From archive (archive) From: mjs@whuts.UUCP (SCHEUTZOW) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Subject: 2061: odyssey 3 Date: 22 Nov 87 02:46:37 GMT This is a review of: _2061: odyssey three_ by Arthur Clarke Unfortunately, this is an average story; the most that I can say is that _2010: odyssey two_ looks good in comparison. This book is based in the society built up in 2001 and 2010, but fails to continue the story line of these two books. Clarke's (apparent) interest in Halley's Comet fills a great part of this novel. Is it a spoiler to tell people what the book is NOT about? The jacket blurb could be construed as false advertising; it says: "And Hayword Floyd, survivor of two previous encounters with the mysterious monoliths, must once again confront Dave Bowman, ... a newly independent HAL, and the power of an alien race." The monolith has no role in this story (that is, it doesn't *do* anything), and there is no alien race. Both Bowman and HAL have such a small part, you'd think they were tacked on merely to justify the title. Neither one appears until the last 3 pages of the book. Summary: This story is OK, although it is not what it is advertised to be. Wait for the paperback. Mike whuts!mjs From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Feb 5 17:58:29 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!news.netmbx.de!mailgzrz.TU-Berlin.DE!math.fu-berlin.de!ira.uka.de!yale.edu!think.com!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!nobody From: hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt) Subject: THE GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS by Arthur C. Clarke Message-ID: <1993Feb3.042843.14500@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Reply-To: hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt) Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 19:31:10 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 72 THE GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS by Arthur C. Clarke A book review by Peter Hunt Copyright 1993 Peter Hunt Although this book has been out in paperback for some time, I only just got around to reading it. While I found the book entertaining and interesting to read, I was disappointed with it; it's not up to Clarke's usual standard. Without giving too much away, the story, set in the early 21st century, deals with two projects to raise the Titanic from its resting place. Both project teams devise different methods for doing this, and both hope to have succeeded by the centennial of the ship's sinking. Clarke uses his characters' conversations to expand on this theme, giving much known and little-known historical background to the Titanic herself, as well as speculating on what underwater search and salvage equipment will look like in the next few decades. Coupled with these discussions is a secondary plot-line dealing with a family whose interest in the Mandelbrot set borders on obsession. This gives Clarke an opportunity to explain and explore the set, complete with all the usual hyperboles. As you've probably surmised, the book's style is classic Clarke. His explanations of historical events, scientific facts and his speculative fiction are interesting and clear. His often-used technique of using the conversations between his characters to present his ideas makes the explanations more approachable and palatable that straight lecturing would do. However, there are quite a few problems with this novel. The worst of these is the lack of plot. There isn't one. What passes as plot is really the gradual revealing of his two main ideas for the raising of the Titanic, and the beginnings of their implementation. Once Clarke gets this far, it's as if he can't be bothered actually going through the motions, and the book just stops. Anticlimax is too weak a word to use for the ending to this book. The secondary theme describing the Mandelbrot set, while quite interesting in itself, is out-of-place. It has nothing to do with the main story, even indirectly. I wonder if Clarke originally wrote these episodes as a short story, and then incorporated them into this novel for filler. Finally, the characters are even less developed than usual. While interesting enough, they are rather flat, and are so similar to each other as to be indistinguishable. They seem to be no more than vehicles for Clarke's ideas and explanations. In conclusion, let me say that I found this book enjoyable and interesting to read. If you enjoy Clarke's style, and read science fiction novels for the ideas they contain, then this book has a lot to offer. However, a novel cannot succeed on ideas alone, and The Ghost from the Grand Banks ends in a way that makes that lack all too apparent. %T The Ghost from the Grand Banks %A Arthur C. Clarke %I Orbit Books %C London %D 1990 %G ISBN 0-7088-83575 %P 253 pp. %O paperback, A$10.95 -- +---------------------------+------------------------------------------------+ | Peter Hunt | I'm digging in the dirt, | | Networks and Comms (Aust) | to find the places I got hurt, | | Digital Equipment Corp. | to open up the places I got hurt. | +---------------------------+--------- Peter Gabriel, "Digging in the Dirt" -+ From rec.arts.sf.written Wed Jun 9 03:59:03 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!pipex!bnr.co.uk!