From the Bookshelf of Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels…

Earth

David Brin,

Jensen, Bruce (Illustrator)

Start date: August 1, 2024

Finish date: August 31, 2024

Discussion: Monthly Reading: Discussion

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Monthly Reading: Discussion

* September, 2024--The Forever War-- Spoilers OK
By Oleksandr , a.k.a. Acorn · 1 post · 9 views

last updated Sep 01, 2024 08:35AM

* September, 2024--The Forever War--No spoilers, please
By Kateblue , 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning · 1 post · 6 views

last updated Sep 01, 2024 08:20AM

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What Members Thought

Aug 19, 2024 Oleksandr Zholud rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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, ins 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.
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Dec 16, 2015 Tomislav rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-stars, read-2-times, science-fiction

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 sociali ...more

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