[usrusr]

I kind of liked how openly seveneves seemed to be about building some fantasy world for stories (or perhaps even for some video game or p&p rpg, with a number of clearly cut out character classes?), then getting gloriously sidetracked in the background explanation story and finally accepting that the world just built isn't remotely as interesting as that background explanation story. It's as if at some point half way through he realized just how much he was being "typical Neil Stephenson" and decided to go with it, to ten-up himself.

That last part almost seems like a form of trolling, the smallest viable story to claim "I had you on a sidetrack all the time and you did not even notice"