At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown agent causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially. A large number of moon fragments will begin entering Earth's atmosphere, forming a "white sky" and blanketing the earth within two years with what he calls a "Hard Rain" of bolides; this will cause the atmosphere to heat to incandescence and oceans to boil away, destroying the biosphere and rendering Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years. It is decided to evacuate as many people and resources as possible to a "Cloud Ark" in orbit, including a "swarm" of "arklet" habitats that will be able to avoid the debris from the moon—both to attempt to preserve the human race and to give the remaining doomed inhabitants of Earth something to hope for, to prevent civil disorder from breaking out on Earth before its surface is destroyed. Each nation on Earth is invited to choose by lot a small number of young people to become eligible to join the Cloud Ark.

The Cloud Ark is to be based around the International Space Station (ISS), currently commanded by American astronaut Ivy Xiao. The ISS is already bolted onto an iron Arjuna asteroid called Amalthea, which provides some protection against moon debris. Robots are used to excavate Amalthea to provide more protection in a project run by mining and robotics engineer Dinah MacQuarie. Technicians and specialists, including Doc Dubois, are sent to the ISS in advance of the Hard Rain to prepare it to become the headquarters of the Cloud Ark.

The plan is that the Cloud Ark must be self-sufficient for 5,000 years and capable of repopulating Earth once it is habitable again. A Human Genetic Archive is sent to the Cloud Ark, with the intention that it will be used to rebuild the human population. Approximately 1,500 people are launched into space in the two years before the Hard Rain begins.

Suspecting that some architects of the Cloud Ark are interested only in pacifying Earth's inhabitants with false hope (rather than creating an environment that will actually survive in the long term), a billionaire named Sean Probst realizes that the Cloud Ark will need a ready supply of water in order to provide propellant for the space station and to prevent it from eventually falling into the earth's atmosphere. He embarks on a two-year expedition to extract ice from a comet nicknamed Greg's Skeleton, using a nuclear reactor to provide power to bring it back towards Earth.

The Hard Rain begins approximately two years after the destruction of the moon as predicted; human civilization as well as nearly all life on Earth is obliterated, although some try to take shelter underground (such as Dinah's father) or in the deep ocean (such as Ivy's fiancé). Markus Leuker, appointed leader of the Cloud Ark, declares all nations of Earth to be dissolved, and imposes martial law under the Cloud Ark Constitution. Despite a worldwide agreement that members of government will not be launched into space, the President of the United States, Julia Bliss Flaherty, manages to get herself sent to the Cloud Ark at the last minute. Shortly afterwards the main cache of the physical Human Genetic Archive attached to the ISS is ruined by the thrusters of an arklet passing too closely, leaving only samples that had been distributed amongst the arks.

There is disagreement on the Cloud Ark about the best way to organize its society and avoid the debris of the moon. Some "Arkies" favor converting the Cloud Ark into a decentralized swarm of small space vessels at a higher orbit out of range of debris, rather than maintaining the central authority of the ISS. Doc Dubois wants to shelter in the "Cleft", a crevasse on the now-exposed iron core of the moon. Others want to go to Mars. Julia Flaherty starts to acquire a coterie of followers and encourages the proponents of the decentralized swarm plan.

Sean Probst's expedition has succeeded, and he has brought a comet into an orbit that will soon pass by Earth. His radio has failed and he has built a replacement by hand, and is able to communicate with Dinah MacQuarie by Morse code. However, he and his party die of radiation sickness caused by fallout from their nuclear reactor long before the expedition is complete. Markus Leuker and Dinah travel to the comet with a small crew to take control of it and bring it back to the Cloud Ark, in order to provide sufficient propellant to reach the Cleft on the moon's core. Just before Dinah returns with the ice as the sole survivor of the mission, Julia Flaherty persuades the majority of the population to abandon the ISS and move to higher orbit in a decentralized swarm, and sends a preliminary expedition to Mars. In the course of their sudden, unauthorized departure the ISS sustains catastrophic damage to many sections. The surviving portions of the Human Genetic Archive are carried along with them, but due to the Arkies' ignorance, these surviving portions are discarded or ignored. Only the digital version of the Human Genetic Archive survives aboard the ISS. The ISS and remaining third of the cloud ark combine through reshaping the ice into a support structure, and is rechristened Endurance.

