Total Eclipse [Paperback]

John Brunner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 1984

Based on George Berkeley's concept of whether a tree falls if nobody hears it, John Brunner's story explores whether a scientific discovery happens if nobody learns of it.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: DAW (February 7, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879979119
• ISBN-13: 978-0879979119
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,287,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars greed is the universal killer, July 12, 2005

By 

C. Campagna "apocalyptic hunter" (Montreal, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Total eclipse (Hardcover)

This novel was well written, in the style usually favored by Mr. Brunner. There is almost no description of the surroundings or the background of the characters, except Ian, so that is why the novel is about 200 pages.

The most interesting precept in this book is that an human could get to think like an alien under the right circumstances. This passage is very well done.

They finally understand how a civilization was wiped out and you will see that this future could happen to us if we are not vigilant toward the biogeneticians.

Greed is a part of our nature, so we must put every effort in our reasonning.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Survival on an alien planet, August 28, 2006

By 

George E. Sullivan (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Total Eclipse (Paperback)

What a great story. These scientist are left to solve the mystery of a dead civilization and in the end they do, but for what. They are stranded and no one knows what they learned along with what lesson they learned about greed. They try and establish a life for themselves on this world but fate has another plan. And in the end their attempt at a new civilization on this planet is thwarted by, perhaps, the greed of man on their own home world.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cumulative alien hypotheses; humanity endures, July 19, 2010

By 

M-I-K-E 2theD "2theD" (The Big Mango, Thailand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Total Eclipse (Paperback)

Though this may be my ninth Brunner novel to date, the author still manages to surprise me with his unending repertoire of imagination, science and, most surprisingly, humanity. A science fiction novel with the title `Total Eclipse' doesn't exactly ring a novelty bell of sorts, but beyond the so-so peel hides a surprisingly rich fruit.

`Sigma Draconis, nineteen light-years from Earth, had once harbored a world with a high civilization. But that world had died and only certain mysterious artifacts remained - wonderful creations but just one of each kind. By the year 2028, humanity was facing its own final crisis. And the starship STELLARIS was sent to find out the cause of that neighboring race's extinction. If they could discover why, it might mean saving our own world from a similar disaster.'

The only habitable planet within reach of Earth happens to also be home to a myriad scattering of similar structures and cloned crystal memory devices. With a deluge of possible hypotheses of the de-evolution of the mollusk-like species or of the fatal flaw of the same peoples, the thirty-some team of experts try to understand the undoing of an entire species. Each solution is ingenious, each explanation is conceivable.

Just when the plot becomes to feel rather tedious with the unrelenting speculative answers, Brunner takes it up a notch a pulls in a rather ominous mood thereby changing the characters' outlook and even the ominous conclusion to the novel. The eleventh-hour plot is wrenched with emotional onuses which is unlike many of Brunner novels which tend to have a straight forward conclusion.

Total Eclipse has nothing to do with a solar eclipse at all, but the reader must read into the plot unreeling and discover what the title means to the novel and to humanity in general.