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!rutgers!mcimail.com!0003621563 From: 0003621563@MCIMAIL.COM (Variety Boston) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: HAMMER OF GOD Message-ID: <55930608212455.0003621563DC3EM@mcimail.com> Date: 8 Jun 93 21:24:00 GMT Sender: nobody@rutgers.rutgers.edu Lines: 55 ~Subject: Review of THE HAMMER OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke Arthur C. Clarke's first solo SF novel in some years was inspired by a short story he wrote for TIME magazine a while ago on life beyond the 21st century. It is another one of those "a comet/meteor is going to crash into the Earth" stories, done with Clarke's fabled attention to scientific detail. It is a satisfying read, but it is not a great novel. Unless Clarke has developed into a stylist into his old age the heavy lifting in this book seems to have been getting the facts right rather than building up interesting characters. The reason I comment on his style is that the book comes across as a *factual* book written in the 22nd century after the event. Thus we get enough detail to humanize these "public figures" but hardly enough to make them come alive as fictional characters. Indeed, most of the characters come across as anonymous scientists or, in one instance, a thinly disguised variation on Stephen Hawking. Thus as future "reportage" this is an entertaining book. Clarke's imagination is as fertile as ever, and his ideas -- such as the unification of Christianity and Islam into a religion called Chrislam or a Martian Disneyland that contains the fictional worlds of Burroughs and Bradbury -- are fun to ponder. The narrative, though, is simply incident after incident with little dramatic development. The denouement has a good deal of excitement, but Clarke reports it matter-of-factly with the payoff coming much too quickly. (Compare this with, for example, the high drama of Greg Bear's FORGE OF GOD.) For Clarke fans their are some inside references to RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and 2001 including a computer named David who is the antithesis of HAL 9000. This is a VERY fast read (large type, lots of blank space) and I read it in a day. So, it's worth a look, but don't let your expectations build up too high. Author: Arthur C. Clarke ~Title: The Hammer of God Publisher: Bantam ~Date: July 1993 Order Number:ISBN 0-553-09557-9 Pages: 226 Comments: hard cover $19.95 Daniel M. Kimmel variety@mcimail.com From rec.arts.sf.written Tue Sep 7 13:27:14 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!gatech!rutgers!pobox.ruu.nl!l.b.dewit From: l.b.dewit@pobox.ruu.nl (Paul Ket) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: 2001 Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke Message-ID: <81134.l.b.dewit@pobox.ruu.nl> Date: 6 Sep 93 21:01:39 GMT Sender: nobody@rutgers.rutgers.edu Reply-To: l.b.dewit@pobox.ruu.nl Lines: 84 Review: 2001: a space odyssey; Arthur C. Clarke By: Paul Ket Books have to be rediscovered by every new generation. Therefore i find it useful to review an old-timer cult book. This book was published before i could read. To make it less boring for the not-so-young i've also asked myself the question: does the book still has a place in SF or is it history? I make some comparisons to other books I've read recently. The story starts in de beginning of time. Man isn't an intelligent animal yet. The story reveals how the transition from animal to man is made and what induced this transition. The characters in this part are redundant. They are flat and only are introduced not to say "man" all the time. In the second part of the book we meet a second person. He lives in a modern society, at least space-flight exists. Our hero travels to a space station to rescue something. What isn't clear. Note the time Clarke takes to elaborate on the art of travel. In any modern novel space travel is taken for granted, it wasn't common then. Nor in the story, but neither in the time Clarke wrote it down (1964-1968). I find it almost boring. Compare it to the Ender Trilogy in which faster than light travel and space-flight are as common as a taxi is nowadays. It isn't explained to the reader, it just is mentioned. What happens to the hero? No answers to that question, so: he isn't! A major subject in the second is the travel to Saturn. This description also gives a image of the time it was written. First, it is not