During the three years that it takes for Endurance to reach the Cleft, the majority of its population die of various causes (cancer caused by cosmic radiation, suicide, bolide strikes, etc.); by the time they are within range of the Cleft, only about 30 survivors remain. Julia Bliss Flaherty's Swarm splits into two factions, who fight; Flaherty's faction is defeated. Running out of food, the Swarm resorts to cannibalism, and by the end of three years only 11 survive, including Flaherty and the leader of the opposing faction, Aïda. Aïda requests to reunite the remnant of the Swarm with the Cloud Ark before it reaches the Cleft, but secretly plans a battle for control of Endurance; as a result of that battle the population is diminished even further.

By the time Endurance reaches the relative safety of the Cleft, there are only eight surviving Homo sapiens in space, all of whom are women. One, the sociologist Luisa, has reached menopause, and the remaining seven (Dinah, Ivy, Aïda, Tekla, Camila, Moira, and Julia) come to be known as the Seven Eves. The Human Genetic Archive has been destroyed, but they have sufficient resources to use the surviving genetics laboratory to rebuild the human race by parthenogenesis. They agree that each of the Seven Eves gets to choose how her offspring will be genetically modified or enhanced. Aïda predicts that, hundreds of years from now, this project shall result in seven new races.

The narrative jumps to 5,000 years later. There are now three billion humans living in a ring around the Earth, and they have indeed formed into seven races, each one descended from and named after the Seven Eves who survived the events of Part 2. These races have quite distinct characteristics, including "Moirans" who can undergo "epigenetic shifts", radically changing their bodies in response to new environments. The iron core of the moon has mostly been used to build space habitats, but the Cleft itself has been turned into "Cradle", an exclusive piece of real estate attached to a tether that occasionally "docks" with Earth.

Humanity has divided mostly along racial lines into two states, Red and Blue, which are engaged in a form of Cold War characterized by cultural isolation, espionage and border skirmishes, mediated by treaty agreements more honored in the breach than the observance.

The orbiting races, the Spacers, terraform Earth by crashing ice comets into it to replenish the oceans, and seed the planet with genetically created organisms based upon re-sequenced DNA data saved from the escape to orbit. Once a breathable atmosphere is recreated, and sufficient plant and animal species have been reseeded, some members of the orbiting races ("Sooners") resettle the planet, in violation of treaty agreements.

A "Seven", a group of seven people with one member from each race, is recruited by "Doc" Hu Noah, to investigate mysterious people who have been sighted on Earth. As the story unfolds, they discover that some humans did indeed survive the Hard Rain on the planet by living in deep mines ("Diggers"), while others survived in ocean trenches using submarines ("Pingers"). Although these survivors have also evolved socially and biologically to form two additional races, the survival of root stock humanity separate from the Seven Eves causes turmoil in Spacer high politics. Ground conflict eventually occurs because each of the orbiting camps (Red and Blue) wishes to establish a preferential or exclusive relationship with the Earthbound races: the Diggers, although descendants of Dinah's family, interpret the Blue state's presence on their territory as an act of aggression and develop an alliance with Red, prompting Blue to seek out an alliance with the Pingers on the strength of Ivy's connection with one of their founders. Matters are further complicated because the Diggers claim all of the Earth's land surface as their own, and initially hold the Spacers in disdain (despite their high technology) for having fled the planet eons ago.

In an epilogue it is revealed that a separate, secret underwater ark had been created concurrently with the cloud ark, leading to the development of the Pingers, based on analysis of the "selfies" Ivy's fiance had sent her, using diagrams and sketches in the background as clues. Ty invites the surviving Seven (along with Sonar and Deep, representatives of the Diggers and the Pingers, respectively) back to apartments at his bar in the Cleft with the intent of forming the first "Nine".

