Arthur C. Clarke
Paperback | Pages: 256 pages Rating: 3.91 | 12562 Users | 576 Reviews
Itemize Books Toward The Songs of Distant Earth
| Original Title: | The Songs of Distant Earth |
| ISBN: | 0007115865 (ISBN13: 9780007115860) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (1987) |
Commentary In Favor Of Books The Songs of Distant Earth
Just a few islands in a planetwide ocean, Thalassa was a veritable paradise—home to one of the small colonies founded centuries before by robot Mother Ships when the Sun had gone nova and mankind had fled Earth.Mesmerized by the beauty of Thalassa and overwhelmed by its vast resources, the colonists lived an idyllic existence, unaware of the monumental evolutionary event slowly taking place beneath their seas...
Then the Magellan arrived in orbit carrying one million refugees from the last, mad days on Earth. And suddenly uncertainty and change had come to the placid paradise that was Thalassa.
Identify Containing Books The Songs of Distant Earth
| Title | : | The Songs of Distant Earth |
| Author | : | Arthur C. Clarke |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 256 pages |
| Published | : | 2001 by Voyager Classics (first published 1986) |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Fiction |
Rating Containing Books The Songs of Distant Earth
Ratings: 3.91 From 12562 Users | 576 ReviewsRate Containing Books The Songs of Distant Earth
One of the only sci-fi books I've ever read twice. This book is a great example of hard sci-f-- the characters are all basically ancillary to exploring and explaining the central premise of colonizing other planets in a future where the sun goes nova in about 1600 years from now. Arthur C Clarke has an amazing way of picking one technology that is so far beyond what we have that it might seem impossible, but explaining it in such detail that it becomes totally plausible, and making that the oneI read this book back in 1987 and rediscovered over the holidays. Earth and the solar system has been destroyed by a dying sun. The last of mankind has set out on a long journey to a new home on a rugged distant planet. Very much like sailors traveling the oceans they stop along the way for supplies and discover that a colony they feared was destroyed hundreds of years ago is actually doing quite well. Do they stay with the colony or continue on to their destination? I really enjoyed the book
Clarke's sci-fi always stands the test of time, he was visionary enough for his ideas to be relevant for a very long time. I also like his blend of philosphy and future. The story was a blend of a ton of different ideas, mutiny, extr-terrestrial intelligence, population control and a species without a home. Lots to think about, unfortunately for me, too much. I never got caught up in any of the issues, too surface an exaamination for a 4 star rating.
The huge interstellar space ship Magellan has docked for a while on the world Thalassa, which had been peopled with earthlings years before our solar system self-destructed. The newcomers must make repairs to their ice shield, and Thalassa is the right place to do it, as it is almost entirely ocean.Arthur C. Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth is a tale of the differences between the new arrivals and the original colonists, who resemble nothing so much as the Polynesians being visited by Captain
Don't get me wrong, I love Arthur C. Clarke. I read "Childhood's End" in high school, and it blew me away. He has written dozens of works that are now considered classics in the annals of science fiction. I just finished "The Songs of Distant Earth" and found it to be, to my shocking dismay, less than enthralling. It's not awful, mind you. As to be expected, the ideas in the book are thought-provoking and grounded in believable science. The storyline was interesting. It just wasn't that
I enjoyed this book a great deal. It plays with a lot of interesting ideas. While on the surface, Thalassa is portrayed as some kind of Eden, under the surface it represents something that has become rather unhuman. The people who live there have been manipulated by the people who planned the colonization of the planet to be stripped of all the nasty bits of humanity. By doing this, though, they become something that's not quite human and live a mundane existence where they're not even curious
When Clarke dealt with science, he was brilliant. When Clarke dealt with sociology and the nature of man as he did in this work, he did not shine so brightly. If you want to know what an atheist thinks mankind could or would be if he could just rid himself of all that cumbersome superstition (aka religion and morality) and also shed all his violent tendencies including the will to power, then you should read "Songs of Distant Earth" because that is the main theme of the work. You should be
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