faster than light, second humans are needed to control things. Ok, they have ample time to study, but there always is somebody awake. The ship isn't self- maintained. This shows when communication halts and an astronaut has to go out and replace a part. Compare this to Starstrike by Scott Card in which spaceships aren't matter any more but just information being designed by a computer. The evil action of Hall is slowly apparent. The way the thinking computer is beaten is very simple and I love it therefore. It reminds me how one could repair a XT computer. You wouldn't try it with your 486 any more. The components just aren't big enough. The intelligence Hal is famous, but nothing compared to other smart spaceship computers we meet later on in other books or TV-series. Being hyped, even named after by a Lotus 1,2,3 add-on, I think it's a dummy. In the last part the odyssey really takes off. Through a hole in a rock it shows to be possible to travel to an other universe. It reminded me of the movie TIME-BANDITS in which time travel was possible by walking through doors. Because of the geographical boundaries not a really convincing way of travelling. In other books the transition from one universe to an other works a different way. Clarke gives it a black tube, an intermediate space between universes. This opens the way to the question: what is between universes? Heinlein tackles this problem in "Number of the beast" by deleting the intermediate space and by introducing instantaneous travel between universes. Clarke gives more insight in how it is done (therefore i like it), but is takes more time to travel. The way the television room exists has been an inspiration to Scott Card. The way the books end leaves ample room to a sequel. In the epilogue (1976) Clarke writes it will be published soon. I have to go to the second- hand book shop i think. In this book things happen in a way that has been an inspiration for other books. Some have solved problems Clarke didn't. Because of this, i found myself skipping some pages. But looking at the book itself i find it very thin, only 229 pages. Some other books haven't finished chapter one by that time. It thus is filled with bright ideas. I don't have the broad picture to see if all those are his own or not, but i assume they are. A lot of other authors have used this book to borrow ideas from. Has it a place in SF-history? Yes, it is leading because of the richness in ideas. Has it still a place today? Maybe, IMHO the place today is not as big as it has been. It sure is not leading as a book in which we get to know people. ~Title: 2001 a space odyssey Author: Arthur C. Clarke Publ. Arrow First publ: 1968 Epilogue 1982 ISBN 0-09-932680-9 ******************************************************************** * Paul Ket * * Educational Technologist; Utrecht University, Netherlands * * "Windmills and canals....this must be Holland" * ******************************************************************** From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jan 12 13:01:28 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: hunt@flotsm.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: THE RAMA TRILOGY by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Message-ID: <2gqd65$8eu@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> Date: 11 Jan 94 01:32:30 GMT Lines: 179 THE RAMA TRILOGY by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee A book review by Peter Hunt Copyright 1994 Peter Hunt The Rama Trilogy consists of _Rama II_, _The Garden of Rama_, and _Rama Revealed_, which collectively form a sequel to Clarke's classic, _Rendezvous with Rama_. The trilogy doesn't quite meet the standard of SF set by its predecessor; as a sequel to _RwR_, the series is ultimately unsatisfying, and frustratingly so. However, I still found the series interesting and enjoyable as an SF story in its own right. *** SPOILER WARNING *** Major spoilers for _Rama II_ and _The Garden of Rama_ follow. I've kept spoilers for _Rama Revealed_ to a minimum, since it's a new release. I've marked the end of the spoilers, as spoiler-free discussion follows. In _Rama II_, a second Rama spaceship enters the solar system in 2200. A second exporation team is sent to investigate it, and this time, the group is made up of military personnel, scientists and journalists. Chosen for their exceptional skills in their chosen profession, little thought was given, it seems, to how they would work together. Power struggles and personality conflicts hinder the group's activities, and the exploration of Rama II only reaches a preliminary stage before things go very wrong, and the team is ordered to evacuate. The characters do encounter two groups of aliens on Rama, though - the "avians" and the "octospiders", although their significance with the respect to Rama and the Ramans is unclear. Three