Customer Reviews

Earth

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Brin's 'Earth' takes place in the year 2038, and the portrait painted of our society 40-some years from now is so totally plausible that it's a little disturbing. By 2038, Earth's population has grown to over 10 billion, natural resources are even more depleted than they are today, and many people think that the population is on the verge of a massive crash. Brin's depiction of the way that various sectors of society deal with this concept is complex and fascinating.

Although many of the scientific aspects of the book were somewhat confusing to me, I was still able to follow the plot. I have studied quite a bit of ecology, have also had a few courses in geophysics, and I was pleased that everything Brin has included in his story is consistent with today's scientific beliefs. The structure of the novel is interesting as well; little tidbits from the general populace and their responses to the events detailed in the chapters are interspersed throughout the book.

Furthermore, the character development is excellent; many "hard" science fiction novels are more about the technology and the situations than about the characters themselves, but Brin has made his characters and their motivations very real and well-developed. Even the less important characters like Logan Eng were as detailed as the central protagonists.

There was only one thing that I did not like about this book, and that is the 'deus ex machina' (sp?) of the ending. I won't say any more because I don't want any spoilers.

'Earth' raises a lot of issues about the environment, the supposed superiority of humankind, the interconnectedness of all living things, the individual's right to privacy, and much more. Lots of food for thought and a fantastic book for discussion (I read this for a book discussion group, and I can't wait to hear what everyone else has to say about it). I haven't read anything else by David Brin, but after reading 'Earth', I definitely want to.

For a few years I was reading Earth once a year, just like I do with Lord of the Rings. Although it's not quite on the same level, it's a wonderful sci-fi. Brin projects a fairly realistic future with real people, real problems, and the truly cool premise of dealing with a microscopic black hole orbiting the planet's core.

The Gaianism (the dominant religion of this environmentally threatened future) was a tad heavy-handed at times, but still didn't get too much into the way to like it. Interspersed with the action were excerpts from the global Net, which augmented the story in ways that reminded me of what Pohl did with Gateway. This sort of transition helped a lot to make the epic size of the book feel much more manageable.

Brin predicted a few things that, like Jules Verne long before him, have since come true or have begun to come true. Central to the book is the Net, which was no doubt based on the Internet which was only a sapling when the book was written; since then the Web has exploded and is operating much like Brin foresaw it would. He even predicted the appearance of spam and the massive, daunting problems of sifting for information online.

If all this doesn't sound interesting enough, well, there's more to say for the story. Much of the plot revolves around a small group of people--in a society heavily biased against secrecy--trying both to conceal and to eliminate the threat of a black hole within the earth. The things they discover along this road make some very interesting sci-fi; it's almost hard sci-fi at times. Meanwhile the world is full of other people somehow connected to all this, or to each other. Some know what's going on or at least that there's a conspiracy, and want to know more or to direct the course of events to their own ends. A new technology that emerges--perhaps not even too far-fetched in its concept (owing to Brin's background as a physicist)--becomes the focal point of a power struggle. Most of this we see through the eyes of an interesting assortment of rather identifiable characters.

Earth is overall a worthy story that's just as good (if not better) the second and third time around. The "chapters" are even reasonably short for the most part, allowing reading on the go and keeping things from getting tedious.

I read David Brin's Earth not long after it first came out, perhaps 1991 or 1992; and for whatever reason, although I enjoy Brin in general and enjoyed this book when I read it, I never got back to it. Recently I've been reading a lot of Dr. Brin's nonfiction (his essays and blog and I plan to get hold of "Transparent Society" this summer) and in the course of that reading, I came across references to a hobby of Brin fans: picking apart Earth (set in 2038) and following tech and social trends and developments in the news, to play a sort of "I Spy" with correct predictions. This intrigued me, and I decided to re-read the book. Because, after all, writing near-future stories is very hard; life tends to go off in unexpected directions and quickly date a work.

Heinlein's "For Us, The Living," which I read about a month ago, is a brilliant piece of near-future speculative fiction - and only a tiny handful of his predictions hit target. That's pretty typical. What's positively freakish about Earth is how many predictions are dead-on, having - in fifteen of the fifty years between the writing and the projected future - either come to pass or come far enough along a developmental road that their occurence in the next thirty-five years is very likely. The powerfully evoked sense of juxtaposed familiarity and alienness is exactly the feeling that I've heard elderly friends and acquaintances talk about when they describe the last fifty years - wait, how did we get here, and why didn't I notice?

