Songs of Distant Earth

Rating:
Summary: Intimate, but slow and uninspiring
Review: This is one of Clarke's quieter stories. It's a chamber piece rather than a symphony. And because he aims for intimacy and muted volume over grandeur, it doesn't have the sweep of his best work.

It tells the story of a society of humans, transplanted from a dying earth, who are visited by a starship of later generation humans also fleeing destruction. In terms of plot, that's really about it. The rest of the story is a relaxed reflection on the consequences of such a meeting. In almost every way, it rehashes themes that Clarke has explored before. The utopian existence of a self satisfied, slightly stagnant society shaken by the arrival of strangers was explored in various stories, but especially The City and the Stars. The evolution of life in a watery environment was covered in 2010. Unattached sex and atheism are to be found in practically all of his works. And a ship full of hibernating passengers on a long and distant journey was used first on 2001 and then on Rama.

The trouble with this book is that it suffers in comparison with those other works. If it had come earlier in his career, it could at least have claimed the distinction of originality. But themes so much better presented elsewhere gives this book the feel of a used hand-me-down. It is interesting, in a quaint sort of way, but does not arrest us with the sheer power of revelation that we have come to expect from Clarke's best.

This is a work I would only recommend to his most die-hard fans. But even such fans will find the pace slow and the story uninspiring. I sense what he has tried to do here, which is to depart from his usual exploration of vast themes and come closer to the human dimension. But he has always been weak with his character development and he doesn't play the introspection card at all well. Clarke is out of his element here. Intentions are not enough, and marks earned for trying are lost again to mediocrity.

Rating:
Summary: The BEST...
Review: Any book that can explain away organized religion (I almost converted to the idea of Alpha the utterly indifferent), expalin away organized politics (not government), explain the missing nutrino problem (what appears to be actual now 15 years later is just as amazing, but far less satifying), explain zero point energy and create a world as wonderful as Tarna deserves to be called the best. I do think this is my favorite Arthur C. Clarke book (and I rate it up there with Moving Mars by Greg Bear).

You could do much worse than reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting, Sad, and Beautiful.
Review: Arthur C. Clarke is in fine form with this book about humanity after the death of Earth, burnt up by the Sun. Many colonies were started on other planets, and Thalassa was one of the later ones sent out before the Sun blew up. Thalassa is a quiet utopia, with the citizenry leading uneventful lives on their ocean world. This peace is shaken when the starship Magellan comes into their system, containing thousands of humans who were the last to leave the Solar System before the Sun blew up. Unlike the Thalassans, who grew up untroubled by the tensions and violence of Earth, the Magellan crew has fresh memories of the last violent days of Earth and still grieve for their home and loved ones; they remember religion, which was supressed on Thalassa to avoid religious strife; they remember tragedy. Clarke's book is a sensitive telling of what happens when the Thalassans are exposed to the last human survivors of Earth, and how those survivors are touched by the tranquillity of Thalassa. Clarke shows you love, remembrance, and tragedy infused with Clarke's sense of wonder.

Rating:
Summary: Good quick read
Review: Songs of Distant Earth isn't the most compelling or well-written book unlike Rendezvous with Rama and 2001. However, it is a quick Sunday afternoon read. The characters are one dimensional and forgettable. I do recommend this book for its simple and elegant portrayal of the emotional and social impact of the time lag in realistic interstellar travel.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking science fiction
Review: Clarke's major works (20xx and Rama) have had a tendency to leave some of his other works in the shadows, particularly the one volume types like this one. This is an excellent story, with compelling characters and the usual Clarke plausible science-fictional situation. I found it to be completely absorbing and I was thinking about it for days after.

Rating:
Summary: The Best
Review: I have read almost all of Clarke's books, including the entire Rama series, the 2001 series, Childhoods End an others. In my view, this is the very best of them all, combining plausable future science with equally plausable human situations.

I have never seen the speed of light so masterfully woven into a story of human emotion as in this book, where the receeding spaceship is visible for the entire lifetime of the female lead character while her lover on board ages only minutes.

The 2nd best Clarke book, Fountains of Paradise (where he "invents" the Space Elevator) is great, but this is still the best of the works of probably the best SF author of all.

