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A Big Dumb Object has put the earth on a delay - each year inside equals a hundred million years outside.

You'd imagine this would make the tale somehow more brisk in its telling. Instead we focus on Elon Musk's best friend and accompain his excruciatingly long and boring life for an excruciatingly long and boring time, while Elon Musk attempts to rescue earth.

Correction: this is an idealized Elon Musk - a sexless, humorless creature that only cares about playing chess with aliens, instead of the meme-loving car salesman we have in our non-fictional world.

It's the neoliberal approach to crisis management: in case of apocalypse, trust the richest, most tech-savvy person with all your resources and defend them to the death from the evil fanatics, the government and the media, while you yourself just focus on living your life the exact same way you've been doing.

Far out concept. I found the interleaving of time throughout the book to be well done, but not exceptional.

This was a re-read for me as I finally had a decent ebook version. It remains as impressive as it was the first time. Big ideas grounded in a human story, that while straightforward, provides the contrast that the big canvas sci-fi ideas can play out against. Now for the rest of the trilogy.