people choose to stay on board, as Rama II continues its voyage out of the solar system. _Rama II_ is really a prologue to the next two books. What happens in _Rama II_ is very interesting and intriguing, but not much of what happens in _Rama II_ carries through to the next book. _The Garden of Rama_ tells of the three explorers' experiences on Rama as it heads out of the solar system. The first part of the book is primarily about the changing relationships between the three main characters (Nicole and Richard Wakefield, and Michael O'Toole), and their growing family. When the family reaches their destination, a huge space complex simply called The Node, there is some more traditional SF fare, including some very interesting revelations about the Rama and Rama II spacecraft. The Wakefield family returns on Rama III to the solar system to establish a human colony on the spacecraft. The last part of the book deals with the first few years of the colony's existence. There's also a detailed encounter with an avian colony, and we learn a lot more about their society. By the end of the book, however, things aren't looking too good for either the human colony or the main characters. _The Garden of Rama_ is the most ambitious book of the trilogy, as it covers a long period of time, introduces many new characters, and deals with some complex interactions between those characters. There's also some surprisingly good SF. It ends in an annoying cliffhanger, however. _Rama Revealed_ is really the continuation of _The Garden of Rama_. It again centers on the intrepid Wakefields, their efforts to understand Rama and its octospider occupants, and their attempts to counter the destructive power that the human colony within Rama III has become. *** END OF SPOILERS *** The main difference between _Rendezvous with Rama_ and The Rama Trilogy is scope; the Rama Trilogy tackles much broader issues. _Rendezvous with Rama_ was about Rama first, and its impact on humanity second. The Rama Trilogy deals primarily with humans and humanity, set against the backdrop of the strange and possibly hostile environment provided by Rama. The immediate effect of this thematic difference is the change in stature of Rama itself. It's this change which is the main reason for my dissatisfaction with The Rama Trilogy as the sequel to _Rendezvous with Rama_. In _Rendezvous with Rama_, it's the spaceship that's the star. The combination of its intriguing design, coupled with its indifference not only to the humans' exploration of it, but also to humanity itself, makes Rama as interesting and complex as any character. In the trilogy, Rama becomes the setting, and its role and presence is much diminished. Conflict occurs between human characters, or between humans and other elements, in Rama. Even then, it is not essential to much of the plot that events take place in Rama. Sometimes the characters themselves seem to forget they're living on the inner surface of a massive cylinder. In fact, sometimes I got the feeling that the authors had forgotten it too. In _Rendezvous with Rama_, there's an unforgettable passage in which characters crossing the Cylindrical Sea are endangered by a massive wave of water. What's so striking is that the characters first see the wave ABOVE them, on the "ceiling". This really brought across the bizarre physics taking place inside this ship. Sadly, there are no passages like this in The Rama Trilogy. When characters look at Rama from a high place (in itself largely unnecessary on a concave world), they look "out", never "up". The strangeness, and possible vertiginous feeling, of seeing a landscape rearing above you is simply never mentioned. This is a costly omission, I think. However, one of the positive aspects of the human-oriented themes of The Rama Trilogy is the strong characterisation. Characterisation, and complex relationships between characters, is something which Clarke's writing alone has traditionally lacked. Not so here; the Rama Trilogy is really a story about human beings (and about one family in particular), and how different people react to very strange situations. Much of the story is about the characters' emotions and motives; this is particularly evident in the first part of _The Garden of Rama_, which is in the form of a personal diary. Sometimes the personal aspects of the books get a bit irritating, however; there are a few too many tearful partings, tearful reunions, or extended reminisces. It all gets a bit much at times, resembling a soap opera more than a little. I also think that someone should have told the authors that recounting the endless joys of raising the almost-perfect family may not appeal to everyone. But, in general, I welcomed the strong characterisation. I should say, though, that this is still very much an SF series. The volume of SF content in the trilogy suffers because of