What a disappointing book! I've never read anything by Ben Bova, but have heard a lot about him, so was really looking forward to this. While I wasn't expecting brilliant prose, what I encountered was shockingly poor. The premise is really interesting, which leaves me even more frustrated with the novel's problems, including: sexist depictions and narrative treatment of all the female characters; racist descriptions of non-European/North American characters; an irritating, repetitive, clumsily expressed obsession with age on the part of the protagonist; incessant, duplicative conflicts and arguments, as though the characters had forgotten each of the many prior instances of the exact same conversation and the resultant realizations; and last, but definitely not least, the most ill-informed presentation of "scientists" that I've ever encountered--this group makes the Scooby-Doo Gang seem like highly trained experts. ( )

I enjoyed the novel. Science fiction is at its best when it asks the reader to investigate big ethical issues. In the case of Survival the read is asked whats more important personal survival or altruism?
Mankind has been sent to the stars to save intelligent species from gamma burst that threatens to kill all organic life on any planet that in its way. In the course of accomplishing this mission one group humans investigates a planet populated by machine intelligences and pre industrial humans..The machines have the upper hand on the planet and are only interested in their own survival at any cost.Bova uses these two groups the humans and the machinist explore the arguments for and against each virtue.
I enjoyed the dialogue between the humans and the machines. This book is short on action and heavily dependent the interaction between machine and human. This comes at the cost of character development. I also felt that the ending seemed abrupt. This is a book more about the journey and the ideas than its conclusion. ( )

Sequel to _New Earth_, _Death Wave_, and _Apes and Angels_. Time locations are now many centuries in the future and place locations are thousands of light-years from Earth. If the "population" of an exoplanet consisted of extremely advanced and intelligent machines, would it be so surprising if the machines were resistant to being helped by human visitors?