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Earth
Earth
TIME IS RUNNING OUT Decades from now, an artificial black hole has fallen into the Earth's core. As scientists frantically work to prevent the ultimate disaster, they discover that the entire planet could be destroyed within a year. But while they look for an answer, some claim that the only way to save Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to reset the evolutionary clock and start over.
704 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
David Brin
300 books3,209 followersDavid Brin is a scientist, speaker, and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Existence, his latest novel, offers an unusual scenario for first contact. His ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends such as the World Wide Web. A movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his post-apocalyptic novel, The Postman. Startide Rising won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel. The Uplift War also won the Hugo Award.
His non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- deals with secrecy in the modern world. It won the Freedom of Speech Prize from the American Library Association.
Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI, nanotechnology, and philanthropy.
David appears frequently on TV, including "The Universe" and on the History Channel's "Life After People."
Full and updated at:
http://www.davidbrin.com/biography.htm
Existence, his latest novel, offers an unusual scenario for first contact. His ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends such as the World Wide Web. A movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his post-apocalyptic novel, The Postman. Startide Rising won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel. The Uplift War also won the Hugo Award.
His non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- deals with secrecy in the modern world. It won the Freedom of Speech Prize from the American Library Association.
Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI, nanotechnology, and philanthropy.
David appears frequently on TV, including "The Universe" and on the History Channel's "Life After People."
Full and updated at:
http://www.davidbrin.com/biography.htm
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 342 reviews
September 23, 2015
This is not an easy read in spite of the well written, accessible prose, some good characterization, and some exciting scenes. The difficulty is due to the ambitious scope of the book which seems to necessitate numerous plot strands, myriad characters, and frequent expositions and infodumps. Personally I am not wired for reading nonfiction, I am always grateful to novelists who manage to impart some new knowledge to me packaged in their fiction. Indeed, I am also grateful to David Brin for the bits of knowledge I picked up from this book about astronomy, homeostasis, biology and such. Unfortunately during the first half of this book I had the feeling that entertainment is not a priority for Brin in the composition of this book, I am not even sure it is of secondary importance. Halfway through the book I was frankly a little bored and took a break to read some other books and I resumed reading it a week later. I did not want to abandon it all together because the major plot strand is very interesting (and I paid full price for the book!). I am glad I persevered because the second half of the book makes it all worthwhile.
Set in 2038 (written in 1990) the basic plot of Earth is about a man-made tiny little black hole that is accidentally dropped into the Earth and begins to devour the planet from the inside atom by atom; left unchecked there would eventually be nothing left of our planet. A team of scientists go after this little runaway black hole and make some startling discoveries in the process. The lost little black hole is an attempt to create a cheap new source of energy, as human civilization is in a state of general dystopia approaching the point of apocalyptic collapse. The maximum sustainable human population has been passed and food is scarce, and the cities are polluted. This is a world Brin is cautioning us away from.
While the book grew on me, exponentially in the second half, I think it could have benefited from being about 200 pages shorter. I feel that it would have been much tighter and better paced and easier to read. More often than not my eyes start to glaze over when I read the exposition passages, but in all fairness to Brin I think he explains the science better than most sci-fi writers that I have read, unfortunately, there is just a little too much of it here for me. Brin clearly cares very much about the environmental issues he raised in this book, almost to the detriment of the story. However, he is a gifted storyteller, and he does write good prose and dialogue. The central characters in the book are quite well developed and believable, but there are just too many of them. The narrative is based on multiple viewpoints as expected, but it caused the early part of the novel to feel fragmented, particularly as some of the point of view characters do not seem to be of much consequence in the grand scheme of things. Brin does bring most of the strands together by the end though, and the explosive (not to mention implosive) climax is quite thrilling. While I don't believe that it is the job of science fiction to predict the future, Earth is successfully prophetic on several counts; the advent of the worldwide web, e-mails, spams, web forums, citizen reporters, global warming and rising sea levels etc. Hopefully, the imminent collapse of the planet's environment won't be one of them, but then that is Brin's main motivation for writing the book I think.
At the end of the day, I would just about rate this book at 4 stars, probably something like 3.8 or some similarly silly decimals. Worth a read if you have the time and patience. My next Brin book will be from his famed Uplift saga.
Set in 2038 (written in 1990) the basic plot of Earth is about a man-made tiny little black hole that is accidentally dropped into the Earth and begins to devour the planet from the inside atom by atom; left unchecked there would eventually be nothing left of our planet. A team of scientists go after this little runaway black hole and make some startling discoveries in the process. The lost little black hole is an attempt to create a cheap new source of energy, as human civilization is in a state of general dystopia approaching the point of apocalyptic collapse. The maximum sustainable human population has been passed and food is scarce, and the cities are polluted. This is a world Brin is cautioning us away from.
While the book grew on me, exponentially in the second half, I think it could have benefited from being about 200 pages shorter. I feel that it would have been much tighter and better paced and easier to read. More often than not my eyes start to glaze over when I read the exposition passages, but in all fairness to Brin I think he explains the science better than most sci-fi writers that I have read, unfortunately, there is just a little too much of it here for me. Brin clearly cares very much about the environmental issues he raised in this book, almost to the detriment of the story. However, he is a gifted storyteller, and he does write good prose and dialogue. The central characters in the book are quite well developed and believable, but there are just too many of them. The narrative is based on multiple viewpoints as expected, but it caused the early part of the novel to feel fragmented, particularly as some of the point of view characters do not seem to be of much consequence in the grand scheme of things. Brin does bring most of the strands together by the end though, and the explosive (not to mention implosive) climax is quite thrilling. While I don't believe that it is the job of science fiction to predict the future, Earth is successfully prophetic on several counts; the advent of the worldwide web, e-mails, spams, web forums, citizen reporters, global warming and rising sea levels etc. Hopefully, the imminent collapse of the planet's environment won't be one of them, but then that is Brin's main motivation for writing the book I think.
At the end of the day, I would just about rate this book at 4 stars, probably something like 3.8 or some similarly silly decimals. Worth a read if you have the time and patience. My next Brin book will be from his famed Uplift saga.
September 30, 2021
Earth, the blue marble.
This book, a marvel.
No, the above statement(s) wasn't meant to be poetic - but it's utterly true.
Where to begin in summing up this book …
A young and brilliant scientist has created an itty-bitty tiny artificial black hole … and lost it "somewhere" in the center of the planet. While he is looking for it together with some allies, earthquakes start shaking the planet and a space station is lost. The reason is rather awesome (). I mean, we dodged quite the bullet there ... now, if only there weren't still so many other bullets to dodge!
But there is also the scientist's grandmother, herself a brilliant geneticist and founder of a new world religion, Gaianism. And she has either a god complex or other mental health problems. *lol* In any case, her observations are most often correct but she's also a force to be reckoned with that could become a problem.
Then there is the space pilot who witnessed the earthquakes and disaster with the space station first-hand and is consequently roped into the whole retrieval affair.
All that while secrecy is basically outlawed and technology (such as smart glasses that record and stream absolutely everything) is also making it insanely difficult for people not to know everything. Now of all times when they could use a bit of secrecy. Kinda.
Oh, in case anyone was wondering, the year is 2038 and Earth is pretty much fucked. Thanks to global warming, overfishing, overfarming and other "nice" things we human did/do, there are billions of ecological refugees, more radical "religions" than I cared to keep track of and the whole political Spiel has become even more ludicrous. The space program has also been abandoned so as to spend the money on Earth (oh, the irony).
Then there are the arks - several places around the globe that keep species in order to preserve them. Some of those even use genetic material to clone / mix species (bringing "back" the mammoth amongst other things).
In short: the book shows the impact we humans can have on the planet, good and bad.
The amazing thing about this? The book was published in the 80s!!!
Yep, it won the HUGOs in 1989 but predicted stuff like the internet (especially with regards to it becoming the major source for news), hyperlinks in electronic correspondence, spamming, a reduction in privacy / the need to share all kinds of stuff with the world online, levees breaking on the Mississippi (this was especially creepy because his exact prediction came true in 2005), voice controlled tech, global warming / the consequently rising sea levels, smart glasses and VR overlays, and much more!
And Brin uses all this to address critical topics (that are even more timely NOW) such as endangered species, global warming, production in and transport of goods from faraway countries (and the effects), refugees from ecological disasters, ecoterrorism, views on colonialism (less about racism and more about the audacity of the cultural theft) and the social effects of overpopulation. All while we're hunting for a black hole (two, actually, and beta's creator) before the destruction of the entire friggin planet! *lol*
And let me tell you, the revelation about the creator of beta … ()!
As if that wasn't enough, THAT revelation got eclipsed by being the big bad. I mean, I never but finding out just how had me raging.
Seriously, the scope of this book is almost unimaginable and thinking about when it was written is even more mindboggling.
The writing style is very fast-paced, has a nice rhythm/flow to it, is simplistic rather than pompous, but never boring or flat. Will it surprise you after all my fangirling that an author who is so great at writing such a thrilling story that moves at break-neck speed, incorporating so many technological and scientific concepts flawlessly, is also a PhD in physics?
This has instantly become one of my favorite (sci-fi) books of all time!
This book, a marvel.
No, the above statement(s) wasn't meant to be poetic - but it's utterly true.
Where to begin in summing up this book …
A young and brilliant scientist has created an itty-bitty tiny artificial black hole … and lost it "somewhere" in the center of the planet. While he is looking for it together with some allies, earthquakes start shaking the planet and a space station is lost. The reason is rather awesome (). I mean, we dodged quite the bullet there ... now, if only there weren't still so many other bullets to dodge!
But there is also the scientist's grandmother, herself a brilliant geneticist and founder of a new world religion, Gaianism. And she has either a god complex or other mental health problems. *lol* In any case, her observations are most often correct but she's also a force to be reckoned with that could become a problem.
Then there is the space pilot who witnessed the earthquakes and disaster with the space station first-hand and is consequently roped into the whole retrieval affair.
All that while secrecy is basically outlawed and technology (such as smart glasses that record and stream absolutely everything) is also making it insanely difficult for people not to know everything. Now of all times when they could use a bit of secrecy. Kinda.
Oh, in case anyone was wondering, the year is 2038 and Earth is pretty much fucked. Thanks to global warming, overfishing, overfarming and other "nice" things we human did/do, there are billions of ecological refugees, more radical "religions" than I cared to keep track of and the whole political Spiel has become even more ludicrous. The space program has also been abandoned so as to spend the money on Earth (oh, the irony).
