This wasn't what I expected, but it was an interesting read. Imagine being able to see what happens when the world is destroyed and reseeded with life several time over a huge number of years. Jack Williamson's imagination was wonderful as he developed each of these incarnations of the earth and made us care for the people who were born over and over again to watch. ( )

When the Earth is devastated by an asteroid, a handful of survivors escape to a moonbase dedicated to preserving life and humanity. Watched over by robots, they are cloned again and again over the course of millions of years, with each new generation finding a wildly changed planet below them.

It's a terrific concept. There's just something about the idea of getting a time-lapse view of the Earth as it suffers and recovers and evolves and grows stranger that really compels the imagination. Unfortunately, very little else about this book does. The writing is flat and pointlessly repetitive. The characterization ranges from cardboard to cartoony. And the story -- I don't think it's really coherent enough to be called a plot -- is thinly sketched and full of stupidities. Actually, that might not be a strong enough statement. To some extent, it seems to be based on stupidities, since, despite the supposed all-importance of their mission, generation after widely spaced generation makes only the most ill-prepared and half-assed attempts at understanding, exploring, or affecting the planet. To the extent that they ever succeed at anything, it appears to be pure, dumb luck.

The ending is at least kind of interesting, I guess. But all in all, man, what a waste of a premise. ( )