Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #238326 in Books
• Published on: 1991-05-01
• Released on: 1991-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 704 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Weaving an epic of complex dimensions, Brin ( Startide Rising ) plaits initially divergent story lines, all set in the year 2038, into an outstandingly satisfying novel. At the center is a type of mystery: after a failed murder attempt, a group of people try to save the victim, recover the murder weapon, identify the guilty party and fend off other assassins, all the while being led through n + 1 plot twists--each with a sense of overhanging doom, because the intended victim is Gaea, Earth herself. The struggle to save the planet gives Brin the occasion to recap recent global events: a world war fought to wrest all caches of secret information from the grip of an elite few; a series of ecological disasters brought about by environmental abuse; and the effects of a universal interactive data network on beginning to turn the world into a true global village. Fully dimensional and engaging characters with plausible motivations bring drama to these scenarios. Brin's exciting prose style will probably make this a Hugo nominee, and will certainly keep readers turning pages.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-- Brin uses the escape of a manmade black hole that is eating away at the Earth's core and a plausible future of sophisticated, instant universal and global computer data linkage and retrieval to reexamine, explore, and expand upon the themes regarding genetic creation and advancement begun in Star tide Rising (1983) and The Uplift War (1987, both Bantam). There is an element of suspense and intrigue as the characters scramble to define, find, and solve the black hole damage before each other and before it's too late. Although less engaging than the previously mentioned books, this is timely in its investigation of current ecological issues and includes a welcome annotated bibliography and list of environmental organizations and addresses. --Joan Lewis Reynolds, West Potomac High School, VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
The long-awaited new novel by the award-winning, bestselling author of Startide Rising and The Uplift War--an epic novel set fifty years from tomorrow, a carefully-reasoned, scientifically faithful tale of the fate of our world. "One hell of a novel . . . has what sci-fi readers want these days; intelligence, action, and an epic scale".--Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Line drawings.

Customer Reviews

Standard Characters and Eccentric Plot from a Sci-fi Master
As he says in the introduction, Earth is David Brin's most optimistic view of what the future will look like. The fact that the planet he depicts is on the knife edge of environmental collapse and disaster shows us just how serious he believes our current problems are. This book could be classified into many different sci-fi subgenres; the Dystopian Future, the emergence of the Singularity, and of course the standard Planet in Peril storyline. The wrecked and dying planet provides the dystopian feel, and the discovery of a miniature black hole in the interior of the Earth gives the characters a deadline and a problem to solve. (I won't spoil the Singularity storyline.)

The characters in the book are realistic enough, but in some cases entirely too sane and well adjusted to be interesting. The three most interesting characters are a trio of teenagers who only appear in short blurbs in between major sections, while the ostensibly main characters have predictable, reasonable, plausible emotional reactions to the craziness going on around them.

The reach of the story is impressive, but it relies on several gimmicks for resolution that leave one feeling a little disappointed. Although this book was obviously meant to have several parallel storylines all but one of them is somewhat neglected. When one of these side stories turns out to be key in the resolution of the book the reader can be forgiven for wondering why it wasn't given more focus, or at least a more convincing lead-up and explanation.

Despite all this, David Brin is a very talented author, and this book is an enjoyable read. Coming from anyone other than the author of the Uplift books I would have expected less and been more pleased. If you've never read a book by Brin before start out with Startide Rising or The Uplift War first.

Better described as "soap box"
I read Earth after seeing it on a booklist with Frank Herbert's Dune. The booklist compared the two favorably. I loved Dune, so I gave Earth a try... and hated it.

It's not that David Brin's goals are indecent. They're quite noble. And I think that's the downfall. I can imagine Brin tapping away with lofty expectations, expecting his novel to be a catalyst. Every sentence preaches.

Brin uses a lot of "guess what I'm writing about" hat tricks. He sprinkles his novel with a heavy hand. It can be a really entertaining style, but less is better. Obscure cultural and science references abound, based I suppose on modern day extrapolations, but tweaked enough to make the windup painful, fleeting enough to make it vanish once the setting is accepted. Easy come easy go.

Each day was a new short story when Earth was being written. I get that feeling reading it. The result is a mess of ramblings meandering all over the place, each its own work of intense art but not one a shelter from the intense preaching.

Vaguely interesting, but too long
After 200 pages or so I put the book down. The parallel stories were plausible, the future Earth was well developed, but it just felt like my time would be better spent reading other books. The characters weren't engaging and the book is just too long, so it felt more like a chore to read it than a pleasure.