David Brin

Earth is as vast and wide as its title character. Set 50 years in the future, it depicts an Earth fully feeling the effects of global warming, where refugees from flooded lands have built a floating country called Sea State; where recycling, conservation and Gaia worship have become religions; where no one can venture out in the sun without extreme protection and endangered animals are sheltered in life arks. On this Earth, the Net has become the only legitimate forum for debate, information show more sharing and decision making. On this Earth, secrecy has been outlawed, the result of a devastating war against Switzerland that has destroyed all notions of hidden bank accounts and squirreled-away piles of wealth. The elderly record every moment with goggles to prevent crime, and privacy no longer exists.

In this setting, a physicist — experimenting with microscopic black holes — discovers an unusual singularity deep inside the planet that is voraciously consuming its mass. He enlists the help of his mentor and a billionaire geologist to figure out a way to dislodge it, and in so doing, discovers that the tiny black hole can be used to focus a beam of gravity that can either be a destructive, unstoppable weapon or a very useful means of lifting things off the planet and moving them through space. As their activities become apparent, they are joined by a relentless investigative journalist and a former Space Shuttle pilot who witnessed the destruction of a space station and death of her husband as a result of one of these “gazers.” The group is frantically trying to control the singularity, but others — governments, clandestine groups, a lone environmental warrior with extreme ideas — have other plans for how to use its power.

I reread Earth because of my renewed interest in global warming and the efforts of groups like Worldchanging, where I believe Brin is a contributor. Also, I wanted to see if any of Brin’s future predictions were coming true, now 17 years after the book was published. I do think technology and the Net are becoming as pervasive and as critical to our global society as he predicted. The eroding of privacy and other civil rights in favor of safety has definitely become a threat as cameras and similar technologies become more ubiquitous and wearable. But I feel we are still firmly entrenched in “TwenCen” mode, unwilling to give up even a little luxury to preserve what really is our only home (although the optimist in me says the tide is turning on that issue, too).

Brin offers hope — in the ingenuity of human thinking, especially under crisis situations; in the discovery of unimagined technologies that are as likely to save us as destroy us; and in the tenaciousness of our species. Let just hope that this part of his vision is one that comes true. show less

David Brin’s post-apocalyptic tale takes a slightly different path than Cormac McCarthy’s [The Road]. But beyond the differences in style and tone, the stories echo essentially the same message, one of the spirit of hope found in human sacrifice and honor.

Gordon Krantz is a drifter, scavenging the debris of a self-destructed civilization and dodging blood-thirsty groups of feudalists bent on taking control of the meager remnants of life. On the run from just such a survivalist raiding show more party, Gordon shelters in a wrecked postal truck, spending the night snuggled next to the skeleton of its original pilot. The next morning, Gordon takes what he can find of use, a leather mail satchel and the driver’s leather coat, each with the official emblems of a forgotten authority. When Gordon stops into a village for shelter and food, these emblems inspire the drifter to lie about who he is. Broken and desperate villagers, eager for a symbol of hope and re-birth latch on to Gordon’s lie, treating him with deference and showering him with gifts. As the lie takes root in the hearts of those he meets, Gordon begins to recall what it meant to believe in something larger than himself.

[The Postman] begins with a poetic, if dark, prelude, lyrically describing the end of one world and the beginning of a new life. The chapter that follows introduces Gordon on the run, quoting what looks like a passage from [The Art of War]. With such an introduction, Brin sets an impossible high standard, and while the rest of the book is good, it never lives completely up to the promise. Brin jams a few too many twists and a few too many characters into the story, sometimes falling into preaching instead of storytelling. [The Postman] is at its best when it’s focused on Gordon as he transforms from guilt over his initial lie into a life of hesitant duty and honor. The hesitant heroes always carry the most potential.

For those folks who found McCarthy too dark and couldn’t recognize the hope in his stark book, [The Postman] offers a lighter, more action-oriented take on the same material. The hope is more obvious, within easy reach.

4 bones!!!! show less

SPOILERS AHEAD; SKIP IF YOU'RE PLANNING TO READ THIS AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW. This is the third book in the new Foundation trilogy, and it's quite an interesting addition. Hari Seldon, now old, isolated from what's left of his family by the exigencies of the Plan, and no longer a major object of suspicion for the Imperial security forces, decides to pursue a minor mystery brought to him by a minor bureaucrat who has been working at the mathematics of psychohistory as a hobby. The mystery show more concerns "tilling", the fact that nearly every human-inhabited planet was subjected to a major churning and grinding of the soil, making it suitable for agriculture, before humans arrived--in an expanding wave just ahead of the wave of human colonial expansion, in fact. There are exceptions, though, worlds where the process didn't happen, and substantial amounts of life unlike the life on most human worlds still survives. What do these anomalies mean? Why do they appear to track so well with the distribution of "chaos worlds", the worlds that experience a runaway outbreak of advancing science, art, and technology, before collapsing into equally runaway disaster?

Hari quickly discovers he's on the trail of something very important to psycohistory and the Plan, and Daneel, the Calvinian robots, imperial security, and several other forces are in hot pursuit of him. All fairly standard, except for where Brin takes this. Put simply, not only is psychohistory wrong, in the sense of inaccurate and inadequate to the job Hari's trying to do with it, but the goal is wrong. Hari's Plan rests on certain assumptions about human nature and human capacity that are not correct, based on facts which are incomplete and which have been subjected to seriously flawed analysis by Daneel and Giskard, which have never been checked against the wishes and opinions of humans. And Daneel has deliberately deceived Hari Seldon about these facts. He has done it from the best of motives, but he's wrong. He's concerned only with taking the safest path for the human species, not the best path; because of the Three Laws, and the Zeroth Law, he can't really distinguish between the two. Hari's plan is really Daneel's plan, and it's a mistake. At the end, it appears that Daneel's plan is triumphant; the hope for a genuinely human future--and perhaps a future where humans may finally be able to run the risk of meeting intelligent aliens--is that Hari's Foundation will be more robust than Hari or Daneel have believed, and prevent Daneel's rather horrifying, but very safe, Gaia plan from coming to fruition.

Altogether, a rather darker and more interesting book than I expected. show less

I missed Brin, it turns out! This is century-spanning space opera (though largely set on Earth), with big time-jumps, multiple species of humanity (including Neandertals, “auties,” and AIs along with dolphins), and attack memes from outer space. As with much big idea sf, it’s about our present problems: climate change, the apparently unstoppable power of wealthy elites, and more generally whether we will make it as a technological species over the medium term. The people are show more recognizable but outsize, and they hold different viewpoints; each is the hero of their own narrative. In short, it’s fun and a little bit thought-provoking (did I mention the attack memes from outer space?). show less