{"id":19287,"date":"2016-08-12T20:35:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T12:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/obama-puts-neal-stephensons-sci-fi-tale-seveneves-on-his-summer-reading-list\/"},"modified":"2016-08-12T20:35:11","modified_gmt":"2016-08-12T12:35:11","slug":"obama-puts-neal-stephensons-sci-fi-tale-seveneves-on-his-summer-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/obama-puts-neal-stephensons-sci-fi-tale-seveneves-on-his-summer-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama puts Neal Stephenson\u2019s sci-fi tale \u2018Seveneves\u2019 on his summer reading list"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_214980\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-214980\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-214980 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/seveneves-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Seveneves\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/seveneves-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/seveneves-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/seveneves-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/seveneves.jpg 588w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-214980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cSeveneves\u201d by Neal Stephenson. (Credit: William Morrow)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Seattle science-fiction author Neal Stephenson\u2019s tale about the moon\u2019s destruction and what happens next, \u201cSeveneves,\u201d has won a place on President Barack Obama\u2019s summer reading list.<\/p>\n<p>Obama, who\u2019s beginning his summer vacation on Martha\u2019s Vineyard, isn\u2019t the only one&nbsp;who has put Stephenson\u2019s&nbsp;880-page novel on a short list. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates put it on his summer&nbsp;reading list in May. And let the record show that I featured the 2015 book in my holiday book guide last December.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeveneves\u201d is the latest dense-with-detail saga from the author of \u201cSnow Crash,\u201d \u201cThe Diamond Age,\u201d \u201cCryptonomicon,\u201d \u201cAnathem,\u201d \u201cReamde\u201d and the Baroque Cycle. Obama might&nbsp;want to pay attention to what happens to the fictional U.S. president after she finds out that the moon has been blasted apart and Earth appears doomed. (Spoiler alert: It\u2019s not pretty.)<\/p>\n<p>Stephenson has lived in Seattle for decades. Every once in a while, he\u2019ll take on a non-book-related project, like helping out Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture or the Magic Leap augmented-reality company. He\u2019s known to tap out the occasional tweet. But he generally takes a low public profile, all the better to focus on his writing.<\/p>\n<p>Among the projects reportedly on his radar screen are a historical time-travel book that he\u2019s co-writing with Nicole Galland, and a screen adaptation of \u201cSeveneves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Bill Gates and the man who blew up the moon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2ilFv64KdC0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If Obama is aiming to finish&nbsp;\u201cSeveneves\u201d and the other books on his list during his vacation, he may have a hard time tearing himself away for golf. Here are the four other volumes the president is putting in his luggage:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u2018Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life\u2019<\/strong> by William Finnegan. A Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir by an obsessive surfer who travels the globe.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u2018The Underground Railroad\u2019<\/strong> by Colson Whitehead. An Oprah\u2019s Book Club novel about&nbsp;a young slave\u2019s bid for freedom in the antebellum South.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u2018H Is for Hawk\u2019<\/strong> by Helen Macdonald. The naturalist and falconer weaves a story about grief and the goshawk that brought her back into the world.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u2018The Girl on the Train\u2019<\/strong> by Paula Hawkins. A psychological thriller told from three points of view, soon to be a major motion picture.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cSeveneves\u201d by Neal Stephenson. (Credit: William Morrow) Seattle science-fiction author Neal Stephenson\u2019s tale about the moon\u2019s destruction and what happens next, \u201cSeveneves,\u201d has won a place on President Barack Obama\u2019s summer reading list. Obama, who\u2019s beginning his summer vacation on Martha\u2019s Vineyard, isn\u2019t the only one&nbsp;who has put Stephenson\u2019s&nbsp;880-page novel on a short list. Microsoft [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5493,4418,5304,4895,4482,5305,21],"class_list":["post-19287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-books","tag-neal-stephenson","tag-science","tag-science-fiction","tag-seveneves","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}