Earth is a dense book, a tightly woven complexity of about eight different story lines that all turn out to be intextricably related. It's a cast of millions; there's inevitably some shallow characterization there, but the dozen or so major characters have richly distinct and diverse voices. None of them (except, perhaps, the teenage genius, Claire) is entirely likeable, but all of them are tremendously credible; ultimately, I found myself really caring about each of them. But over and above the characterization in the microscale of the individual, there's a place where character and setting intermingle, bleed through, where communities and societies and the Earth itself become characters, take on a dynamic life and movement and responsiveness. It's just the sheer incredible richness and detail and texture, both of the individuals and of the world in which they move, that makes this book such a sensuous delight. There comes a point when I find the commodities price lists and obscure blog threads and other bits of electonic flotsam and jetsam injected into the text as compelling as the interactions and crises of the characters.

The actual plot - a physics experiment gone horribly wrong, and a close-knit team trying to make it right, in secret, in a world where secrecy has become a war crime - is just technothriller enough to keep the pace clipping along, just old-school hard sci-fi enough to make the reader work at it (think Greg Bear's Eon and sequels). All in all, a thoroughly fun read that is also emotionally and intellectually engaging and - still, after all these years - astonishingly relevant.

I'm sad to be rating this so low. The book is quite good, but the Kindle version of it is an example of lazy publishing. I am in a book group and was the only one with the electronic version. Therefore, it was very easy for me to verify that the Kindle version is riddled full of typos while the print versions are not. On top of that, the publisher DIDN'T INCLUDE A TABLE OF CONTENTS. It makes jumping between sections incredibly difficult. There is no excuse for the lack of effort that went into setting this book up for the Kindle, interestingly, a device that the book itself seems to predict.

Read the book, but know ahead of time that if you choose the Kindle version, it is flawed.

The characters are engaging, the author has a message, and the book is tightly written. Without doubt, David Brin is one of the best authors currently writing in the Science Fiction field. But to me, the book fell short. Clearly, this is a book with a "message," which is that mankind (if you'll excuse the expression) is doing serious environmental damage to the planet. I do not object to the message. The problem is that the message is so heavy that it overwhelms the novel in a way unusual for Brin. What is more, the conclusion is not only preposterous but it basically says that the only hope for the world is the emergence of a genuine Gaea: an enlightened autocratic goddess created by a scientific fluke. The book, however, does have strong characters, fast-paced action, and some compelling moments -- particularly the scene where Old Man River finally triumphs over the Army Corps of Engineers! This is a book that a committed environmental activist will enjoy, as will rabid fans of Brin's other works. For a better Brin book also based on a message, I would recommend GLORY SEASON, which is about gender politics and male/female roles (touching on many of the same issues dealt with in a different way in Le Guin's ground-breaking and award winning THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS more than two decades ago). Brin's uplift universe books, STARTIDE RISING, THE UPLIFT WAR, and BRIGHTNESS REEF -- books that truly set the standard for hard sf space opera -- also outpace EARTH (although one should be warned that REEF is the first of a planned trilogy and does not stand on its own)

An amazing pre-sentient work, Earth explores the world fifty years from now with astonishing accuracy and vividness. Writing before the development of the world wide web, Brin describes nearly completely what we have today, and will likely in forty years, with a world culture dependent on the web for all it's information. It is a possible future, but a very likely one. Here, there is mandatory time spent on the net, as it is too important for survival, and though one may not have enough for food in the next day, still access to the world web is free. With this and the ever presence of personal vid-cams has come the complete death of privacy. Warming has continued apace, and so Bangladesh and the Maldives are gone, with floating cities to take their place. The world has finally realized the importance of the environment- only because it is forced to- and dropping a cup in the water can get you prison time. White folks are in trouble especially from the lack of ozone layer, and new religions have arisen- Gaiaism and interestingly neo-Raism, with the recognition of the sun as a power that can destroy lives through skin cancer.

