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Loading... Imperial Earth (original 1975; edition 1976)by Arthur C. Clarke
Work InformationImperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke (1975)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book took forever to get through. It's not complex. It's not too long. It was just not engaging. Dated...I was a tad disappointed in Clarke for that. I'm not keen on authors using contemporary terms, mores, etc. when writing a future history novel. Three hundred years is a lot of time for change and I would expect Clarke to know better than to use geopolitical names and overly specific limits on technology, and yet here he did. And I thought one part rather cute (this was written in 1974-1975): No one would ever know how many immature young minds had been ruined by them. "Brain burning had been a disease of the sixties [e.g. 2260s], until the epidemic had run its course[...] As I said, dated. Not bad, but a forerunner of his later Rama writings. I did not realize this was the second time I'd read this book. It's hard sci-fi with heart. Not especially action packed. Lends new meaning to the word expat. A young man from Titan makes a rare (and very expensive) trip back to the home planet as an emissary in 2276. This is Clarke making his case for continued space exploration. Clarke might as well have written an essay called, "What I Think Earth Will Be Like In the Year 2276". There's hardly any plot; the characters are wooden. Even when somebody dies, there's no drama. I picked this up for a quick escapist read, but I could barely finish it. Every once in a while, I thought to myself, "I'm not nerd enough for this book." no reviews | add a review
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This science fiction classic by the award-winning author of "2001: A Space Odyssey" is the fascinating saga of Duncan Makenzie, traveling from Titan, a moon of Saturn, to Earth, as a diplomatic guest of the United States for the celebration of its Quincentennial in the year 2276. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I think I've begun to see some of Clarke's patterns. He will often (when writing in the future) describe a list of things. Two or three of those things are well known to us now. The final item in the list is always something that happened in characters' past, but our future. Additionally, Clarke loves to leave a book with hints of future wonders of engineering yet to be built. I've also noticed that for some odd reason, many of Clarke's references to past arts, events, or ideas are 20th century ideas. Once in awhile, these common patterns are interesting - after reading several Clarke books in a row, they start to get repetitive.
In the end, the core of the plot was not all that interesting. The final engineering project was not as compelling as some of Clarke's other man-made wonders. The final surprise reveal was not completely explained - I actually figure out what it meant only by reading some other comments on LibraryThing. The heavy comparisons between Titan and the Titanic were cumbersome and not quite as informative as I would have hoped. ( )