Tuesday - First Chapter - First Paragraph - Seveneves

Each Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea shares the first part of a book that she is reading or thinking about reading.  This week I'm sharing the first few paragraphs of Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.  This book is way outside of my norm, but somehow, I'm intrigued and interested.  At least enough to try it.  See what you think:

     The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.  It was waxing, only one day short of full.  The time was 05:03:12 UTC.  Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero.
     An amateur astronomer in Utah was the first person on Earth to realize that something unusual was happening.  Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the Reiner Gamma formation, near the moon's equator.  He assumed it was a dust cloud thrown up by a meteor strike.  He pulled out his phone and blogged the event, moving his stiff thumbs (for he was high on a mountain and the air was as cold as it was clear) as fast as he could to secure the claim to himself.  Other astronomers would soon be pointing their telescopes at the same dust cloud--might be doing it already!  But--supposing he could move his thumbs fast enough--he would be the first to point it out.  The fame would be his; if the meteorite left behind a visible crater, perhaps it would even bear his name.
     His name was forgotten.  By the time he had gotten his phone out of his pocket, his crater no longer existed.  Nor did the moon.

Blurb:

What would happen if the world were ending?

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb.  In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

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As I said, I'm not much of a science fiction reader or even a reader of dystopian books at all.  However, I have read a few in my younger years, notably Alas Babylon and Lucifer's Hammer.  We'll see if this one works for me.  What do you think?  Would you keep reading?