I read through He Who Fights with Monsters and it was not only my first read into the genre, so far it's been my favorite. I've come to absolutely love the characters, especially the protagonist, and the humor. Interesting and likeable characters are what makes or breaks a book for me.

I'm waiting on the next book to release, and in the mean time I've tried reading some others, but I've disliked what I've read so far. I read through the first three and a half books of Defiance of the Fall, but not only is the main character just hands down boring and contradictory, it's made worse by the fact that I don't believe the author is a very good writer. The amount of times a character has "snorted" and "rolled their eyes" is honestly a bad running joke.

After this I tried reading the Iron Druid Chronicles. It's not a LitRPG book, just a fantasy novel that takes place in modern times, but the author spent very little time on anything but the major plot points. Everything happens in such rapid succession that there's no depth given to the characters. I don't think it's poorly written, I just think it's just written for a different kind of reader. The books are also incredibly short for me, and I finished the first three in just a few days.

I'm halfway through the first book of The Primal Hunter now, and the writing is far better than Defiance of the Fall, the protagonist much better written, except I'm not sure I like him all that much. Very much the "I'm quiet, smart, and better than everyone" kind of attitude you'd get out of the know it all in high school, except supposedly this guy is a grown adult.

I've read all of these through Kindle Unlimited and they were all suggested to me by the app itself. I've only recently picked up reading again since dropping Reddit altogether, so I'm not super well versed into the best ways of finding new series to read.

This sci-fi book starts out as a first contact novel. Aliens show up and say "Your planet is dying--we're here to rescue you! Come join our galactic federation!"

Here's the twist: the protagonist emphatically refuses. The world is sick, but humanity is healing it. Successfully. They have been for decades. And they refuse to leave Earth and go explore the stars until the job is done.

Thus begins this story's major conflict. The aliens have visited a few other planets with signs of advanced civilization, and in every case they've arrived too late--the other civilizations have extincted themselves by the time they arrive. The aliens are emphatic that technological societies cannot thrive on a planet's surface; in every other case, either the planet or the civilization dies. The humans are unfazed. Repairing an ecosystem is possible, they say. We've proven it. Are proving it. Yes, there's a hurricane bearing down on us, but the storms get a little less intense every year.

This is a story about meeting people utterly unlike you and finding common ground with them. It's about imagining a better future and working doggedly toward it.

Eco-focused stories usually have a back-to-the-land, pastoral vibe; they want to get in touch with nature by reducing our use of technology as much as possible. That's not this book at all. Our heroes use neural interfaces and networked decision-making algorithms to manage the restoration of the ecology. They write algorithms that weight the vote in favor of community-defined ethical preferences. Technology isn't the enemy--corporations are, which is why the corps were exiled decades ago. Networks and algorithms can be powerfully good when they're used to benefit the many instead of the few.

This book has so much heart and so much beautiful imagery. It is gloriously weird in lots of ways I'm not going to spoil. It's a hopeful book that's giving me ideas I'm starting work on now. You can find it here or in your local library.

It's hard to find hopeful sci-fi these days. The zeitgeist is that things are bad and they will keep getting worse. That's a problem, because before you can build a better future, you must first imagine one. This is the first book I've found in a long time that does a credible job of that.

This post is about a pair of novels by Daniel Suarez. The first one is Delta-V, the physics term for a change in velocity; the second one is called Critical Mass. Together they're a heavily-researched look at asteroid mining, offworld economics, and space-based solar power.

The series takes place in the mid 2030s. By this point, the symptoms of climate change are becoming serious, creating what people call "the Long Emergency": famines, storms, and waves of climate refugees. There is real concern that the global economy will collapse under the strain. To avert financial apocalypse, an expedition is launched to mine the asteroid Ryugu; the first book covers the miners' training, their long journey through space, and the hazards of mining an asteroid in deep space. In the second book, they use those mined materials to build a space station in lunar orbit, to set up a railgun for launching materials from the moon's surface into its orbit, and to begin building the first space-based solar power satellites.