the significant component of human interactions, but the SF that's there is of excellent quality, and of the standard we've come to expect of Clarke. Again, the SF tends not to be concerned with Rama itself, which gets frustrating after a while. But certainly there are enough interesting ideas to be getting on with. Technically, the writing is quite good, but there are occasional passages which are downright clumsy. At times I felt I was reading a screenplay, especially during dream descriptions. Analogies also tended to be overused - by the end of the series, if another character's reminiscence was described as "a montage of images running through their mind" yet AGAIN, I was ready to scream. But passages such as these were thankfully infrequent, and not an impediment to enjoying the series as a whole. Essentially, I found The Rama Trilogy to be interesting and enjoyable. I think it is exceptional SF story, with strong characters and interesting concepts and situations. However, as the sequel to _Rendezvous with Rama_, I think it's only average. The greatest flaw with this series is that is ultimately fails to fulfil the potential set by its pedecessor. And that's a shame, because while the series has a lot of positive aspects, it's that single shortfall that readers will most likely remember. %T RAMA II %A Arthur C. Clarke %A Gentry Lee %I Orbit Books %C London %D 1989 %G ISBN 0-7088-4826-5 %P 496 pp. %O paperback, A$10.95 %T THE GARDEN OF RAMA %A Arthur C. Clarke %A Gentry Lee %I Orbit Books %C London %D 1991 %G ISBN 1-85723-021-3 %P 593 pp. %O paperback, A$11.95 %T RAMA REVEALED %A Arthur C. Clarke %A Gentry Lee %I Victor Gollancz %C London %D 1993 %G ISBN 0-575-05577-4 %P 477 pp. %O hardback, A$35.00 -- +---------------------------+------------------------------------------------+ | Peter Hunt | I'm digging in the dirt, | | Networks and Comms (Aust) | to find the places I got hurt, | | Digital Equipment Corp. | to open up the places I got hurt. | +---------------------------+--------- Peter Gabriel, "Digging in the Dirt" -+ Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!newsfeed6.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!fci-se!fci!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!18.24.4.11!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk (Paul S Jenkins) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Clarkes 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 21 Jan 1998 15:37:52 -0500 Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Lines: 53 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1740 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY by Arthur C Clarke Review copyright 1998 Paul S Jenkins For those of us who consider Arthur C Clarke to be the quintessential science fiction writer, any work of SF written by the man himself -- _without_ collaboration -- is eagerly awaited. His naming as a Knight Bachelor in the UK New Year's honours list comes as deserved recognition. Clarke's original work, however, is these days thin on the ground. His recent novels, not counting collaborations, have been short, and several have been derivative of his earlier works. For example, the 'braincap' of 3001 can be found in HAMMER OF GOD, and the space elevator -- where the protagonist of 3001 begins his story -- was the central idea behind THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE. 3001 is the fourth book in the series which began with the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which Clarke co-scripted with Stanley Kubrick. Clarke wrote the first book at the time the film was being made, following it over the years with 2010: ODYSSEY TWO and 2061: ODYSSEY THREE. 3001 is more a forum for the expounding of Clarke's ideas about the future, rather than a conventional story with a beginning, middle and end. If you can accept that, it's a good read. Clarke has lost little of his former style and craft, and his prose still captivates. Being of the old school, he writes with a permanent 'sense of wonder' at the futuristic vision he's portraying. Many SF writers make predictions about the future -- Clarke's predictions have a habit of coming true. The central premise of 3001 is that Frank Poole, murdered by the computer HAL outside the _Discovery_ in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, has been rescued just as his frozen body was about to leave the solar system. Medical advances at the beginning of the fourth millennium have enabled doctors to revive the cryopreserved astronaut, and he acts as our guide to the wonders of the future. It's a very old literary device, and Clarke nods to Heinlein's use of the technique in a chapter entitled "Stranger in a Strange Time." Frank Poole eventually confronts the awesome monolith -- a larger version of the one on the Moon -- on Jupiter's satellite Europa. He renews an old friendship, and ties up several loose ends of the saga. It's a definite end to the series, but Clarke said the same about his previous sequels. He recently celebrated his 80th birthday, and could justifiably hang up his word-processor. But I wonder if 3001 really is Sir Arthur's final Odyssey. %A Clarke, Arthur C. %T 3001: The Final Odyssey %I HarperCollins Voyager %C London %D 1997 %G ISBN 0 586 06624 1 %P 273 pp. %O paperback, GBP 5.99 Paul S Jenkins Portsmouth UK Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.ecn.ou.