About this title: The countdown to doomsday began with the discovery in 1956 of the neutrino, a particle with no mass and no charge. By the year 2001, the significance of this phantom particle was understood: it was a harbinger. A cosmic event was imminent, and would be close enough to touch. Soon the Sun would go nova; the demolition of Earth was assured. And so it happened in the year 3620. Over the centuries of knowing the end was at hand, humanity pulled together to launch probes into space. Primitive ships, at first, carrying embryos to distant systems, relying on machines to incubate and rear the first ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780345322401ISBN:0345322401
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Ex-library. Pages are in good condition; three black remainder marks on top & bottom edge. Spine is tight but creased. Cover is in good condition with only slight rub wear along edges. Library stamp on ffep blacked out &... Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 319 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780345322401ISBN:0345322401
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Light edge and corner wear. No marks. Tight, square book. Some tanning. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 319 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Spine is well creased. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade C average reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is well creased. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade C average reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
"I have always had some difficulties with Arthur C. Clarke because of the high level of scientific and technical detail he includes in his books. In this book (more novella) however, whilst including the details of man's newfound technology enabling high speed space flight, it didn't overpower the book so the story, I felt, flowed well. Simple and intriguing storyline, engaging characters and an ending leaving you wanting to know what happened next. What if we were able to start again, wipe the slate clean and leave behind all that complicates society? Wishful thinking?"
"Goodreads' plot summary of this book is completely misleading: it is not about an invasion of millions of refugees flooding into Edenic Thalassa.
I read this book every year around the beginning of summer starting when I was about 13. Thalassa, Greek for ocean, is a tropical island on a watery colony planet where reason has broken out. There is no religion or poverty. People are even reasonable about their personal lives. While Arthur's vision is, at times a bit simplistic, even bordering on parochial, I can't help but wish I lived on Thalassa.
There is an element of poetry in this writing, an overwhelming bigness of the cosmos that makes humanity seem a very small mote in an indifferent universe. This insignificance is not to be lamented but to be exulted in. Only a self-involved fool would be disappointed by reality.
Upon re-reading this book as an adult, I noticed some allusion to the works of Ernest Hemingway and some simplistic but well-meaning anti-religious thought. I explained what I was reading to a secretary-- I prefer to use the old fashioned, condescension-laden term, since there is little of any true import that "office managers" manage-- suggested to me that I had found a deeper meaning in a beloved childhood story. Suppressing near apoplectic mirth, and probably sounding more than a little icy, I amended that what I'd found was a shallower meaning."
"This is another book that I bought in Sierra Leone. I loved the 2001 books when I was a kid, and reading this I was quickly reminded why: I'm a giant dork. Clarke is really good at considering the limits of scientific possibility and probability. In this book, the sun has gone nova and humans have long been sending unmanned "seeding ships" to distant planets where humans are created from genetic information and raised by robots. A much later manned mission lands on a previously seeded planet, and the two populations of humans coexist for a year (along with another species of animal that seems to be intelligent), centuries after the demise of earth. How can you not love that!
Well, unfortunately Clarke is much better at hypothesizing quantum drives and space elevators than he is at writing about humans. Like past books, evolution is a big theme, and in Clarke's mind biological, social, and ethical evolution all seem similar. His attempts at something like a futurist anthropology are cringe-worthy, and the idea of a future utopia in which society has been perfected is something that should be eliminated from all science fiction. Still an entertaining read."
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