I was surprised to learn that space-based solar power is a real thing that the US, China, and several other countries and companies are actively pursuing. Basically, you have a bunch of solar panels in orbit, which beam power down to receiving antennas ("rectennas") on Earth. You lose a lot of efficiency converting the electricity to microwaves and back, but solar panels on orbit have access to ~7-10x more energy than those on the ground, since there's no atmosphere in the way and it's always solar noon. In exchange for a large initial investment, space-based solar power offers always-on, 100% renewable energy that can be switched from New York to California at a moment's notice.

That initial investment is a doozy, though. SpaceX is working on lowering launch costs, but launching material from Earth's surface into orbit is going to be very expensive for a very long time. So these books look at what might be possible if we could avoid those costs. What if we could create mining and manufacturing operations in space? What if we could use those to generate clean power in heretofore undreamt-of amounts?

I’m going to excerpt a conversation from the second book:

[At dinner,] chemist Sofia Boutros described the unfolding water crisis in the Nile watershed back on Earth—and the resulting regional conflict. This elicited from around the table a litany of other climate-change-related calamities back home, from wildfires, to floods, to famines, to extinctions.

The Russian observer, Colonel Voloshin, usually content to just listen, chimed in by saying, "Nations which have contributed least to carbon emissions suffering worst effects." He looked first to Lawler and then Colonel Fei. "Perhaps the biggest polluters should pay reparations."

Dr. Ohana looked down the table toward him. "It's my understanding that Russia has actually benefitted from warmer climate."

Yak replied instead. "Not overall. Soil in Siberia is poor. Wildfires and loss of permafrost also disruptive."

Lawler added. "You guys sell plenty of fossil fuels, too, Colonel."

The electrical engineer, Hoshiko Sato, said, "Complete decarbonization is the only way to solve climate change."

Most of the group groaned in response.

She looked around the table. "That might sound unrealistic, but there's no other choice if we want to save civilization."

Chindarkar said, "We've been saying the same thing for fifty years, Hoshiko. It's barely moved the needle."

"We’ve brought carbon emissions down considerably since 2020."

Boutros said, "You mean we slowed their growth."

Ohana said, "We should be planting more trees."

Monica Balter countered, "Trees require water and arable land. Climate change is causing deserts to spread, pitting food versus trees. Plus, whatever carbon a tree captures gets released when it dies—which could happen all at once in a wildfire."

Chindarkar looked down the table at her. "Nathan Joyce claimed we could use solar satellites to power direct carbon capture. Could that really be done at the scale necessary to reduce global CO2 levels?"

Colonel Voloshin let out a laugh. "That's not even in the realm of possibility. It wouldn't even make a dent."

Monica Balter said, "I respectfully disagree, Colonel." She looked to Boutros. "And Sofia, I understand we must do everything possible down on Earth to reduce carbon emissions: solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal—all of it. But that won't remove what's already in the atmosphere."

Voloshin shook his head. "We must adapt."

Lawler couldn't resist. "Easy for Russia to say."

Balter spoke to Voloshin. "Back in 1850, atmospheric carbon was at two hundred eighty parts per million. Now it's at four hundred fifty-seven parts per million. We put over a trillion tons of CO2 into Earth's atmosphere over that time. Humans caused the problem, and humans can solve it."

The colonel was unfazed. "Yes. All of humanity worked hard to cause this, and it still required almost two centuries to accomplish. It is naïve to think a few machines will correct it."

"Half of that excess carbon was emitted in the last forty years, and direct air carbon capture powered by solar satellites can actually work at a global scale. I can show you the numbers, if you like."

He scoffed. "Even billionaire Jack Macy says that solar power satellites are idiotic—that very little energy beamed from space reaches the terrestrial power grid due to transmission and conversion losses."

Balter nodded. "The number is 9 percent."

The crew around the table murmured.

He spread his hands. "I rest my case."