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!netnews.com!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "3001: The Final Odyssey", Arthur C. Clarke Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 Jul 1998 14:58:30 -0400 Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Lines: 104 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2013 "3001: The Final Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade "You know those Rama books? The ones he did with somebody else?" he asked. "Yes." I said. "Well, they were really terrible. Not much of Clarke at all." "True." "But he's put out a new one. `3001.' Another in the `2001' series. It's vintage Clarke. You'll have to get it." So I looked forward to it with great anticipation. We all enjoy Clarke a lot. I mean Heinlein is OK for adventure junkies and Ayn Rand fans, and Niven has a few interesting astrophysics tricks, but Clarke is the only one for techies when they want to avoid gnashing their teeth every three pages over some egregious scientific error. He was right. This is vintage Clarke. And that is not altogether good. For one thing, those familiar with the Clarke corpus will know that Clarke is at his best in the short story. His novels, and particularly the more recent, tend to have story lines that zig and zag, and wander up blind alleys and cul de sacs. At times Clarke seems to get bored and will fast forward thirty years over a chapter break. Of course, some may object that many of the more recent Clarke books are collaborations, but this tendency is also noticeable in the 2001 series, the original "Rendezvous with Rama," and others stretching back a ways. Therefore, "3001" bears less resemblance to a novel than to a collection of short stories with a few common characters. Another problem is that Clarke is good with technology, but he is not as good with people, and particularly society. Yes, it is true that we could not communicate with an English-speaker of a thousand years ago, but that was because there *was* no English that long ago: it was basically Saxon, and was about to get an infusion of French. Even without sound recordings we can still understand the English of four centuries back with little difficulty. I know: I've been to Newfoundland. What would be difficult is not only idiom, and reasonable marks to Clarke for that, but also concepts. How would you explain "clockwise motion," "running like clockwork," and "weekend" to King Harold? Clarke has a very optimistic view of society. I will agree with Feynman's assessment, in "The Meaning of it All" (cf. BKMEANNG.RVW), that psychology is only just starting, and that current theories will no doubt seem as quaint as phlogiston and a periodic table with four elements in the several hundred years that it has taken physics to come up with some reasonably useful laws. However, the world of 3001 seems to have no social problems at all, aside from minor and isolated aberrations. The poor, or any other social strata, are no longer with us. I assume that Clarke would dismiss that objection out of hand, since he is adamant (and in the valediction patronizingly so) that mankind will have finally outgrown religion. Odd, though, that the evils of the Inquisition, the Crusades, female genital circumcision, and the Indian subcontinent have nothing to do with politics or other sociological pathologies. I am not sure how the death of "religion" fits in with a tremendous push for, oh, shall we call it "spirituality?" The science is reasonably strong, though spotty. Clarke seems to be very conservative in many areas, given the vast gulf he has to play with. If information storage has grown through nine orders of magnitude in forty years, a mere handful in a millennium seems pikerish. Nanotechnology is non-existent. Medicine, and particularly microbiology, seems to have had a very lucky time of it. While there is a nod to Mad Cow disease and the obligatory sermon on vegetarianism, virulent new diseases seem to have stopped happening and resistance to antibiotics and whatever follows them is a non-issue. I can handle vacuum energy and inertia drives, although I don't see why an inertia drive can't run a shuttle on Earth, as it does in other places. However, I would have kept my big keyboard shut, had Clarke not dropped one heck of a clanger in *my* field: computer