Then there are the arks - several places around the globe that keep species in order to preserve them. Some of those even use genetic material to clone / mix species (bringing "back" the mammoth amongst other things).
In short: the book shows the impact we humans can have on the planet, good and bad.
The amazing thing about this? The book was published in the 80s!!!
Yep, it won the HUGOs in 1989 but predicted stuff like the internet (especially with regards to it becoming the major source for news), hyperlinks in electronic correspondence, spamming, a reduction in privacy / the need to share all kinds of stuff with the world online, levees breaking on the Mississippi (this was especially creepy because his exact prediction came true in 2005), voice controlled tech, global warming / the consequently rising sea levels, smart glasses and VR overlays, and much more!
And Brin uses all this to address critical topics (that are even more timely NOW) such as endangered species, global warming, production in and transport of goods from faraway countries (and the effects), refugees from ecological disasters, ecoterrorism, views on colonialism (less about racism and more about the audacity of the cultural theft) and the social effects of overpopulation. All while we're hunting for a black hole (two, actually, and beta's creator) before the destruction of the entire friggin planet! *lol*
And let me tell you, the revelation about the creator of beta … ()!
As if that wasn't enough, THAT revelation got eclipsed by being the big bad. I mean, I never but finding out just how had me raging.
Seriously, the scope of this book is almost unimaginable and thinking about when it was written is even more mindboggling.
The writing style is very fast-paced, has a nice rhythm/flow to it, is simplistic rather than pompous, but never boring or flat. Will it surprise you after all my fangirling that an author who is so great at writing such a thrilling story that moves at break-neck speed, incorporating so many technological and scientific concepts flawlessly, is also a PhD in physics?
This has instantly become one of my favorite (sci-fi) books of all time!
September 30, 2021
I'll preface this review by mentioning that I've been in love with this book ever since I first read it when it came out. I loved it so much that it rode my top three books of all time for many, many years, and I even jumped at the chance to meet the author in a speech he made about the transparent society and I even cornered him afterward to let him know how much I appreciated him.
This was in the mid-'90s shortly after Glory Season had come out.
I just said, "Mr. Brin, I just wanted to let you know that your novel Earth is in my top three favorite novels of all time."
Mr. Brin, still a rather young man at this time, became shy and embarrassed, tipping his head downward, perhaps shuffling his feet a little, and said, in a tiny voice, "Really? I'm frankly rather surprised at how much I got away with."
This, to me, really says it all. Modesty, being a great writer despite getting a PHD in Physics, being a multi-Hugo Winner, and being someone who is STILL predicting the living hell out of the future.
Test it. Read Earth.
This came out right when the internet was mostly just a bunch of BBS's but he captured the feel of what we have today. Tru-Vue glasses, with hoards of people recording everything, everywhere, for any reason, are basically us with our cell phones. The ecological transformations, the social pressures, the way that we absolutely KNOW we have to change everything about our world, right this very moment, is reflected in THEIR world, having already made that change, and with many of the same things that we're about to do... on just as big a scale.
Well, assuming we DO get our butts in gear.
And none of this really touches on the true glorious spectacle of what we get to experience in this near-future Earth. Some REALLY impressive shit goes down, easily bringing them all to the brink of total death, (a miniature black hole swimming around in the center of the earth), but it's how the novel is balanced on a knife's edge with OPTIMISM that had astounded me.
So, TL;DR:
If you're a millennial and you've never even HEARD of David Brin or his novel EARTH, please do yourself a very big favor and hunt it down. It is still as valid, wonderful, and shockingly thoughtful as it was when it first came out. And more, it's even MORE timely now than it was back in the early '90s.
If you need someone to force you to pick up a true classic that is NOT getting enough love, that should be still getting ALL the love, then I will be that person. *flexes muscles*
Run. Don't walk. Get a copy. You will thank me.
This was in the mid-'90s shortly after Glory Season had come out.
I just said, "Mr. Brin, I just wanted to let you know that your novel Earth is in my top three favorite novels of all time."
Mr. Brin, still a rather young man at this time, became shy and embarrassed, tipping his head downward, perhaps shuffling his feet a little, and said, in a tiny voice, "Really? I'm frankly rather surprised at how much I got away with."
This, to me, really says it all. Modesty, being a great writer despite getting a PHD in Physics, being a multi-Hugo Winner, and being someone who is STILL predicting the living hell out of the future.
Test it. Read Earth.
This came out right when the internet was mostly just a bunch of BBS's but he captured the feel of what we have today. Tru-Vue glasses, with hoards of people recording everything, everywhere, for any reason, are basically us with our cell phones. The ecological transformations, the social pressures, the way that we absolutely KNOW we have to change everything about our world, right this very moment, is reflected in THEIR world, having already made that change, and with many of the same things that we're about to do... on just as big a scale.
Well, assuming we DO get our butts in gear.
And none of this really touches on the true glorious spectacle of what we get to experience in this near-future Earth. Some REALLY impressive shit goes down, easily bringing them all to the brink of total death, (a miniature black hole swimming around in the center of the earth), but it's how the novel is balanced on a knife's edge with OPTIMISM that had astounded me.
So, TL;DR:
If you're a millennial and you've never even HEARD of David Brin or his novel EARTH, please do yourself a very big favor and hunt it down. It is still as valid, wonderful, and shockingly thoughtful as it was when it first came out. And more, it's even MORE timely now than it was back in the early '90s.
If you need someone to force you to pick up a true classic that is NOT getting enough love, that should be still getting ALL the love, then I will be that person. *flexes muscles*
Run. Don't walk. Get a copy. You will thank me.
April 13, 2018
My rating for this book probably suffers from my method of reading it—15 to 20 minute bursts while on coffee break at work. It’s a sci-fi thriller and reading only 20-30 pages per day really stretched out the action in a non-thrilling way.
It is also a little heavy on the hard science fiction side of things for my tastes—remember, I am primarily a fantasy reader! There’s an awful lot of mathematical calculations, envisioning the Earth’s core, and talk of gravity and fundamental particles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my primary interest. Brin manages to bring in plenty of social and environmental issues too, and lots of people and politics, which was what kept me reading. Give me people issues!
One thing that I have to really credit this author for, he produces great swear words for his future characters. You realize that they are swearing, you accept it as such, yet the words aren’t any that would offend any contemporary reader.
It’s an interesting look at what the near future could look like and an action packed plot to keep you reading. I liked it, but I like his Uplift series more I confess.
Book number 279 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project.
It is also a little heavy on the hard science fiction side of things for my tastes—remember, I am primarily a fantasy reader! There’s an awful lot of mathematical calculations, envisioning the Earth’s core, and talk of gravity and fundamental particles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my primary interest. Brin manages to bring in plenty of social and environmental issues too, and lots of people and politics, which was what kept me reading. Give me people issues!
One thing that I have to really credit this author for, he produces great swear words for his future characters. You realize that they are swearing, you accept it as such, yet the words aren’t any that would offend any contemporary reader.
It’s an interesting look at what the near future could look like and an action packed plot to keep you reading. I liked it, but I like his Uplift series more I confess.
Book number 279 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project.
March 3, 2014
The Large Hadron Collider is doing pretty well this early into its life. It has already produced compelling evidence for the existence of a Higgs boson. And it hasn’t produced a microscopic black hole that would sink into the centre of the Earth and devour us all. Yet.
David Brin wrote Earth around the same time I was born, long before the LHC was being built and its doomsayers were crying disaster. Even then, however, the idea of experimental physics creating a world-swallowing black hole was a potent one. At first, it seems like the black hole present in Earth is a sign of the ultimate hubris of humanity … yet as the story develops, it becomes apparent that perhaps the black hole is an interloper sent by others who aren’t happy about having new neighbours.
This sense of layers of revelation is typical, both of Brin in general and Earth specifically. In style, Earth is quite similar to the other works of Brin’s that I’ve read, particularly the Uplift trilogy. Since it is set closer to the present day—2038, a mere fifty years in the future from the time Brin was writing—it also has much in common with the hard SF thrillers written by authors like Ben Bova and Greg Bear. The main characters are, by and large, scientists, intensely passionate about their work and dedicated to ideals like “scientific inquiry” and “truth”. The antagonists are authoritarian or anarchical in their allegiances, out to preserve the old order or tear it down at all costs, with both sides looking to the latest and greatest in scientific discoveries to give them the edge.
So to distinguish it from other such books, Brin sets Earth in a near future where global warming has occurred slightly faster than most scientists have predicted. In this version of 2038, humanity is still paralyzed by a dependence on fossil fuels. Coastal regions are losing ground to the ocean even as inland areas find desertification has become a pressing issue. Though information technology abounds, obsession with the role of secrecy in last century’s ecological disasters has reduced an individual’s privacy. And sometime in the first decade of the twenty-first century (i.e., five to ten years ago, for those of us in 2014), the world declares war against Switzerland in a bloody-almost-nuclear debacle.
There is a lot to process here. Certainly Brin deserves credit for such an intricate and detailled vision of the future. As he explains in his afterword, he isn’t going for accuracy—which would be foolish because it is almost impossible—just plausibility. Each of the attributes of his 2038 is a consequence of the trends he observed in 1989, coupled with some creative speculation about what kinds of surprises might happen along the way. It has been a while since I read a book that so confidently and cleverly lays out the near-future— Nexus tries very hard but doesn’t quite make me believe, and Rainbows End increasingly feels like allegory rather than an attempt at extrapolation. So, in this sense, Earth is a very interesting work of science fiction.
It’s quite interesting to compare Brin’s vision of 2038 with our actual 2014, what with hindsight being what it is. Keeping in mind that he’s writing three years before the World Wide Web, but in 2038 the Net is ubiquitous and quite recognizable to readers in 2014. He predicts that we’ll have trouble advancing the space program beyond low-Earth orbit, despite the potential gains if we can tap asteroids for all their yummy resources. He speculates how the search for Earth-like planets will progress (or not).
The main plot, with a black hole threatening to devour the planet, seems like something out of the tabloids from a year or two ago. Again, Brin is slightly ahead of his time with this “prediction”. And if the LHC is any indication, then who knows? Perhaps by 2038 we will indeed be playing with black holes as a possible source of power. As far as black holes go as a threat in Earth, I like how Brin develops the tension very slowly. This is a planetary-scale disaster, but Alex and his companions manage to keep it under wraps for most of the book. They don’t go running to the media or initiate a full-scale panic. (Of course, when it does get out, the consequences are disastrous.)