"But 9 percent of what? Jack Macy neglects to mention that a solar panel up in orbit is seven times more productive than one on the Earth's surface. The fact that he runs a rooftop solar company might have something to do with that.

Boutros asked, "A sevenfold difference just from being in space?"

Balter turned to her. "The best you can hope for on the Earth's equator at high noon is 1,000 watts of energy per square meter—and that's without factoring in nighttime, cloudy days, seasons, latitude. But a power sat in geosynchronous orbit would almost always be in 1,368 watts of sunlight per square meter. So you get a whole lot more energy from a solar panel in space even after transmission inefficiencies are factored in. Plus, a power sat won't be affected by unfolding chaos planetside."

Voloshin shrugged. "What if it is cloudy above your rectenna? You would not be able to beam down energy."

"Not true. We use microwaves in the 2.45-gigahertz range. The atmosphere is largely invisible at that frequency. We can beam the energy down regardless of weather—and directly to where it's needed. No need for long distance power lines."

"But to what purpose? It could not be done on a scale sufficient to impact Earth."

"Again, I could show you the numbers."

Chindarkar said, "I'd like to see them, Monica. Please."

Balter put down her fork and after searching through virtual UIs for a moment, put up a shared augmented-reality screen that appeared to float over the end of the table on the station's common layer. It displayed an array of numbers and labels. "Sorry for the spreadsheet."

Colonel Fei said, "We are quite interested in seeing it, Ms. Balter."

She looked to the faces around the table. "There are four reasons I got involved in space-based solar power... " She pealed them off on her fingers. "...electrification, desalination, food generation, and decarbonization. First: electricity. We all know the environmental, economic, and political havoc back on Earth from climate change. Blackouts make that chaos worse, but a 2-gigawatt solar power satellite in geosynchronous orbit could instantly transmit large amounts of energy anywhere it's needed in the hemisphere below it. Even several locations at once. All that's needed is a rectenna on the ground, and those are cheap and easy to construct."

Chindarkar nodded. "We saw one on Ascension Island."

Jin added, "J.T. and I are building sections of the lunar rectenna. It is fairly simple."

"Right. For example, space-based energy could be beamed to coastal desalination plants in regions suffering long-term drought-providing fresh water. It can also be used to remove CO2 directly from seawater, through what's known as single step carbon sequestration and storage, converting the CO2 into solid limestone and magnesite—essentially seashells. This would enable the oceans themselves to absorb more atmospheric CO2. Or we could power direct air capture plants that pull CO2 straight out of the atmosphere."

Voloshin interjected. "Again, a few satellites will not impact Earth's atmospheric concentrations, and where would you sequester all this CO2?"

"Just a few satellites wouldn't impact climate, no—but there's definitely a use for the CO2—in creating food. Droughts in equatorial zones are causing famine, but hydrogenotrophic bacteria can be used to make protein from electricity, hydrogen, and CO2. The hydrogen can be electrolyzed from seawater and CO2 from the air. All that's needed is clean energy." She glanced to Chindarkar. "NASA first experimented with this in the 1960s as a means for making food here in deep space."

"Really? Even back then."

"The bioreactor for it is like a small-batch brewery. You feed in what natural plants get from soil: phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, iron, potassium—all of which, incidentally, can be extracted from lunar regolith. But I digress..."

Colonel Fei's eyebrows raised. "That is indeed interesting."

"The bioreactor runs for a while, then the liquid is drained and the solids dried to a powder that contains 65 percent protein, 20 to 25 percent carbohydrates, and 5 percent fatty acids. This can be made into a natural food similar to soy or algae. So with energy, CO2, and seawater, we could provide life-saving nutrition just about anywhere on the planet via solar power satellites."

Voloshin was unimpressed. "Yet it would still not resolve climate change."

"At scale it could. Do the math ... " Balter brought up her spreadsheet. "We're emitting 40 billion tons of CO2 per year, 9 billion tons of which can't be sequestered by the natural carbon cycle and which results in an annual increase of roughly two parts per million atmospheric CO2—even after decades of conservation efforts."