viruses. I don't care whether ID4 or 3001 had the idea first (and did either of you thank Fred Cohen? No, I didn't think so); the concepts are still equally invalid. Turing, and his machines, proved that whatever algorithm one machine can compute another can compute: he didn't say that any machine can run another machine's programs. The creation of this super virus/trojan reminds one of Monty Python's military use of The Perfect Joke. Alright, I can accept that there will be all kinds of wonderful, and not so wonderful, developments in computing over the next millennia, but for the same reason that you cannot have a perfect virus defence, you can't have an undetectable virus. There's never an AV that'll always recover: there's never a virus that can't be discovered. The tricks that Clarke proposes are all the mathematical equivalents of asking the super-deluxe- really-smart computer the well-beloved trick question "why?" (Didn't Clarke use that one once already?) And I don't care if you do have an agent inside the machine; the "Firstborn" seem to be just a tad older and smarter than you, and MonolithOS 3.14159... probably has a thread killing daemon that will keep the machine from chasing its CPU up its own multiplicity. Nice parallelism, mind. Bit hard on the desktop models, maybe. %A Arthur C. Clarke %C 101 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 %D 1997 %G 0-345-42349-6 %I Ballantine/Fawcett/Columbine Books/Del Rey %O http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey delrey@randomhouse.com %P 274 p. %T 3001: The Final Odyssey Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldfeed.gte.net!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "Richter 10", Arthur C. Clarke/Mike McQuay Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 13 Aug 1998 14:14:22 -0400 Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Lines: 41 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2086 "Richter 10" by Arthur C. Clarke/Mike McQuay Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade If reviewers actually like to rip a book apart, this is an embarrassment of riches. OK, first of all we have dorph. Made from endorphins. Natural. Organic. Therefore non-addictive, right? Nobody has heard of psychological addiction, eh? [Sigh.] Spot welding tectonic plates with hydrogen bombs sounds a little risky. H-bombs tend to be better at pushing things apart than holding them together. We have a digging machine that can throw dirt a full mile straight (*dead* straight) up in the air. Now, even though that is many, many orders of magnitude better than anything we've got today, what *really* astounds me is that the dirt, rocks, and other implements of destruction don't immediately fall right back down that same straight mile. With fantastically accurate data based on observations of the current state of the earth, a super-fantastic-really-good program is unable to simulate a massively cataclysmic geological event. However, making wild guesses on the state of the world before an event that we know nothing about, the same program is able to accurately work it out. And since when have you had to worry about an imaged simulation shaking itself to pieces? "Capt'n, we must shut'ter doon! The photons canna take any more o' this!" Oi vei. %A Arthur C. Clarke %A Mike McQuay %C 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10103 %D 1996 %G 0-553-57333-0 %I Bantam Books/Doubleday/Dell %O 800-323-9872 212-765-6500 http://www.bdd.com webmaster@bdd.com %P 407 p. %T "Richter 10" Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news.tele.dk!4.1.16.34!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: alex@arcfan.demon.co.uk (Alex McLintock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: The Trigger - Arthur C Clarke and Michael Kube McDowell Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: none X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Date: 28 Nov 2000 13:27:29 -0500 Message-ID: Lines: 49 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 975436050 29565 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2808 The Trigger, Arthur C Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell Review Copyright 2000 Alex McLintock This was a well-paced thriller but only an average science fiction novel. I can't say I saw much of Clarke's handiwork in the book. I don't really believe that ACC would normally come up with science as flimsy as The Trigger is based upon. The interplay of characters was a bit predictable as everyone in the entire book seemed to be a stereotype of one sort or another. The "what if" is that an effect is discovered by physicist Jeffrey Horton. He creates a field which causes explosives to go off prematurely. This includes the charge which propels bullets thus making it an effective weapon against guns. Horton has to live with his discovery as it changes