Rating:
Summary: This is wonderful - story telling at its best
Review: Songs of Distant Earth is one of my personal favorites from out of all Arthur Clarke's works. The title itself is hauntingly magnetic and this haunting note is a motif for the entire book. I have always maintained that the best science fiction is the type that looks at people and social relationships over future times, not just the bells and whistles of space warps and so on. Songs of Distant Earth is the perfect example; simple on the surface, complex below the skin. Picture a peaceful, near pastoral society in any age that has been long separated from a historic past. They may occasionally wonder how they got this way, but by and large are content to live life the way it is. Then out of the blue, the long lost past suddenly arrives and they must confront not only their past but their future as well. The sudden influx of strangers, different in outlook, in vision, in sheer virility of life rudely shakes the pastoral by its very presence. Even though the intruders have no wish to disrupt the status quo, their very arrival has unalterably changed matters. Over time, the newcomers gain an appreciation of the islanders' apparently placid yet deeply intertwined way of life. In return, some of their youthful challenge rubs off on the islanders. Clarke's exploration of human characters and relationships is among the best in the business. You can easily understand and identify with the people, their dreams, their hurts, their rising above their sorrows. And as with all of Clarke's books (at least his early works) the lyrical turn of prose and the quirky, subtle use of humor is beautiful. This is a book I have re-read many times and it will always be on my shelf of favorites. Read it, it doesn't matter whether you are a sci-fi buff or not, this is a classic read beyond genres.

Rating:
Summary: Yet Another Winner From The Master
Review: This book is similar to Clarke's Imperial Earth in the emotional impact it had on me. No one other than Arthur C. Clarke could've written this book. Unlike many other science fiction authors, ACC doesn't rely totally on science (although his science is accurate and realistic) to make his novels. The fact is, no matter what genre you're writing in, the most important ingredient in a novel is STORY. Who cares if the science is accurate if the story is boring? Nobody.

Also, unlike many other SF authors, (cough, cough L. Ron Hubbard) Clarke relies on realistic or theoretically realistic events, facts, and situations in his stories. No bull, just fact.

TSDE is an excellent novel, one which is both realistic and emotionally satisfying (something that even the greats like Heinlein and Asimov often failed to do). And, as usual with Arthur, the book has a picturesque and touching ending. Bravo Arthur!

Rating:
Summary: Arthur C. Clarke's vision of Star Trek
Review: In his author's foreword, Arthur C. Clarke writes that this is his vision of the "space opera" or Star Trek, and here he uses real science to give us a more realistic view of inter steller travel. No Warp Six could get you to another solar system in just a week's time. The actual travel would last several centuries. Hence this book deals with the last races of man who travel to another solar system to begin a new life, after Earth's sun goes Nova. They land for refueling and rest on a planet called Thalassa where human beings have already lived for 300 years, and this clash of cultures could alter the planet's culture in very harmful and unseen ways. Great book. Should also be made into a movie.

Rating:
Summary: Good science, excellent myth-making; poor history.
Review: Mankind has left the planet earth, about to be engulfed by the explosion of the sun, in spaceships that fanned out around the galaxy, the passengers sleeping for hundreds of years until reaching habitable planets. A new ship with its cargo of a million Sleeping Beautys has reached the planet Thalassa, an island surrounded by ocean. This civilization enjoys all the virtues and the gentler vices of the South Sea islands, with neither God (belief in whom had done mankind "more evil than good") nor sexual jealousy. (Clarke goes to pains to emphasize his book is science fiction, rather than fantasy, but when it comes to human nature he allows himself a dose of utopian fantasy.)

There is not much of a plot here in the ordinary sense of the word. But the pictures Clarke evokes of the death of our planet, colonization of others in a slow-motion diaspora, of islands in a sea of potentially hostile blue, made the book well worth the read for me. Clarke's planet is less exotic and more ominous than C.S.Lewis' water-world of Perelandra; his literary and psychological imagination less acute, but more scientifically disciplined.

As a student of comparative religion, I was interested in how faith fared in Clarke's 27th Century. Clarke allows vestiges of a vague deism among a specialist or two, but the idea of a God who answers prayer has long since been ruled out by "statistical theology," which shows that good things happen to good (and bad) people just as often as you would expect by the laws of chance. This seems a bit feeble to me; I personally have had experiences that would take a tremendous number of unanswered prayers to flatten on the statistic curve. Another interesting touch is that one of the refugees has brought with him a tooth of the Buddha, because he "founded the only religion that never became stained with blood." This was a nice touch, artistically. But I get the impression Clarke, between writing novels and doing science, had little time left to learn much about the real religious history of East or West, as opposed to rubber-stamping popular skeptical prejudices. Oh well....