She tapped a few screens and a virtual image of an industrial structure covered in fan housings appeared. "A direct air capture facility like this one could pull a million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year at a cost of one hundred dollars a ton. All of the components are off-the-shelf and have existed for decades. Nothing fancy. But it needs 1.5 megawatts of constant clean energy to power it—and that's where solar power satellites come in."

Voloshin said, "But who would pay? Governments? Do not count on this."

Chindarkar asked, "Monica, seriously: How many carbon capture plants would it take to make a difference in the atmosphere of the entire Earth?"

Jin added, "And how many solar power satellites to power them?"

Balter brought her spreadsheet back up. "Merely to cancel out Earth's excess annual emissions—9 billion tons of CO2—we'd need nine thousand 1-megaton DAC plants worldwide, each requiring 150 to 300 acres."

The group groaned.

Tighe said, "That's a lot of hardware and a lot of real estate, Monica."

"It doesn't have to be on land. Just 2.7 million acres total—smaller than Connecticut. And that would be spread across the entire globe. More importantly, doing that stops the advance of climate change. If we reduce emissions, then it would actually help reverse climate change."

Chindarkar studied the numbers. "Powered by how many solar satellites?"

Balter highlighted the number. "It would take 1.6 terawatts of electricity—or 818 2-gigawatt SPS-Alphas. Each about 7,400 tons. But again: that halts the advance of climate change."

The group groaned again.

"Eight hundred eighteen satellites?" Jin shook his head. "That would take decades to build."

"Not with automation and sufficient materials here on orbit. You've seen the SPS-Alpha I'm building—it's made of simple, modular components."

"Yours is one-fortieth the size of these 7,400-ton monsters."

"But it's the same design. We just need the resources up here in space, and we could scale it rapidly with automation."

Voloshin picked up his fork. "As I said: it is a technological fantasy."

Chindarkar ignored him. "Monica, what would it require to not just halt climate change—but reverse it?"

Balter clicked through to another screen. "To return Earth to a safe level—say, three hundred fifty parts per million CO2-you'd need to pull three-quarters of a trillion tons out of the atmosphere." She made a few changes to her model. "So with forty thousand DAC plants, powered by thirty-six hundred 2-gigawatt satellites in geosynchronous orbit, you could accomplish that in eighteen years."

Fei asked, "At what cost?"

"Roughly seventy-two trillion dollars."

Again groans and an impressed whistle.

Voloshin shook his head. "I told you."

Balter added, "That's four trillion a year, over eighteen years. Spread across the entire population of Earth."

This was met with a different reaction.

Jin said, "That is actually less than I thought."

"And bear in mind the fossil fuel industry has been supported by half a trillion dollars in direct government subsidies worldwide every year for ages. Whereas this four trillion is for just a limited time and would permanently solve climate change, and we'd see significant climate benefits within a decade as CO2 levels came down. And once it was accomplished, all that clean energy could be put toward other productive uses, either on Earth or in space."

She studied the faces around her. "But to accomplish it, we'd need tens of millions of tons of mass in orbit. Launching all that mass up from Earth would never work because all those rockets would damage the atmosphere, too. However, with your lunar mass-driver—and the ones that follow it—we could make this work. This is why I'm here."

Those around the table pondered this. For the moment, even Voloshin was silent.

Boutros asked, "Is it not risky to tinker with the Earth's atmosphere?"

"That's what we're doing now, Sofia. This would just reverse what we've done and return Earth to the conditions we evolved in."

Chindarkar pointed to the virtual spreadsheet. "Does that seventy-two trillion dollars include the cost of the solar power satellites?"

"Yes. And doing nothing will cost us far more. Best estimates are that by the year 2100, continued climate change will reduce global GDP by 20 percent—which is about two thousand trillion dollars. Not to mention the cost of possibly losing civilization.