society around him. There are a huge number of interesting social consequences of such a device, but Kube-McDowell and Clarke only scratch the surface of them. Many of the most interesting ones are just mentioned in passing without being properly explored. Here are some of them -- I don't believe mentioning these will spoil anyone's enjoyment of the book: The Trigger can be used to clear mine fields of their anti personnel devices. How do you treat such an effect? Is it a right for the common man to destroy any guns within a short radius around him? Surely such an act of "defence" is really an act of "offence." Should a scientist discovering making an important discovery with global implications publicise it to the world or hand it over to his nation's defence forces? This book's saving grace is that it is easy to read and so although it is neither a brilliant SF novel, nor a brilliant action novel, it has enough to make a half decent thriller. %A Arthur C Clarke %A Michael Kube-McDowell %C London %D 2000 %G 0-00-648383-6 %I Harper Collins, Voyager %O Paperback, UKP 6.99 %T The Trigger Alex McLintock http://www.arcfan.demon.co.uk/sf/books/ SF BOOK REVIEWS www.zz9.org has a new competition to win a book and videos This review and many others by Alex McLintock can be found on www.DiverseBooks.com Path: news.island.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.net.uni-c.dk!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!washdc3-snh1.gtei.net!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: "Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 07:44:31 -0800 Subject: REVIEW: "The Trigger", Arthur C. Clarke/Michael Kube-McDowell Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca Priority: normal Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Lines: 60 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: 1020698948 senator-bedfellow.mit.edu 3945 18.85.1.50 Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:259 "The Trigger" by Arthur C. Clarke & Michael Kube-McDowell Review Copyright Robert M. Slade, 2002 It sometimes seems as if the recent spate of Clarke Collaborations is an attempt to do in science fiction what Paul Erdos did in mathematical literature. The eponymous "trigger" is a device that will explode (or, later, render impotent) any gunpowder or explosives. The book is an attempt to explore the complex social ramifications of such a technology. The book is not simplistic in examining the issues, but is ultimately quite limited. The major conflict deals with the proponents of the use of the technology against a collection of gun advocates, the least irrational of which is a thinly disguised National Rifle Association. Therefore, the main discussions in the novel will make little sense for those who are not thoroughly familiar with the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Absent some minor discussions of the chemistry and formulation of explosives, and a completely unexplained foray into optical wave dynamics, there is no real technology involved in this book. The trigger technology never does develop a theoretical basis. Indeed, in the only attempt to do so, the narrative seems to imply that the trigger is the long-fabled philosopher's stone--and then blithely abandons that intriguing possibility. More than plot potential is discarded in this work. Characters, loose ends, Futurians, red herrings, tests, villains, suppositions, and voyages to other planets are left hanging throughout the book like half of a shoe store's stock waiting to drop. However sympathetic the personae populating the story it is difficult, in the end, to really care about any of them: how do you know whether it is going to be worth the effort of working up any emotional contact with someone who may disappear, never to be heard from again, on the next page? The book winds up with a rather ironic contradiction of itself. Towards the end we find a speech that should affect us deeply. It is clear that we are to be stirred by this address: we are told so in the book. It addresses the lamentable tendency of a creatively bankrupt entertainment industry to turn, when all else fails, to murders and mayhem that are completely at odds with with reality. Why then, in a last ditch attempt to introduce tension to a book notably lacking in force, do we finish up with kidnapping, torture, and murder? %A Arthur C. Clarke %A Michael Kube-McDowell %C 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 %D 2000 %G 0-553-57620-8 %I Bantam Books/Doubleday/Dell %O http://www.bdd.com webmaster@bdd.com %P 626 p. %T "The Trigger" ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com If we poison our children with hatred Then the hard life is all that they'll know - `It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go', Jackson/Finch http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade