The Songs Of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke | book review

[@BryanM.R.-prionic1]

Interesting commentary, especially regarding the cultural/literary purge. 😬 I've read and enjoyed the "classic" SF writers almost exclusively in the short story, idea-driven format. I really should check out the novel-length works, but I can easily imagine many of those writers suffering in the form for reasons you express. I recently stumbled across your channel and have enjoyed what I've watched so far. I look forward to future uploads.

[@dustinneely]

@@BryanM.R.-prionic1 thanks for watching.

[@someothercharacter]

Haven't read any Clarke. He doesn't get reviewed too often from what I see, but this book seems decent. I like the scifi tropes of no Earth or the sun going supernova. New colonies. Stuff like that.

[@dustinneely]

@@someothercharacter it wasn't a bad book. He just didn't focus on any of the more interesting ideas he had brewing.

[@christophercollard3284]

Sounds like an abstraction of the Noahs arc story. Or of a metaphoric encoding.

[@dustinneely]

@@christophercollard3284 There are definite similarities to the story of the arc, but the book has a character named Moses so there is a definite exodus and searching for "the promised land" thing going on. Interesting book.

[@binglamb2176]

The spoiler was no problem since I probably won't read this one. Why would Clarke present all these ideas in a kind of laundry list and then not develop them? That seems strange to me. Do you know if he took these ideas and expanded on them in later books?

[@dustinneely]

@@binglamb2176 evidently this novel was an expansion of a short story with the same title he wrote years earlier. This is one of his later novels so I'm not sure he did much with any number of fascinating ideas he came up with. There is plenty in here for an accomplished Science Fiction writer to expand on. 1.The idea of an secular humanist society being deified by a primitive alien species is fascinating. 2. Mutiny on the Bounty in space is interesting. 3. The implications of introducing Homer & Shakespeare to a culture that has never heard of them before. 4. Ecological terrorists on a space colony. I could probably name off 6 more ideas he comes up with and drops. Science Fiction writers should definitely read this one. There are plenty of concepts here worth mining for material.

[@Writing4Jesus247]

Yeah, conflict is the engine of the story! "Feels like it was written by Spock"😂😂😂🖖🖖

[@dustinneely]

@@Writing4Jesus247 there have to be at least 5 or 6 concepts worthy of an entire novel in this book.

[@Writing4Jesus247]

@@dustinneely wow. I watched a superman cartoon movie one time that was like that. Had five or six plots that they took care of quickly but felt like six different movies smushed into one lol

[@thephilosophicalagnostic2177]

There were so many problems with this novel. 1. The sun can't go nova. Stars only go nova when there is a companion star triggering the event. 2. Humans were given 1,000 years lead time to get everyone out of our solar system. They were only able to send a small percentage out. The rest died. I don't believe this for a second. 3. Clarke assumed a serious scarcity of computer capacity and that most of human knowledge had to be scrapped. Utterly obsolete by the time the book was published. 4. Clarke was what Asimov fessed up to decades ago...he was a planetary chauvanist. People can only survive and thrive on planets. The opposite will almost certainly turn out to be true. People will survive and thrive far more easily in space colonies, huge structures that rotate, generating artificial gravity. It was wince-producing all the way.

[@dustinneely]

@@thephilosophicalagnostic2177interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[@Maeve_Ever_Books]

This sounds so cool but, also slightly disappointing. 😅

[@dustinneely]

@@Maeve_Ever_Books it's a bit half baked. It does make me interested to read more of his work. I've only read this and Childhoods End. Childhoods End was a much better book. It had a tighter plot.

[@Maeve_Ever_Books]

@ I’ll have to check Childhoods End out!