"But if, as your CEO Mr. Rochat says, we intend to prove the SPS concept at scale here in lunar orbit, well... then you will make this commercially feasible. In other words, you can make this future happen. Everyone else has talked it to death. The bean counters and decision makers back on Earth clearly won't do it, no matter how critical it is. And this needs to be started as soon as possible—before the situation on Earth gets truly untenable."

This book is not afraid to think big. That's what sci-fi is for, right? And it's extensively researched; there's a bibliography at the end of each book that I've used to start my own research journeys.

I like these books because they're ambitious. They never downplay the scale of the problems we face, but they maintain that these problems are solvable, and they expose me to new ideas I'd never heard of. I found them in my local library. Thanks for reading this wall of text!

After giving This is How You Lose the Time War a five star review, I started scrolling through other reviews and I found thoughtful, well reasoned arguments for the other side. This is a thoroughly crafted well written book that is not going to be to everyone's taste.

The premise is two opposing secret agents, saboteurs, time and history manipulators who work for conflicting civilizations become aware of each other and start to exchange letters. It becomes a love story.

The nature of the work each main character does to manipulate history across many centuries and many parallel universes makes the narrative confusing. I can't imagine it done effectively any other way, but I also like other confusing time shifting stories where the story starts to make sense later.

The characters only meet through their letters with a couple of exceptions, so some say the love story is unbelievable. For me, it reflects the extreme isolation and loneliness of their work and how even minimal tenuous companionship of a peer would satisfy a gaping need.

The writing includes extravagant romantic feelings and poetic literary allusions to go with the science fiction and time travel aspect. I appreciated it, but people who like romance and poetry don't always like science fiction and time travel and vice versa.

The authors lean into the epistolary format. It's not exclusively letters but a significant percentage of the writing is the letters these two characters exchange.

The creative forms the letters take were fun for me and seemed like a valid extrapolation of actual historical spycraft if you assumed much greater ability to manipulate matter. However some people find them over the top.

It is an exuberant, enthusiastic book that is fun if you like it and possibly cringy if you don't

Just finished (re-)watching the Friends TV series ... End of the last episode, sitting in the empty apartment (Joey: "Has it always been purple?" Phoebe: "Do you realize that at one time or another, we've all lived in this apartment?")

Got me thinking, more as a plot contrivance than the actual plot, a story about an apartment, spanning a century or more, and the various people that lived in it, jumping back and forth across time, linking them together through history ... perhaps even, a la "Ship of Theseus", spanning multiple centuries and multiple homes/dwellings that occupied the same space.

So specifically, I'm wondering if anyone can think of any novels that adopt this idea, or anything similar, as a primary vehicle for their storytelling?

I have a vague recollection of a short story or novella in 2ndary school, about the life of a redwood, and the various people and animals that lived in and around it over the centuries ... and also I recall reading "A Winter Tale" by Mark Helperin -- a semi-fantastical novel about the city of New York ... oh look, apparently, they made it into a movie, too.

But those two are the only examples I can think of that come close to this idea.

PS: I love to write fiction, and someday I may even finish a novel ... but generally, I get about halfway through, figure out how it's going to end, and then lose interest ... so if anyone with more ambition likes the idea, you're welcome to it.

ETA: I'm not looking for the 10,000 variations of "oooh, haunted by the ghost of a person that died here 20 years ago". Broader, covering a longer timeframe, multiple substories interwoven into the same living space, you get the idea.

I've read a few novels, I think an excellent short novel is Elevation by Stephen King. It's not what you'd expect from a Stephen King novel (no horror elements), but it's a great read. I can't say too much without spoiling it, but here's the blurb:

The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together—a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences.

It starts off a little slow, but give it a little bit of time. It's readable in an afternoon, I think I spent 5 or so hours reading it.

I'm in the last 100 pages and would like to recommend this book. Although it plods a little bit early on, to me it's something of an achievement to keep things going and create interest in the last pages. The premise is that people live multiple lives, but there's more to it than that. The level of writing is above average and the breadth of the book, taking you through several countries and historical events is well done. I'll be up for discussing it in a week or so if anyone's interested.