesized by Aïda.


 * Finagle's Law: Despite the effort that humanity gave to preserving itself,


 * First Contact: In the final part of the book,


 * Fling a Light Into the Future: The whole point of the Cloud Ark - priceless artefacts, frozen embryos and encoded DNA sent up into space to prevent their destruction by the bolides and ensure a future for humanity.


 * Fluffy the Terrible: What should we name the giant rocks that are going to eradicate humanity? How about Peach Pit, Lima Bean, Mr Spinny.


 * Glorious Mother Russia: Justified since


 * Heroic Sacrifice:


 * Hero of Another Story: Some decide to retreat underground or into ocean trenches to save themselves from the Hard Rain.


 * History Repeats:


 * Hufflepuff House: Camites, mostly due to


 * Human Subspecies: The Seven Races, Among them, the Dinans are the closest to "original/baseline" humanity.


 * I'm a Humanitarian: What else to do


 * Info Dump: About half the book. There's a lot to learn.


 * Jack of All Trades:


 * Lost Technology: Despite all the advances, microchips and wireless technology still haven't returned to pre-zero capabilities, mostly because smaller transistors are, despite being more powerful per square inch, more susceptible to destruction by cosmic rays - a big problem in space - and also since modern-day social media is blamed for, rather passive-aggressively known as "Tav's Mistake".


 * Meaningful Name: Most of the Spacers are named after important people, places and events from The Epic.


 * Men Are the Expendable Gender: Justified since women are generally more adaptable to life in space, requiring less food and being less susceptible to radiation,


 * Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: Five. Possibly the hardest science fiction book you'll ever read. Everything after the first sentence is rooted in scientific fact.


 * The Mole:


 * Moving Buildings: Justified, since everything's in space and that's how orbital mechanics work.


 * Mr. Exposition: Doc Dubois.


 * New Media Are Evil: To the point where it's described as "Tav's Mistake".


 * No Celebrities Were Harmed
 * African-American celebrity science personality Doc Dubois is Neil De Grasse Tyson, to the point where he's sent up to the ISS to report on all the science going on
 * Commercial space-enthusiast philanthropist Sean Probst is Elon Musk
 * Teenage activist and target of an assassination attempt Camila is Malala Yousafzai
 * Tech blogger Tavistock Prowse (of "Tav's Mistake") is Cory Doctorow
 * (Ex-)president of the USA Julia Bliss Flaherty (or JBF) is suspiciously similar to Hillary Clinton (presumably in a parallel universe where she won the 2016 election) or possibly Sarah Palin.


 * Our Presidents Are Different:


 * Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Maybe the fact that pushed people away from the idea of an omnibenevolent god.


 * President Evil:


 * Propaganda Machine: The Reds have a channel filled with propaganda which is their only means of contact with Blue.


 * Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Teklans and Neoanders.


 * Race Against the Clock: Two examples:
 * After the moon explodes, humanity has just about two years until the Hard Rain begins and life on Earth ends, causing a global craze to get everything into space.
 * At the Council of the Seven Eves, Dinah, fed up with the bickering, goes outside and sets off an detonation charge on the window - If they can't reach a compromise in ten minutes, the human race doesn't deserve the second chance. It takes three.


 * Ragnarok Proofing: Anything that was to survive the Hard Rain.


 * Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Aïda's curse, although it took a few millennia to come to be.


 * Sex Is Good: Especially given the world's going to end.


 * Sex Is Evil:


 * Shout Out: There is a Dr. Hu, who wears a scarf.


 * Speculative Fiction: It's Neal Stephenson, after all.


 * Sophisticated As Hell: A long description of the mass-to-fuel ratio required for any trip into space, concludes that if you are on the wrong side of the ratio, you're "completely screwed."


 * Space Elevator: Although it's more of a Space Spinning-Stick.