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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Posit a galactic field that reduced our ability to think. We develop our intelligence & technology under the influence of that field & then we move out from under its influence. Suddenly everyone on the planet doubles their IQ. What would happen to our civilization, to the everyday people? That's the basis that Anderson uses for this book & it's well done. ( )I have to say I love Poul Anderson. He takes an interesting concept, makes a really quick novel out of it, and ends the book at just the right point to prevent the concept from becoming tired. In this book, we learn that Earth has been traveling through a field that inhibits electrical reactions by a slight amount, for the past 60 million years. As we move out of the field electrical reactions speed up- it's little, but enough that sensitive equipment is disrupted, in particular our brains. Overnight everyone on Earth, including animals, becomes many times as smart as they were. What if animals no longer desired to wallow in the mud and produce food for us? What if everyone was so smart, they deemed the manual labor society relies on beneath them? Is being superintelligent really all that good... what happens when you get bored? Fun book. A cosmic event causes the co-inhabitants of planet earth to leap suddenly forward in intelligence. Everyone is suddenly stratspherically smarter, even the animals. How would society cope if everyone were suddenly a genius, and the dumb beasts of burden no longer dumb. Would society as you know it tear itself apart and descend into anarchy. . . . can there be any future for a world of super-intelligent beings? The writing style has dated somewhat, however this remains a fascinating classic of science fiction. One of my favorite stories of all time. Read it as a teenager. Re-read it with a girlfriend I wanted to share it with a decade later. I want to re-read it again just thinking about it -- soon. I wish there were a sequel that went into more depth with some of the characters (both human and animal). There was so much potential here that never quite came to be. For instance, the animal intelligence could have been played out more. Also, transitions were almost non-existent. You would follow one character, then go onto another, then come back to the first at a later time with no explanation of whatever came of the previous scenario. The concept was interesting enough that It kept my attention, which is hard to do these days. no reviews | add a review
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For millions of years, the part of the galaxy containing our solar system has been moving through a vast force field whose effect has been to inhibit "certain electromagnetic and electrochemical processes" and thus certain neurotic functions. When Earth escapes the inhibiting field, synapse speed immediately increases, causing a rise in intelligence, which results in a transfigured humanity reaching for the stars, leaving behind our earth to the less intelligent humans and animal lifeforms. A transcendent look at the possible effects of enhanced intelligence on our planet.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400)
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