Unfortunately, like much of the hard SF of that era, Earth spends a little too much time navel-gazing. Brin once again follows several different characters, many of whom never meet up yet whose experiences provide the reader with a slightly different perspective on the plot. They are also a way for Brin to explore his 2038 future, in addition to the somewhat random infodumps that he includes at the end of every chapter. Alas, I feel like some of these characters and story arcs could have been eliminated without adversely affecting the story too much.
Similarly, while Brin’s characters all come across as earnest, they can also be very flat. The antagonists are two-dimensional in their single-mindedness, and this effect is only amplified by Brin’s tendency to tell rather than show. This is particularly evident when it comes to the relationship between Daisy and her daughter, Claire. It’s not enough that we see the way Daisy neglects her daughter and her house. No, Brin has to remind us, and show us Daisy’s own thoughts, to emphasize that, yes, Daisy has lost the plot.
Sometimes I felt in danger of losing the plot myself a few times. Earth is just a little ponderous for what should be a sleek, high-stakes thriller. Brin spends the first three-quarters establishing the setting, characters, and stakes. And then in the last quarter, he introduces twists that seem to come from nowhere. Specifically, I’m ambivalent about Jen’s fate and Pedro’s possible true identity. In both cases, these twists make a certain amount of sense—and I hate admitting that, because they also feel like bad storytelling. Jen is literally a deus ex machina, while Pedro’s twist just seems like one more complication we don’t need if Brin isn’t going to explore it in more detail—and, this being the denouement, there is no time for such things.
As a result, the ending is somewhat messy and disorganized after a long, slow lead-in. Earth is a bundle of interesting ideas, clever predictions, and stock characters involved in a doomsday scenario. I’m surprised, in fact, that SyFy hasn’t optioned it for one of its awful TV movies yet. (The book isn’t as bad as a SyFy original movie, but it has all the ingredients to make such a movie.)
Reading Earth has been an interesting experience in an anthropological sense. It’s not what I would call essential Brin, though. I really enjoyed the Uplift series, in which Brin has the space to develop his ideas on a much grander scale. (Though, as with the conclusion here, the conclusion to that series seems to include one-too-many new ideas that weren’t really mentioned earlier.) If, like me, you come across Earth and are in need of a new book to read, then you could do much worse. I can’t muster too much enthusiasm, however, for books that are brimming with good ideas yet in need of so much refinement. Once again Brin demonstrates his strengths in big ideas and his weaknesses in creating connections in people to make those ideas matter.
David Brin wrote Earth around the same time I was born, long before the LHC was being built and its doomsayers were crying disaster. Even then, however, the idea of experimental physics creating a world-swallowing black hole was a potent one. At first, it seems like the black hole present in Earth is a sign of the ultimate hubris of humanity … yet as the story develops, it becomes apparent that perhaps the black hole is an interloper sent by others who aren’t happy about having new neighbours.
This sense of layers of revelation is typical, both of Brin in general and Earth specifically. In style, Earth is quite similar to the other works of Brin’s that I’ve read, particularly the Uplift trilogy. Since it is set closer to the present day—2038, a mere fifty years in the future from the time Brin was writing—it also has much in common with the hard SF thrillers written by authors like Ben Bova and Greg Bear. The main characters are, by and large, scientists, intensely passionate about their work and dedicated to ideals like “scientific inquiry” and “truth”. The antagonists are authoritarian or anarchical in their allegiances, out to preserve the old order or tear it down at all costs, with both sides looking to the latest and greatest in scientific discoveries to give them the edge.
So to distinguish it from other such books, Brin sets Earth in a near future where global warming has occurred slightly faster than most scientists have predicted. In this version of 2038, humanity is still paralyzed by a dependence on fossil fuels. Coastal regions are losing ground to the ocean even as inland areas find desertification has become a pressing issue. Though information technology abounds, obsession with the role of secrecy in last century’s ecological disasters has reduced an individual’s privacy. And sometime in the first decade of the twenty-first century (i.e., five to ten years ago, for those of us in 2014), the world declares war against Switzerland in a bloody-almost-nuclear debacle.
There is a lot to process here. Certainly Brin deserves credit for such an intricate and detailled vision of the future. As he explains in his afterword, he isn’t going for accuracy—which would be foolish because it is almost impossible—just plausibility. Each of the attributes of his 2038 is a consequence of the trends he observed in 1989, coupled with some creative speculation about what kinds of surprises might happen along the way. It has been a while since I read a book that so confidently and cleverly lays out the near-future— Nexus tries very hard but doesn’t quite make me believe, and Rainbows End increasingly feels like allegory rather than an attempt at extrapolation. So, in this sense, Earth is a very interesting work of science fiction.
It’s quite interesting to compare Brin’s vision of 2038 with our actual 2014, what with hindsight being what it is. Keeping in mind that he’s writing three years before the World Wide Web, but in 2038 the Net is ubiquitous and quite recognizable to readers in 2014. He predicts that we’ll have trouble advancing the space program beyond low-Earth orbit, despite the potential gains if we can tap asteroids for all their yummy resources. He speculates how the search for Earth-like planets will progress (or not).
The main plot, with a black hole threatening to devour the planet, seems like something out of the tabloids from a year or two ago. Again, Brin is slightly ahead of his time with this “prediction”. And if the LHC is any indication, then who knows? Perhaps by 2038 we will indeed be playing with black holes as a possible source of power. As far as black holes go as a threat in Earth, I like how Brin develops the tension very slowly. This is a planetary-scale disaster, but Alex and his companions manage to keep it under wraps for most of the book. They don’t go running to the media or initiate a full-scale panic. (Of course, when it does get out, the consequences are disastrous.)
Unfortunately, like much of the hard SF of that era, Earth spends a little too much time navel-gazing. Brin once again follows several different characters, many of whom never meet up yet whose experiences provide the reader with a slightly different perspective on the plot. They are also a way for Brin to explore his 2038 future, in addition to the somewhat random infodumps that he includes at the end of every chapter. Alas, I feel like some of these characters and story arcs could have been eliminated without adversely affecting the story too much.
Similarly, while Brin’s characters all come across as earnest, they can also be very flat. The antagonists are two-dimensional in their single-mindedness, and this effect is only amplified by Brin’s tendency to tell rather than show. This is particularly evident when it comes to the relationship between Daisy and her daughter, Claire. It’s not enough that we see the way Daisy neglects her daughter and her house. No, Brin has to remind us, and show us Daisy’s own thoughts, to emphasize that, yes, Daisy has lost the plot.
Sometimes I felt in danger of losing the plot myself a few times. Earth is just a little ponderous for what should be a sleek, high-stakes thriller. Brin spends the first three-quarters establishing the setting, characters, and stakes. And then in the last quarter, he introduces twists that seem to come from nowhere. Specifically, I’m ambivalent about Jen’s fate and Pedro’s possible true identity. In both cases, these twists make a certain amount of sense—and I hate admitting that, because they also feel like bad storytelling. Jen is literally a deus ex machina, while Pedro’s twist just seems like one more complication we don’t need if Brin isn’t going to explore it in more detail—and, this being the denouement, there is no time for such things.
As a result, the ending is somewhat messy and disorganized after a long, slow lead-in. Earth is a bundle of interesting ideas, clever predictions, and stock characters involved in a doomsday scenario. I’m surprised, in fact, that SyFy hasn’t optioned it for one of its awful TV movies yet. (The book isn’t as bad as a SyFy original movie, but it has all the ingredients to make such a movie.)
Reading Earth has been an interesting experience in an anthropological sense. It’s not what I would call essential Brin, though. I really enjoyed the Uplift series, in which Brin has the space to develop his ideas on a much grander scale. (Though, as with the conclusion here, the conclusion to that series seems to include one-too-many new ideas that weren’t really mentioned earlier.) If, like me, you come across Earth and are in need of a new book to read, then you could do much worse. I can’t muster too much enthusiasm, however, for books that are brimming with good ideas yet in need of so much refinement. Once again Brin demonstrates his strengths in big ideas and his weaknesses in creating connections in people to make those ideas matter.
May 18, 2013
Great novel, well deserving of the 1991 Hugo, though it lost to Bujold's The Vor Game. It lost the SF Chronicle award and the Locus to Simmon's The Fall of Hyperion. All of these are great SF and I'd be hard pressed to chose among them. I give Earth 9 of 10 stars, very good, not perfect.
50 years in the future an extinction level event threatens the Earth. Noble laureate Alex and his many cronies have to figure out how to save us all using hard science, Maori mysticism, primate social behavior and much more, anything that helps or gives clues to a solution.
The plot is complex, the science believable even today 23 years later, perhaps even a bit more believable. It contains lots of secrets and puzzles to solve if one is so inclined. There are numerous characters, those important well developed and most believable with someone for almost anyone to identify. And the prose is far above average for genre fiction.
I shelved it under EcoFiction as well as SF since the Gaea theory and a likely state of the Earth's ecosystem and climate 50 years hence.
Brin is fascinating. This is the best of his I've read since Sundiver
50 years in the future an extinction level event threatens the Earth. Noble laureate Alex and his many cronies have to figure out how to save us all using hard science, Maori mysticism, primate social behavior and much more, anything that helps or gives clues to a solution.
The plot is complex, the science believable even today 23 years later, perhaps even a bit more believable. It contains lots of secrets and puzzles to solve if one is so inclined. There are numerous characters, those important well developed and most believable with someone for almost anyone to identify. And the prose is far above average for genre fiction.
I shelved it under EcoFiction as well as SF since the Gaea theory and a likely state of the Earth's ecosystem and climate 50 years hence.
Brin is fascinating. This is the best of his I've read since Sundiver
September 5, 2007
This book is a treasure. It drastically changed my worldview and made me come to see the urgency of some of the issues facing our generation. One of Brin's concepts has actually become a major piece of my belief system. Besides all of this serious stuff....this is a damn fun book to read that you will not put down until you are finished!
January 5, 2016
It's the year 2038, and Earth ain't doin' so well. The planet is overheated and overpopulated. Economies have failed; income inequality is rampant. And somewhere, deep inside the earth, a technological innovation has gone awry as an artificial black hole may eat the planet from the inside out.
Hard Sci-Fi in a Nutshell
Earth was published in 1990, and it's set in 2038. This dates the book occasionally, but, as with all aging science fiction, it's interesting to see what the author was and wasn't able to predict about our present. (Let's all hope Brin's completely wrong about future catastrophes involving black holes, though.) Old predictions about our present and future, however, no matter how intriguing or impressive, don't necessarily breathe life into a story. When it comes to spirit, Earth is pretty much all "head" and no "heart."
Brin is a scientist himself—according to his website, he's even cowritten "NASA-funded studies with California Space Institute, regarding robotics & space station design" (so, like, wow)—and like many scientists who dabble in fiction, he journeys into the hard sci-fi genre, attempting to create plots that are theoretically possible, even if improbable.
This sort of writing isn't for everyone, and it's why there's hardly any heart to Earth. It's also why hard science fiction can sometimes seem preachy as an author tries to teach readers a lesson. It's a genre where good characterization is frequently sacrificed at an altar of science, projected or pseudo. Earth does have its preachy moments—it would just about have to, given the book title—but it's the characters who suffer most as Brin molds them from stereotypes (or obvious stereotype reversals) and dedicates the content of their thoughts and dialogue to awkward infodumps.
In my experience, these are expected shortcomings of the hard sci-fi genre, but Brin's Earth faces a much more common problem seen in works from all genres of fiction: there are too many characters and subplots, and most prove to have no purpose. To me, this is unacceptable in a book that is seven hundred pages long. I can't quite shake the feeling that Earth wasted a bit of my time, and that was with considerable skim-reading.
So what did I enjoy about Earth? I can answer that easily. Between some of the book's chapters, you find nonfiction-styled excerpts that are about the state of the planet and society during various periods in (future) history. It comes as no surprise that Brin is better suited to nonfiction, and these bits and pieces turn out to be a much more interesting conduit for his predictions. If I could have read the entire story through a filter of these fictional articles and transcripts, my feelings about this book would likely be very different. As it is, though, these works were what kept me tolerating the rest of the book.
Whether you will like Earth or not depends upon how important quality characterization is to you and how much clichés——and a deus ex machina ending will bother you. As to that ending, I must quote a Goodreads reviewer's comical thoughts:
If you can be satisfied with contemplating interesting scientific possibilities alone, you may find you're able to overlook Earth's shortcomings. Some readers will no doubt love it.
If anything purely objective can be said of Brin's writing, it's probably that it's a good example of what's to be found in the hard science fiction genre. It plays well enough to its audience, but not everyone is part of that audience.
========================================
Quotes From the Book
(Apply your own positive/negative connotations.)
========================================
Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next.
---
One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.
---
...worried governments suddenly began pouring forth reams--whole libraries--of information they'd been hoarding, stumbling over themselves to prove they weren't responsible for the sudden outbreak of gravitational war.
Hard Sci-Fi in a Nutshell
Earth was published in 1990, and it's set in 2038. This dates the book occasionally, but, as with all aging science fiction, it's interesting to see what the author was and wasn't able to predict about our present. (Let's all hope Brin's completely wrong about future catastrophes involving black holes, though.) Old predictions about our present and future, however, no matter how intriguing or impressive, don't necessarily breathe life into a story. When it comes to spirit, Earth is pretty much all "head" and no "heart."
Brin is a scientist himself—according to his website, he's even cowritten "NASA-funded studies with California Space Institute, regarding robotics & space station design" (so, like, wow)—and like many scientists who dabble in fiction, he journeys into the hard sci-fi genre, attempting to create plots that are theoretically possible, even if improbable.
This sort of writing isn't for everyone, and it's why there's hardly any heart to Earth. It's also why hard science fiction can sometimes seem preachy as an author tries to teach readers a lesson. It's a genre where good characterization is frequently sacrificed at an altar of science, projected or pseudo. Earth does have its preachy moments—it would just about have to, given the book title—but it's the characters who suffer most as Brin molds them from stereotypes (or obvious stereotype reversals) and dedicates the content of their thoughts and dialogue to awkward infodumps.
In my experience, these are expected shortcomings of the hard sci-fi genre, but Brin's Earth faces a much more common problem seen in works from all genres of fiction: there are too many characters and subplots, and most prove to have no purpose. To me, this is unacceptable in a book that is seven hundred pages long. I can't quite shake the feeling that Earth wasted a bit of my time, and that was with considerable skim-reading.
So what did I enjoy about Earth? I can answer that easily. Between some of the book's chapters, you find nonfiction-styled excerpts that are about the state of the planet and society during various periods in (future) history. It comes as no surprise that Brin is better suited to nonfiction, and these bits and pieces turn out to be a much more interesting conduit for his predictions. If I could have read the entire story through a filter of these fictional articles and transcripts, my feelings about this book would likely be very different. As it is, though, these works were what kept me tolerating the rest of the book.
Whether you will like Earth or not depends upon how important quality characterization is to you and how much clichés——and a deus ex machina ending will bother you. As to that ending, I must quote a Goodreads reviewer's comical thoughts:
Just be prepared to be disappointed by the ending. Just make up your own, and pretend like the written ending isn't real.
If you can be satisfied with contemplating interesting scientific possibilities alone, you may find you're able to overlook Earth's shortcomings. Some readers will no doubt love it.
If anything purely objective can be said of Brin's writing, it's probably that it's a good example of what's to be found in the hard science fiction genre. It plays well enough to its audience, but not everyone is part of that audience.
========================================
Quotes From the Book
(Apply your own positive/negative connotations.)
========================================
Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next.
---
One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.
---
...worried governments suddenly began pouring forth reams--whole libraries--of information they'd been hoarding, stumbling over themselves to prove they weren't responsible for the sudden outbreak of gravitational war.
February 10, 2022
I read this in a college environmental science class, early 1990s. I remember it talking about the "world wide web" and email, and thinking "no way!!"
May 11, 2021
Bloated. Dated. Sexist. Skip it; read literally any other climate fiction.
July 14, 2019
Le sobran historias, personajes y páginas.
Tremenda decepción.
Tremenda decepción.
December 27, 2014
Dang those profligate "TwenCen" forebears of ours! They went and burned off the ozone layer and depleted the water tables and used up all the petroleum, and consequently just a few decades later people lead stunted lives, devoid of privacy and required by law to maintain a near-zero environmental footprint. Those who are smart wear goggles to protect their vision from "sleeting ultraviolet radiation" (and also to record, and to upload if they wish, whatever they see).
That's the background situation. But now, researchers have noticed that there is a tiny but growing artificially created black hole orbiting the center of the Earth, thousands of miles below the crust. Had some clever idiot not put it there (assuming it's of human origin), civilization, or better yet "swarming, pestilential humanity" itself, could take a long-overdue exit, allowing Mother Gaia to recover and try again over the geological ages to come. But even that bet is off the table if this subterranean threat cannot be stopped: The entire planet will be swallowed up.
The author, a scientist, mentions in a brief preface that the grim circumstances depicted here represent his best-case scenario for the near future (year 2038). I don't think he's seriously predicting a feral black hole, although no doubt something totally unexpected like that could very well show up at any time, either as a result of human stupidity or fate. Writing in 1990, he did project a course for the Internet that is very close to what it has become, as well as depicting users of that Net who publicly humiliate one another or appoint themselves agents of "the side of righteousness," justified in undermining the work of anyone who fails to meet their arbitrary standards. Kudos to Brin for that vision. But I think he's far more concerned about a near-term general decline, affecting not only the "Earth-rapists" who may deserve it but the Earth herself.
As a personal aside, throughout my adult life I've worried about the numerous negative side effects of modern civilization -- air and water pollution, habitat destruction, vanishing species, over-fishing of the oceans, etc. etc. I've noticed, too, that concern for certain environmental issues is far more fashionable than for others, for reasons that don't seem closely related to the immediacy of the threat or our capacity to do anything about it, and suspect that some advocates may be motivated primarily by the perceived nobility they acquire from the cause. Then there's the self-reinforcing system in which government agencies pay researchers to provide data that justifies consolidation of more and more power by said agencies. So, despite acknowledging the importance of conservation and good stewardship, I also understand and sympathize with voices such as that of this online curmudgeon:
"Let’s try to survive the complete, total, insane, idiotic, out of touch, killing, controlling, taxing assholes that run our governments by educating our fellow humans about REAL issues instead of scaring them silly and driving them insane with what is at best pseudo science and at worst the exact same thing the church did in the dark ages."
Therefore, I decided to view Earth simply as sci-fi and not as a prophetic warning of dire times just around the corner.
As a story, it has potential, although I'm not fond of the practice of using alternating chapters to cycle through a large cast of characters (interspersed in this case with what another reviewer calls "expositions and infodumps"). A third of the way into the book I still felt uncertain as to who were the main protagonists. Then I slapped my forehead and said, Of course. The Earth is the protagonist. Given that even its oceans are mere films of moisture in comparison with its massive bulk, individual humans rate about the same as bacteria.
Among them are Alex, a very bright physicist who thinks at first that he's responsible for that black hole; Teresa, an astronaut who finds herself investigating whether some kind of conspiracy is afoot; Jen (Alex's grandmother), a biologist destined for a very unusual fate; Logan, a scientist who playfully tosses out a wild theory that prompts a surprise visit from a scary government representative; Nelson, an earnest young African with pet baboons; and a trio of reckless young men who reminded me somewhat of the misfits in A Clockwork Orange. (Actually, all of these characters are more likable than bacteria, even if none rises to the level of being a main character.)
By the end of the second third of the book, I had wearied of the continual transitions between the many threads of the plot, and felt sure that Brin could have wrapped things up by now. I began taking away points for every page that did not obviously contribute to the story. The prose meanwhile was just passable, if you overlook occasional forays into meaningless jargon, such as:
"The bogeys," Ruby said, referring to their unknown foes. "They're uniting on a lambda band now, fourteen hundred megacycles, with what looks like a Koonin-style metric impedance match."
Say what? That sort of thing led me to think that perhaps instead of being published this work ought to have remained a cross-discipline creative writing project. I assume some actual science does underly the tale. But the business of dueling beams that cut through the Earth suggests the light-sabres in Star Wars, and while struggling down the homestretch to the finish I had the sense that I'd wasted far too much time on a geek's runaway fantasies.
That's the background situation. But now, researchers have noticed that there is a tiny but growing artificially created black hole orbiting the center of the Earth, thousands of miles below the crust. Had some clever idiot not put it there (assuming it's of human origin), civilization, or better yet "swarming, pestilential humanity" itself, could take a long-overdue exit, allowing Mother Gaia to recover and try again over the geological ages to come. But even that bet is off the table if this subterranean threat cannot be stopped: The entire planet will be swallowed up.
The author, a scientist, mentions in a brief preface that the grim circumstances depicted here represent his best-case scenario for the near future (year 2038). I don't think he's seriously predicting a feral black hole, although no doubt something totally unexpected like that could very well show up at any time, either as a result of human stupidity or fate. Writing in 1990, he did project a course for the Internet that is very close to what it has become, as well as depicting users of that Net who publicly humiliate one another or appoint themselves agents of "the side of righteousness," justified in undermining the work of anyone who fails to meet their arbitrary standards. Kudos to Brin for that vision. But I think he's far more concerned about a near-term general decline, affecting not only the "Earth-rapists" who may deserve it but the Earth herself.
As a personal aside, throughout my adult life I've worried about the numerous negative side effects of modern civilization -- air and water pollution, habitat destruction, vanishing species, over-fishing of the oceans, etc. etc. I've noticed, too, that concern for certain environmental issues is far more fashionable than for others, for reasons that don't seem closely related to the immediacy of the threat or our capacity to do anything about it, and suspect that some advocates may be motivated primarily by the perceived nobility they acquire from the cause. Then there's the self-reinforcing system in which government agencies pay researchers to provide data that justifies consolidation of more and more power by said agencies. So, despite acknowledging the importance of conservation and good stewardship, I also understand and sympathize with voices such as that of this online curmudgeon:
"Let’s try to survive the complete, total, insane, idiotic, out of touch, killing, controlling, taxing assholes that run our governments by educating our fellow humans about REAL issues instead of scaring them silly and driving them insane with what is at best pseudo science and at worst the exact same thing the church did in the dark ages."
Therefore, I decided to view Earth simply as sci-fi and not as a prophetic warning of dire times just around the corner.
As a story, it has potential, although I'm not fond of the practice of using alternating chapters to cycle through a large cast of characters (interspersed in this case with what another reviewer calls "expositions and infodumps"). A third of the way into the book I still felt uncertain as to who were the main protagonists. Then I slapped my forehead and said, Of course. The Earth is the protagonist. Given that even its oceans are mere films of moisture in comparison with its massive bulk, individual humans rate about the same as bacteria.
Among them are Alex, a very bright physicist who thinks at first that he's responsible for that black hole; Teresa, an astronaut who finds herself investigating whether some kind of conspiracy is afoot; Jen (Alex's grandmother), a biologist destined for a very unusual fate; Logan, a scientist who playfully tosses out a wild theory that prompts a surprise visit from a scary government representative; Nelson, an earnest young African with pet baboons; and a trio of reckless young men who reminded me somewhat of the misfits in A Clockwork Orange. (Actually, all of these characters are more likable than bacteria, even if none rises to the level of being a main character.)
By the end of the second third of the book, I had wearied of the continual transitions between the many threads of the plot, and felt sure that Brin could have wrapped things up by now. I began taking away points for every page that did not obviously contribute to the story. The prose meanwhile was just passable, if you overlook occasional forays into meaningless jargon, such as:
"The bogeys," Ruby said, referring to their unknown foes. "They're uniting on a lambda band now, fourteen hundred megacycles, with what looks like a Koonin-style metric impedance match."
Say what? That sort of thing led me to think that perhaps instead of being published this work ought to have remained a cross-discipline creative writing project. I assume some actual science does underly the tale. But the business of dueling beams that cut through the Earth suggests the light-sabres in Star Wars, and while struggling down the homestretch to the finish I had the sense that I'd wasted far too much time on a geek's runaway fantasies.
April 6, 2008
David Brin is one of those hard Science Fiction writers who know the art of writing stories. He has characters that are flesh and blood; he gives good details of the scene before us without causing anemia in the telling. One irritation of many books, especially many found in the New York Times Best Seller List, is that the story and characters are so skeleton, if you were to blow on the page, perhaps the words themselves would float away in the wind for what little story and art there is between the cover of the novel. But, David Brin does better on this account than many on those lists.
Another thing he does well is tell the cautionary tale, a "prophetic" style of storytelling in Science Fiction that found its hight of popularity with the Cold War, and various writers visions of a world after WWIII and nuclear confrontation. After Glasnost ,Perestroika, the talks between Gorbachev and Reagan, this type of fiction began to wane, as we all breathed a sigh of relief. But new confrontations are before us, and a new series of the cautionary tale are needed in fiction to raise the conscience and awareness. Brin does this in 'Earth'. The huge strength of the novel lies not in the hard science, but in a population's reaction to and debating of, the changing of the Earth's environment. It will be people and policies that will change the course of the threat of killing the planet. But in a world with so many cultures and so many opinions and ideas, this will be a challenge. This Brin does especially well.
His use of fonts is particularly interesting, as he creates tone, separate personalities, and tension in the use of various fonts and sizes. Adding to that a cyber community, which is much more advanced than ours, yet no more matured.
There are a few things that detract from the novel. First, the central conflict is not the climate or the environment, but a black hole tucked deep inside the Earth. Add to that all the possible outcomes of a world "raped" (as Brin calls it in his book many times), and you have a jumble of ideas that challenges credulity for the reader, for which he admits to in his afterword.
Also, while there is even a well liked and admired spiritual physicist in the novel, much of the portrayal of the religious community is relegated to the reader as simple-minded individuals and groups, even when at times they are thrown a carrot of admiration of sorts. Examples of this can be found on pages 451-52, where Mahayana Buddhism is relegated to a sound bite, and one that is superficial at best. There is also the “doomsday prediction” of an internet user (presumably Christian) on page 533. The Lord’s Prayer’ is given a Gain/New Age twist, and even there it is relegated with a sort of Agnostic twist “…Our Mother, who art beneath us, whatever thy name” (Earth, 535), where “whatever reads almost like an inside joke. There is at one point, an argument online of some rouge Catholic nuns whose argument sounds like the “angels sitting on the head of a pin” argument of the Middle Ages, as if though this type of thinking Catholics or other Christians are the only types of intellectualism they are capable of (at the time of this review, the reviewer apologizes that the citation cannot be found. Any assistance in finding the proper pages for this citation will be greatly appreciated). In fact, like any community, religious or secular, there are degrees to the talents and abilities of various thinkers in their respective fields. It is ridiculous to suppose that the only intellectuals are scientists. But in a sense, that is what one takes away after reading ‘Earth’.
Some will admire the fact that Brin is acting the futurist here, by predicting certain trends, and most importantly the importance and increasing use of the internet as a means of gaining information, news, and a place to debate, though the realized world of the internet and Brin’s vision are somewhat different. There are, incidently, websites which lists the predictive achievements of ‘Earth’. These are fine and kudos to Brin for such insight. This reviewer confesses not to be conversant in science, and while reading hard science fiction is a pleasure, what is looked for in any book read are good narrative techniques, good characterizations, plot, and descriptions. In this sense, Mr. Brin has done a fairly thorough job at creating a novel of this magnitude, despite the over excesses and the anti-spiritual/religious bias he exhibits.
Another thing he does well is tell the cautionary tale, a "prophetic" style of storytelling in Science Fiction that found its hight of popularity with the Cold War, and various writers visions of a world after WWIII and nuclear confrontation. After Glasnost ,Perestroika, the talks between Gorbachev and Reagan, this type of fiction began to wane, as we all breathed a sigh of relief. But new confrontations are before us, and a new series of the cautionary tale are needed in fiction to raise the conscience and awareness. Brin does this in 'Earth'. The huge strength of the novel lies not in the hard science, but in a population's reaction to and debating of, the changing of the Earth's environment. It will be people and policies that will change the course of the threat of killing the planet. But in a world with so many cultures and so many opinions and ideas, this will be a challenge. This Brin does especially well.
His use of fonts is particularly interesting, as he creates tone, separate personalities, and tension in the use of various fonts and sizes. Adding to that a cyber community, which is much more advanced than ours, yet no more matured.
There are a few things that detract from the novel. First, the central conflict is not the climate or the environment, but a black hole tucked deep inside the Earth. Add to that all the possible outcomes of a world "raped" (as Brin calls it in his book many times), and you have a jumble of ideas that challenges credulity for the reader, for which he admits to in his afterword.
Also, while there is even a well liked and admired spiritual physicist in the novel, much of the portrayal of the religious community is relegated to the reader as simple-minded individuals and groups, even when at times they are thrown a carrot of admiration of sorts. Examples of this can be found on pages 451-52, where Mahayana Buddhism is relegated to a sound bite, and one that is superficial at best. There is also the “doomsday prediction” of an internet user (presumably Christian) on page 533. The Lord’s Prayer’ is given a Gain/New Age twist, and even there it is relegated with a sort of Agnostic twist “…Our Mother, who art beneath us, whatever thy name” (Earth, 535), where “whatever reads almost like an inside joke. There is at one point, an argument online of some rouge Catholic nuns whose argument sounds like the “angels sitting on the head of a pin” argument of the Middle Ages, as if though this type of thinking Catholics or other Christians are the only types of intellectualism they are capable of (at the time of this review, the reviewer apologizes that the citation cannot be found. Any assistance in finding the proper pages for this citation will be greatly appreciated). In fact, like any community, religious or secular, there are degrees to the talents and abilities of various thinkers in their respective fields. It is ridiculous to suppose that the only intellectuals are scientists. But in a sense, that is what one takes away after reading ‘Earth’.
Some will admire the fact that Brin is acting the futurist here, by predicting certain trends, and most importantly the importance and increasing use of the internet as a means of gaining information, news, and a place to debate, though the realized world of the internet and Brin’s vision are somewhat different. There are, incidently, websites which lists the predictive achievements of ‘Earth’. These are fine and kudos to Brin for such insight. This reviewer confesses not to be conversant in science, and while reading hard science fiction is a pleasure, what is looked for in any book read are good narrative techniques, good characterizations, plot, and descriptions. In this sense, Mr. Brin has done a fairly thorough job at creating a novel of this magnitude, despite the over excesses and the anti-spiritual/religious bias he exhibits.
November 27, 2017
I was trying to describe this book to people at my book club last night, and as I went through all the things it tried to incorporate, one person asked if this was a humourous book? It is not, but I can see how the hodge-podge I was listing might make it sound like a book where piling all these themes and technologies were be used to highlight absurdity.
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
August 19, 2024
This is a near-future SF novel, written in 1988-1989. It was nominated for Hugo and Locus, lost both (Hugo to The Vor Game, Locus took 2nd place, losing to The Fall of Hyperion. Both winners are lighter and IMHO literarily better novels). I read it as a part of the monthly reading for August 2024 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group.
This is a big book – 27 hours on audio, 601 pages hardback. It is felt that the author attempted to write something more than an entertaining SF adventure, instead trying his prediction powers and going into futurology. Sometimes quite successful, especially with the role of the Internet in the daily lives of millions (called infonet), including social networks and video streaming.
The book starts in the late 2030s and the world is quite different from the one in 1990 – global warming drowned millions, ozone holes blinded whole species of animals and birds, destroying them. National states are moved backstage, on the rise are new religions (different Gaia worships, Sun worship), supranational organizations (UN, NATO) and popular green movements, from moderates to extremists. And an overpopulation – 10 billion people, and want to live in style, not just survive. The book has longer chapters following multiple characters, interwoven with short ones, which either tell the story of life formation on Earth or its different aspects – hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, noosphere, or give snapshots from the Network, from discussing commercial nuclear fission to multiple conspiracy theories. While some of the inserts are interesting, they distracted me from the main story.
Among the main characters, we meet Alex, a genius young physicist, who accidentally dropped a micro black hole into Earth only to find out that a larger version (but still micro) in already inside and if not ‘turned off’ will grow enough to destroy the planet in just a few years. His no less genius grandmother Jen Wolling, a Nobel laureate in biology, and viewed by many as an avatar of Gaia, who supports ‘arks’ enclosed safe environments for animals, for as noted above, Sun’s ultraviolet may blind them, toxic wastes poison them, people hunt them. She supports gene modification of both man and other animals. Stan Goldman is a US astronaut, a shuttle pilot, who lost her husband and more friends when an anomaly destroyed the space station (as can be guessed, linked to the effects of a black hole)…
The main plot line is the race against time to stop the black hole, but it is actually a small part of the book, but more is about what this new world looks like, from oldsters, who film everything with their eye-lenses (initially a citizen vigilantism against crime, too like modern use of a smartphone by many); paramilitary fighting against illegal hunting; green extremists fighting even relatively green projects, like a tidal power plant, for It seemed that even a pollution-free power plant—one drawing energy from the moon’s placid orbit—was bound to have its enemies these days. The protestors mourned former wetlands, which some had seen as useless mud flats, but which had also fed and sheltered numberless seabirds before being turned into a dammed-up plain of surging, turbid saltwater.
The idea of writing a groundbreaking novel can be seen and admired, but IMHO it has failed. I liked other books by the author, but this one is too enormous to enjoy.
This is a big book – 27 hours on audio, 601 pages hardback. It is felt that the author attempted to write something more than an entertaining SF adventure, instead trying his prediction powers and going into futurology. Sometimes quite successful, especially with the role of the Internet in the daily lives of millions (called infonet), including social networks and video streaming.
The book starts in the late 2030s and the world is quite different from the one in 1990 – global warming drowned millions, ozone holes blinded whole species of animals and birds, destroying them. National states are moved backstage, on the rise are new religions (different Gaia worships, Sun worship), supranational organizations (UN, NATO) and popular green movements, from moderates to extremists. And an overpopulation – 10 billion people, and want to live in style, not just survive. The book has longer chapters following multiple characters, interwoven with short ones, which either tell the story of life formation on Earth or its different aspects – hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, noosphere, or give snapshots from the Network, from discussing commercial nuclear fission to multiple conspiracy theories. While some of the inserts are interesting, they distracted me from the main story.
Among the main characters, we meet Alex, a genius young physicist, who accidentally dropped a micro black hole into Earth only to find out that a larger version (but still micro) in already inside and if not ‘turned off’ will grow enough to destroy the planet in just a few years. His no less genius grandmother Jen Wolling, a Nobel laureate in biology, and viewed by many as an avatar of Gaia, who supports ‘arks’ enclosed safe environments for animals, for as noted above, Sun’s ultraviolet may blind them, toxic wastes poison them, people hunt them. She supports gene modification of both man and other animals. Stan Goldman is a US astronaut, a shuttle pilot, who lost her husband and more friends when an anomaly destroyed the space station (as can be guessed, linked to the effects of a black hole)…
The main plot line is the race against time to stop the black hole, but it is actually a small part of the book, but more is about what this new world looks like, from oldsters, who film everything with their eye-lenses (initially a citizen vigilantism against crime, too like modern use of a smartphone by many); paramilitary fighting against illegal hunting; green extremists fighting even relatively green projects, like a tidal power plant, for It seemed that even a pollution-free power plant—one drawing energy from the moon’s placid orbit—was bound to have its enemies these days. The protestors mourned former wetlands, which some had seen as useless mud flats, but which had also fed and sheltered numberless seabirds before being turned into a dammed-up plain of surging, turbid saltwater.
The idea of writing a groundbreaking novel can be seen and admired, but IMHO it has failed. I liked other books by the author, but this one is too enormous to enjoy.
August 19, 2012
Sad to say, this book was a clunker. It looked promising in the beginning--like it was going to be a parable about the dark side of technological progress. And it might have worked, had Brin kept his story on a smaller scale, focusing on the effect an abused planet was having on a few people. Unfortunately, he decided to attempt writing an epic, with the result that there were too many characters involved in too many subplots that I couldn't very invested in.
Given the fact that the book was published in 1990 and takes place in 2038, it's interesting to read it in 2012, roughly the half-way point. In some things, Brin was quite prescient, e.g. his portrayal of the Earth suffering from climate change, and especially his take on the pervasive presence of the Internet (which he calls the World Net). In other cases, the story is filled with anachronisms: the space shuttle program is still active, and people are still wondering in 2038 whether there is water on Mars. But the anachronisms could have simply been considered quaint and charming if the approach to the story had been better.
There is one exceptional scene in the first 374 pages, where disaster befalls those tending a space station. I wasn't prepared an additional 200+ pages to find out whether there was another. The book became too much of a slog. I gave up.
Given the fact that the book was published in 1990 and takes place in 2038, it's interesting to read it in 2012, roughly the half-way point. In some things, Brin was quite prescient, e.g. his portrayal of the Earth suffering from climate change, and especially his take on the pervasive presence of the Internet (which he calls the World Net). In other cases, the story is filled with anachronisms: the space shuttle program is still active, and people are still wondering in 2038 whether there is water on Mars. But the anachronisms could have simply been considered quaint and charming if the approach to the story had been better.
There is one exceptional scene in the first 374 pages, where disaster befalls those tending a space station. I wasn't prepared an additional 200+ pages to find out whether there was another. The book became too much of a slog. I gave up.
October 16, 2010
This was the second time I read this book, and I liked it better this round.
It's fast-paced action with a strong ecological message. Although it was published pre-internet (1990), it anticipates much of the immediacy of instant communications. Unfortunately, the situation with the environment hasn't gotten better, and we'll have to face many of the challenges this book portrays.
I especially liked the author's explanation of the assumptions he made and the points he exaggerated. He's a great storyteller.
It's fast-paced action with a strong ecological message. Although it was published pre-internet (1990), it anticipates much of the immediacy of instant communications. Unfortunately, the situation with the environment hasn't gotten better, and we'll have to face many of the challenges this book portrays.
I especially liked the author's explanation of the assumptions he made and the points he exaggerated. He's a great storyteller.
June 3, 2018
Reread. But kind of exhausting. Too many ideas and in the end kind of fell over. But it had some details that stayed with me me for years. Looking for a rock in Kansas. Editing 80s sf movies to be 15 minutes long. The gnomes of zurich kind of. A black hole at the center of the Earth? And using Shuttle Down as a detail. And something about a manifestation of Gaia in some manner. And a floating country of environmental refugees. That's a lot for me to have remembered and rightly so. I also recalled being impressed at Brin's version of a worldwide computer network. And reading this now, he really didn't do all that badly. The details were just thin enough that it still worked in 2018 which is remarkable for something published only a year or so after www was invented. But the book also had too much fluff. The scientific dump also was too much. And too much characters. But it did have a real ending. A mixed bag but a pretty good one.
August 24, 2017
Started this last night as a break from "War and Peace." We'll see how it goes. Already there's a potential disaster caused by a super-collider thingee. People have been protesting the existence of those dubious contraptions. There was one in "Angels and Demons" as I recall.
Moving in a bit after last night. As with "War and Peace" there are several plot trains running here. As is common with sci-fi, especially so-called "hard" sci-fi, the ideas are interesting while the writing is merely functional. In other words, Mr. Brin is no Tolstoy! The writing seems a bit dated already. Any time a sci-fi writer sets a story in the very near future he/she runs the risk of occasionally looking foolish. It seems very unlikely that the world will look like this in only 23 years. Maybe in 123 years...
I'll say one thing, this book is packed with various stuff. Other G'reads reviewers have complained about all the "content" and I guess they do have a point, but I'm enjoying it so far. Most recently a hapless bio-preserve employee has gotten mixed up in the politics of a baboon troop and is facing off against several pairs of angry canine teeth. Ever see the canines on a baboon!
Moving on and trying to remember who everyone is - just like War and Peace!
- Speaking of Russia, there's a bit of a tribute made to "A Clockwork Orange" via use of some of the lingo by some lay-about teenagers.
- The Chinese are fingered specifically for eco-criminality(powdered rhino horn etc.) specifically - good!
- Roland's fate is a BIT overdone. The author's sympathies are clear enough anyway. And I agree with him by the way.
- Another reminder... "Silent Running."
The author is smart and perceptive about our Earth problems and where we might be heading. He and I are on the same wavelength in a lot of ways, although that hard science stuff, mostly physics, is beyond me. I'm better at the biology/behavior/evolution stuff, having been an Anthro major.
Moving onward and thinking that this book ought to be shorter. Most of its parts are interesting but there does seem to be an indulgent amount of verbiage. Not a BIG issue but it's there.
- 'thumpers' = "Dune"
Well... I "finished" this book by skip-skimming to the end. Mr. Brin finally wore out my patience with mediocre writing, endless, repetitive digression and a denoument that took about 200 pages to resolve itself. In a word... BLOATED! At first I was not in agreement with those cranky G'reads reviewers who took exception to the complexity of the "plot" because the author kept me interested. Things began to go downhill as soon as sex and romance popped into the narrative view. The author is not exactly Tolstoy, in fact he more closely resembles Dan Brown in his good days(does he actually have those?). Examples...
"Sometimes it was just enough to have someone to hold." or "Among other things, June had at least given him back his sexuality." - Dear... GOD!!! Awful Brown-like word-barf.
Then there're all those mini-cliffhangers, another Brown device. And more: the creation of a "new" slang favorite: "dumpit" seems to have COMPLETELY replaced "damnit" just 50 years into the future. Why?????? Let's end this...
- Why would destroying the Glen Canyon dam NOT restore "the world's beauty one iota" Seems to me that it would indeed - a lot of iotas in fact!
- After a bunch of cataclysmic occurrences, Logan thinks "This may be serious." D'ya think?
- The author loves the weird words and deploys as many as a graduate of the Iowa writer's workshop. "Noctilucent" comes to mind. Please...
- I wonder what the editor must have felt upon reading this immense word pile. The only sane alternative would have been to tell the author that all those neat ideas were really interesting but he needed to go back and write it all again with HALF as many pages. The alternative apparently was to publish as is - a bad decision.
I have to admit that I'm not at all sure what happened by the end but the author killed most of the interest I might have had in the outcome. Going back to Dan Brown: the ending of "Angels and Demons," a boring, ridiculous seemingly and endless affair, has nothing on this thing. On and on and on it went... I reduce my rating to 2.0* Mr. Brin is not a bad writer but he ain't a good one either. He really needs a tough-love editor!
Moving in a bit after last night. As with "War and Peace" there are several plot trains running here. As is common with sci-fi, especially so-called "hard" sci-fi, the ideas are interesting while the writing is merely functional. In other words, Mr. Brin is no Tolstoy! The writing seems a bit dated already. Any time a sci-fi writer sets a story in the very near future he/she runs the risk of occasionally looking foolish. It seems very unlikely that the world will look like this in only 23 years. Maybe in 123 years...
I'll say one thing, this book is packed with various stuff. Other G'reads reviewers have complained about all the "content" and I guess they do have a point, but I'm enjoying it so far. Most recently a hapless bio-preserve employee has gotten mixed up in the politics of a baboon troop and is facing off against several pairs of angry canine teeth. Ever see the canines on a baboon!
Moving on and trying to remember who everyone is - just like War and Peace!
- Speaking of Russia, there's a bit of a tribute made to "A Clockwork Orange" via use of some of the lingo by some lay-about teenagers.
- The Chinese are fingered specifically for eco-criminality(powdered rhino horn etc.) specifically - good!
- Roland's fate is a BIT overdone. The author's sympathies are clear enough anyway. And I agree with him by the way.
- Another reminder... "Silent Running."
The author is smart and perceptive about our Earth problems and where we might be heading. He and I are on the same wavelength in a lot of ways, although that hard science stuff, mostly physics, is beyond me. I'm better at the biology/behavior/evolution stuff, having been an Anthro major.
Moving onward and thinking that this book ought to be shorter. Most of its parts are interesting but there does seem to be an indulgent amount of verbiage. Not a BIG issue but it's there.
- 'thumpers' = "Dune"
Well... I "finished" this book by skip-skimming to the end. Mr. Brin finally wore out my patience with mediocre writing, endless, repetitive digression and a denoument that took about 200 pages to resolve itself. In a word... BLOATED! At first I was not in agreement with those cranky G'reads reviewers who took exception to the complexity of the "plot" because the author kept me interested. Things began to go downhill as soon as sex and romance popped into the narrative view. The author is not exactly Tolstoy, in fact he more closely resembles Dan Brown in his good days(does he actually have those?). Examples...
"Sometimes it was just enough to have someone to hold." or "Among other things, June had at least given him back his sexuality." - Dear... GOD!!! Awful Brown-like word-barf.
Then there're all those mini-cliffhangers, another Brown device. And more: the creation of a "new" slang favorite: "dumpit" seems to have COMPLETELY replaced "damnit" just 50 years into the future. Why?????? Let's end this...
- Why would destroying the Glen Canyon dam NOT restore "the world's beauty one iota" Seems to me that it would indeed - a lot of iotas in fact!
- After a bunch of cataclysmic occurrences, Logan thinks "This may be serious." D'ya think?
- The author loves the weird words and deploys as many as a graduate of the Iowa writer's workshop. "Noctilucent" comes to mind. Please...
- I wonder what the editor must have felt upon reading this immense word pile. The only sane alternative would have been to tell the author that all those neat ideas were really interesting but he needed to go back and write it all again with HALF as many pages. The alternative apparently was to publish as is - a bad decision.
I have to admit that I'm not at all sure what happened by the end but the author killed most of the interest I might have had in the outcome. Going back to Dan Brown: the ending of "Angels and Demons," a boring, ridiculous seemingly and endless affair, has nothing on this thing. On and on and on it went... I reduce my rating to 2.0* Mr. Brin is not a bad writer but he ain't a good one either. He really needs a tough-love editor!
February 4, 2017
This is a long book that is rich with ideas and concepts. It's set about fifty years into the future from 1990 and you can already see a number of his predictions come true. It's not a page turner. The pace is slow, leisurely. It's a thoughtful book. It took me a long time to read it because I typically didn't read more than a few pages at a time. I also frequently remarked on passages to my wife because Brin's ideas on things seem to match mine pretty well.
February 7, 2011
Author David Brin just posted a link to a video where he does a reading from Earth. But, this is not just a talking head video.
[image error]
Brin's bookshelves and some kitchen appliances are visible in the background, but they will not distract because the reading is illustrated w/fade-ins to terrific astronomical spacescape photography and art, and not randomly either, but in synch with the passage Brin reads.
Brilliant, fun, and much better than those origins of earth and the universe films you remember from old time Science Museum FieldTrips or the day when your science teacher couldn't bear lecturing and qued up a movie after fooling around with the canister and projector, etc. Yes, his personal reading plaque reminds us of the ipad, the kindle
Earth remains one of my favorite books. The way this book prefigures the internet and communication via social media and messaging is practically omniscient and a little bit spooky! -I have read Earth quite a few times. It is entertaining, inspiring, and I like the parallel story lines. Brin's portrayal of technology and computer aided communication ages pretty well considering it was published in 1990.
His exploration of climate change and how an angry earth might wreak havoc on people's lives is even more serendipitous post-Katrina/Haiti/Australia you fill in the blank with the flooding disaster that still haunts you or is currently occupying prime-time.
Katrina?
Australia?
[image error]
Brin's bookshelves and some kitchen appliances are visible in the background, but they will not distract because the reading is illustrated w/fade-ins to terrific astronomical spacescape photography and art, and not randomly either, but in synch with the passage Brin reads.
Brilliant, fun, and much better than those origins of earth and the universe films you remember from old time Science Museum FieldTrips or the day when your science teacher couldn't bear lecturing and qued up a movie after fooling around with the canister and projector, etc. Yes, his personal reading plaque reminds us of the ipad, the kindle
Earth remains one of my favorite books. The way this book prefigures the internet and communication via social media and messaging is practically omniscient and a little bit spooky! -I have read Earth quite a few times. It is entertaining, inspiring, and I like the parallel story lines. Brin's portrayal of technology and computer aided communication ages pretty well considering it was published in 1990.
His exploration of climate change and how an angry earth might wreak havoc on people's lives is even more serendipitous post-Katrina/Haiti/Australia you fill in the blank with the flooding disaster that still haunts you or is currently occupying prime-time.
Katrina?
Australia?
January 7, 2012
3.5 Stars. There is much to admire about this 1990-vintage panorama of Earth in the 50-year future (at the time of writing). From our vantage point, ~20 years into that predicted future, many of the deeply disturbing trends are playing out along very similar lines as those predicted in the book. Equally important, a lot of mostly-positive trends are also falling more or less into place. In many ways, the predictive power of this book is quite remarkable.
I was also impressed by the ambitious scope of the work. The writing is very good in its treatment of scientific issues, both real and fanciful. There is a helpful postscript in which the distinctions between known and speculative science, and the author's thinking behind the story lines, are made clear. And the coverage of Earth is comprehensive, from the core (site of a central dramatic theme) to the deeply disturbed crust and its too-many humans, to near-earth orbit and then beyond. All of these themes are treated with great skill, and a complex story that moves along nicely and with some very exciting developments. Moreover, there is a really interesting discussion of the processes of human consciousness, and a very clever plot development that grows out of it.
My problems with the book are in the relatively weak character development, and - for my taste - rather clumsy treatment of individual human relationships. I just didn't get the feeling that the major characters were portrayed with the skill that characterized the other elements of the story. This was something of a distraction from what was otherwise a really good read.
This was my first major read on my new Kindle, and I borrowed it online from the local library. There is a great deal of potential in this lending mechanism, and I can recommend it highly for those who have access.
I was also impressed by the ambitious scope of the work. The writing is very good in its treatment of scientific issues, both real and fanciful. There is a helpful postscript in which the distinctions between known and speculative science, and the author's thinking behind the story lines, are made clear. And the coverage of Earth is comprehensive, from the core (site of a central dramatic theme) to the deeply disturbed crust and its too-many humans, to near-earth orbit and then beyond. All of these themes are treated with great skill, and a complex story that moves along nicely and with some very exciting developments. Moreover, there is a really interesting discussion of the processes of human consciousness, and a very clever plot development that grows out of it.
My problems with the book are in the relatively weak character development, and - for my taste - rather clumsy treatment of individual human relationships. I just didn't get the feeling that the major characters were portrayed with the skill that characterized the other elements of the story. This was something of a distraction from what was otherwise a really good read.
This was my first major read on my new Kindle, and I borrowed it online from the local library. There is a great deal of potential in this lending mechanism, and I can recommend it highly for those who have access.
February 9, 2013
Reading this book was wonderful. But then you get to the ending... And eh. So read it, by all means read it. It definitely makes you think. He strikes a cord when he describes these silent forests. And, living in the suburbs, I know what he means about these perfectly planted trees. Just be prepared to be disappointed by the ending. Just make up your own, and pretend like the written ending isn't real.
July 16, 2015
This book, although not likely to be an award-winning piece of English literature, wonderfully exemplifies how good sci-fi is a field of social commentary, thought experiments, and moral ruminations. I read this at a young age, and it was mind opening. Perhaps the glasses of youth led to a different view from that which I might have now (and that the disappointment in the poor ending has faded), but I would still definitely (or 'defo' in proper Australian) recommend.
March 25, 2008
Despite the many numerous poor reviews, I found this to be quite an enjoyable novel and, at the very least, gave me plenty of things to consider in my own view of my place in the grand scheme of things.
August 10, 2018
People suck, the Swiss have a navy, and the world becomes sentient. Oh, and a bunch of baboons go to the moon in a pyramid.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2018
Storyline: 3(1)/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 5/5
One has only to read a few chapters to grasp that Brin is an environmentalist and that this is an environmentalist's treatise. Someone screaming at you that you "must save the Earth!" for seven hundred pages just isn't going to go well, and Brin knows this. So the author does two things to make this much more than a manifesto. First, Brin is evenhanded, fair-minded that is. It is always guiltily satisfying seeing the Greens portrayed as villains. Before 9/11, before ISIS, there was the Earth Liberation Front and ecoterrorism. It should not be surprising, then, to see this early 90s story project those trends into the future. And it doesn't even seem like a failed projection. The current 21st century reality is just a hiatus from what Brin predicted here. Some of the more prophetic parts of this book are the pieces that show the Western world breaking up into rigidly intolerant, hyper-vitriolic social and political movements that loathe one another and are incapable of compromise. What Brin does especially well in this book is to show that saving the Earth might just be disastrous for humanity. The social cost, particularly in the future Brin has created, to remedying environmental ills is not cheap, and the resulting moral dilemmas are none too small. Activist authors who have enough self-awareness to lay bare the problems and weaknesses of their own visions deserve special recognition.
The second thing that Brin does to make this more then a manifesto is to make the future plausible. The author is obviously well-read and informed and the environmental and social futures Brin gives us hit just the right balance between surprising revelation and affirming present trends. It was the intersection of the environmental and the social that made this a treat to read. The technological solutions to saving dying species, the life changes we'll have to make in response to certain environmental catastrophes, the manifestations of in-group/out-group dynamics in the future, Brin works wonders with these. The author gives a wonderfully rich world, full of political and social changes that correspond to the *jj-------&&&&&&&&&&&hijhfiojhw
iohjfuihs^///*&*&(T#*U*()UUUUDF(UI)(#U()U(FI()JFIOJFIO#HJ*(UJFJFJQ@# U*#Y&*FJOFLRL:R}}PPOQU)@+!LLLDFK@#_#WGG>?GHE@%HUIHUI!#@$%)I()(#$U@*(UQ}?LP
uh... personal voice interjecting more forwardly here. Something just happened. The book was going along fairly well, plot was waning a little but I was still entertained with the commentary and worldbuilding and then catastrophe struck. That moderated voice and pace informed by research and delivered with thoughtfulness - it just collapsed. I mean, disastrously, cataclysmically, exploded. What was left in its place was a sensationally dramatized story that was more like low-budget zombie movie than it was reasoned environmental plea. I'm not sure what happened. We weren't being prepared for this. I might have concluded that somehow my book got merged with a malicious fan fiction caricature had not Brin defended his plotting choices in the afterward. Oh well. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He did something similar in The Postman and with the last (sixth) book of the Uplift series. The ending doesn't change my initial impressions, but it sure did take it from being a fairly good book to a mostly bearable one.
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 5/5
One has only to read a few chapters to grasp that Brin is an environmentalist and that this is an environmentalist's treatise. Someone screaming at you that you "must save the Earth!" for seven hundred pages just isn't going to go well, and Brin knows this. So the author does two things to make this much more than a manifesto. First, Brin is evenhanded, fair-minded that is. It is always guiltily satisfying seeing the Greens portrayed as villains. Before 9/11, before ISIS, there was the Earth Liberation Front and ecoterrorism. It should not be surprising, then, to see this early 90s story project those trends into the future. And it doesn't even seem like a failed projection. The current 21st century reality is just a hiatus from what Brin predicted here. Some of the more prophetic parts of this book are the pieces that show the Western world breaking up into rigidly intolerant, hyper-vitriolic social and political movements that loathe one another and are incapable of compromise. What Brin does especially well in this book is to show that saving the Earth might just be disastrous for humanity. The social cost, particularly in the future Brin has created, to remedying environmental ills is not cheap, and the resulting moral dilemmas are none too small. Activist authors who have enough self-awareness to lay bare the problems and weaknesses of their own visions deserve special recognition.
The second thing that Brin does to make this more then a manifesto is to make the future plausible. The author is obviously well-read and informed and the environmental and social futures Brin gives us hit just the right balance between surprising revelation and affirming present trends. It was the intersection of the environmental and the social that made this a treat to read. The technological solutions to saving dying species, the life changes we'll have to make in response to certain environmental catastrophes, the manifestations of in-group/out-group dynamics in the future, Brin works wonders with these. The author gives a wonderfully rich world, full of political and social changes that correspond to the *jj-------&&&&&&&&&&&hijhfiojhw
iohjfuihs^///*&*&(T#*U*()UUUUDF(UI)(#U()U(FI()JFIOJFIO#HJ*(UJFJFJQ@# U*#Y&*FJOFLRL:R}}PPOQU)@+!LLLDFK@#_#WGG>?GHE@%HUIHUI!#@$%)I()(#$U@*(UQ}?LP
uh... personal voice interjecting more forwardly here. Something just happened. The book was going along fairly well, plot was waning a little but I was still entertained with the commentary and worldbuilding and then catastrophe struck. That moderated voice and pace informed by research and delivered with thoughtfulness - it just collapsed. I mean, disastrously, cataclysmically, exploded. What was left in its place was a sensationally dramatized story that was more like low-budget zombie movie than it was reasoned environmental plea. I'm not sure what happened. We weren't being prepared for this. I might have concluded that somehow my book got merged with a malicious fan fiction caricature had not Brin defended his plotting choices in the afterward. Oh well. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He did something similar in The Postman and with the last (sixth) book of the Uplift series. The ending doesn't change my initial impressions, but it sure did take it from being a fairly good book to a mostly bearable one.
July 7, 2024
A long,slow lead up to a disappointing end.
Flat under developed characters.
Too many plots, sub plots, stories, side stories with not enough detail to events in any one, but an awful lot of words.
Flat under developed characters.
Too many plots, sub plots, stories, side stories with not enough detail to events in any one, but an awful lot of words.
August 29, 2018
second read - 24 October 2011 - ***** I enjoyed this much more than I think I did when I first read it 16 years ago. While the purpose of science fiction is not typically to predict the future with accuracy, I was quite impressed with the accuracy of David Brin's predictions in this book, as well with his synthesis of multiple scientific disciplines. I found one of his fictional reference passages, to be very interesting -
"Nations are often likened to living bodies. And so, oldtime state socialism may be said to have turned many a body politic into lazy, unproductive blobs. Likewise, inherited wealth and aristocracy were egoistic cancers that ate the hearts out of countless other great nations. To carry the analogy further - what these two pervasive and ruinous social diseases had in common was that each could flourish only when a commonwealth's immune system was weakened. In this case we refer to the free flow of information. Light is the scourge of error, and so both aristocracy and blob-socialism thrived on secrecy. Each fought to maintain it at all costs."
Interestingly, with regard to the overpopulation setting of this novel, the UN is just this month estimating that the world population has now crossed the 7 billion mark.
first read - 1 May 1995 *** This novel was nominated for 1991 Hugo, but was not the final winner. I was expecting something more like Brin's Uplift War series, but was disappointed.
"Nations are often likened to living bodies. And so, oldtime state socialism may be said to have turned many a body politic into lazy, unproductive blobs. Likewise, inherited wealth and aristocracy were egoistic cancers that ate the hearts out of countless other great nations. To carry the analogy further - what these two pervasive and ruinous social diseases had in common was that each could flourish only when a commonwealth's immune system was weakened. In this case we refer to the free flow of information. Light is the scourge of error, and so both aristocracy and blob-socialism thrived on secrecy. Each fought to maintain it at all costs."
Interestingly, with regard to the overpopulation setting of this novel, the UN is just this month estimating that the world population has now crossed the 7 billion mark.
first read - 1 May 1995 *** This novel was nominated for 1991 Hugo, but was not the final winner. I was expecting something more like Brin's Uplift War series, but was disappointed.
July 27, 2011
Once again, I find that several of the interesting ideas percolating through my own brain have already been developed (and published) by some famous author a long time ago. At least David Brin had the courtesy to only beat me to print by a couple of decades, unlike those damned Pre-Socratics...
But in all seriousness, this is a great book, and it has weathered the last twenty years far better than its ilk usually have any right to expect. It's a sweeping, grand, thrilling story that starts out as hard sci-fi and ends up as...something else. But along the way, Brin shows us a world thirty years in the future (fifty when he was writing) that is eerily familiar in many ways. While his predictions miss the mark as often as they hit it square on, his success rate is nevertheless astounding. But the real reason to read this book (aside from the fact that it's great fun and full of global warming, earthquakes, black holes, tactical geology, radical philosophy, cyber warfare, space ships and lasers) is that many of the themes and issues he explores are just as relevant today as they were in 1989.
It's got its flaws (notably a detectably pedantic tone at times) but it's definitely worth the read.
But in all seriousness, this is a great book, and it has weathered the last twenty years far better than its ilk usually have any right to expect. It's a sweeping, grand, thrilling story that starts out as hard sci-fi and ends up as...something else. But along the way, Brin shows us a world thirty years in the future (fifty when he was writing) that is eerily familiar in many ways. While his predictions miss the mark as often as they hit it square on, his success rate is nevertheless astounding. But the real reason to read this book (aside from the fact that it's great fun and full of global warming, earthquakes, black holes, tactical geology, radical philosophy, cyber warfare, space ships and lasers) is that many of the themes and issues he explores are just as relevant today as they were in 1989.
It's got its flaws (notably a detectably pedantic tone at times) but it's definitely worth the read.
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