I have to reduce this from five stars only because the last quarter of the book becomes more magic than science fiction or scientific realism, and the improbabilities become too great. But I would highly recommend this work for the vision of a very likely future which we should all be prepared for.

'Earth' is a bit of a strange mixture: it is a considered ecosocial critique patched onto a not entirely serious B-movie disaster plot and terrible deus-ex-machina ending. Brin can certainly write, and 'Earth' is a great read (until the end), populated by many well-painted characters, from the major protagonists like Alex Lustig, creator of the world-threatening miniature black hole, to the minor roles, like the excruciatingly realistic middle-class teenage gangmembers in Bloomington, Illinois. Disregard the pulp plot, and it is also a highly thoughtful and perhaps prophetic portrait of a world which has suffered environmental meltdown and where privacy is a forgotten concept. Until the troubles of Worldcom, Enron and AOL etc., I had thought Brin's backstory of a global war against coporate secrecy was amusing but far-fetched. Now I am not so sure... something's going to have to give.

I'm also surprised nobody seems to have noticed its strong resemblance to John Brunner's brilliant and cynical early 1970s environmental dystopia, 'Stand on Zanzibar'. The setting and the structure of 'Earth', with its multiple storylines split by excerpts from imaginary nonfiction works and internet chatrooms, is strongly influenced by Brunner's novel, and Brin also directly pinches the figure of the 'mucker', someone who is driven to senseless spree-killing by the deteriorating environmental conditions. Brin's work is far more optimistic than Brunner's, however whereas I would still rate 'Stand on Zanzibar' as one of the greatest SF novels of all time, 'Earth' is disjointed, but fun.

Brin pays homage to Aldous Huxley in this book, which is the best near-future epic since Huxley's "Brave New World". Regardless of how you feel about environmentalism, you have to admit that Brin has extrapolated current events to logical, yet surprising continuums. A world-wide fabric of computer communication? Duh. Real time video recorders on every person? It's happening now. Arks to protect animals from ozone-depleted UV blindness? Not too much of a stretch. Energy from manufactured black holes. Okay, that may test your imagination.

One thing that won't stretch your credulity though is Brin's mastry of character development. There are dozens of fully fleshed humans that are eminently believable and at the same time, unpredictable. Who is the obvious alpha male in the youth gang? Wrong. What has that annoyingly persistant reporter got planned? Wrong. Even the slightly out of pattern ending will startle you.

The book really has a little bit of everything, including Brin's famous wit, understated but warming romance, and heart-stopping suspense. If you don't like this book, then you just don't like hard science fiction.

I know that a book has affected me when its ideas keep popping up in my conversations. Earth is one of those books, because it covers so many issues that I consider to be hot topics: privacy, the information super-highway, restrictions in scientific research, evolution of consciousness and the future of the entire human race.

I read a couple of reviews here criticizing the shallow characterizations, but all of the characters seemed like real people to me. It has a great villain you'll love to hate, and loads of intelligent people having intelligent conversations.

If you don't like books that jump back and forth between several sets of characters and plots, then you won't like Earth. I happen to enjoy this format, to see how the various people and situations merge in a grand finale; and believe me, this book has a heck of a grand finale!

As near future fiction goes this is one of the best books in that category. Some of Brin's projections are almost here by now, some "errors" due to unforseen turns of events, like the total collapse of the Warsaw Pact socialist states, are forgivable, and the impact on the overall story is rather minor.

Overpopulation, rising sea levels, depletion of the Ozone Layer and other calamities we will experience now and in the near future are all probed for their repercussions on our planet and its ecosphere. Some possible ways to tackle these problems both psychologically and in its roots are also depicted.

To be honest nothing in the book is really new or unheard of. But the successful combination of the themes creates the brilliance of David Brin's "Earth".

It would be unfair to dub the book "Hard SF", because it offers reading value beyond mere good projections and speculations into the near future. What makes it stand out in this category of science fiction books is the depth of character we readers are offered in the antagonists and the colorfull and informative insights into our possible future we are given through invaluable snippets of Net-News or Newsgroup posts.

Any user of the internet and its news-services and discussion-groups should feel at home, reading this book.