[J-Rod]

I read this many years ago, and Brin is easily my favorite author. I have read almost everything he has published. Earth is great for the PO crowd, mainly because many of the issues he wrote about in 1987 have really started to come to pass. If anyone likes well written Sci-Fi, that's not in the year 2183, this is a must read. From his site:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n Earth (NOMINEE: 1991 Hugo award for best novel [runner-up]), it's fifty years from tomorrow. A microscopic black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core and the entire planet is in danger of being destroyed within two years. A team of scientists frantically searches for a way to prevent the ultimate disaster. But while they look for an answer, others argue that the only way to save the Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to let the million-year evolutionary clock rewind and start over.

It's been more than a decade since Earth was first published. Since then, some things have eerily come true. The prediction getting the most attention was my portrayal of a vivid, dynamic world wide web -- though under a different name. (Note how the web-address system I use differs from the URL codes that developed a few years later.) Some people credit me with foreseeing the 'web page' and self-forming internet communities, but I think the ideas were already latent -- almost obvious -- when I started writing the book in 1987.

The same holds true for 'wearable' computing... the ability to walk about in wireless contact with a seamless Net, looking up information, even through your VR sunglasses. Some say this first appeared in Earth, but I know several people who spoke of similar possibilities even earlier.

As for Global Warming, a looming refugee crisis, the need for young people to demand a place amid an aging population, the desperate struggle to preserve species and all the rest... even the notion of a micro-black hole as an ultimate "environmental threat"... none of these originated with me. I will, however, take credit for the "Helvetian War" -- a metaphor standing in for the inevitable day when the world's people will get fed up with the wretched and universally vile effects of banking secrecy. Events of late 2001 seem to have made this looming crisis all the more likely, and sooner than even I expected.

As writers go, I suppose I'm known as an optimist. So it seems only natural that this novel projects a future, (now less than forty years from now), where there's been just a little more wisdom than folly... perhaps a bit more hope than despair.

In fact, this is just about the most encouraging tomorrow I can imagine right now. What a sobering thought.

[nero]

Hey, David Brin is one of my favorite authors too. My one quibble however is that he often tries to fit too many "big" ideas into a book and the plot suffers. Earth suffers from this failing. It has multiple threads and multiple themes and should really have been two or three separate books.

Brin's books are so full of original ideas that I'll continue to read his books but I have been disappointed that he doesn't respect the rule that you can only solve one global crisis per book.

[Aaron]

Excellent book... on my shelf.

Currently re-reading Treason.

Brin rocks...

Highly recommended.

[J-Rod]

My favorites are all of the Uplift series, and I thought "The Practice Effect" was a nice original story. Kiln people was nice, but I guess I just expected more somehow. I found myself reading it a bit too fast, wanting to finish it, and not savor.

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'K')iln people was nice

[J-Rod]

Yeah it was good, don't get me wrong. I just hope for more of the Uplift style stuff from him. It's good to see an author not get entrenched in any one style. I would however cut off an appendage for another Uplift series, or at least something in that flavor.

[julianj]

I like Brin's work too, but I haven't read severa of those mentioned. Thanks for the recommendations - I know what to look out for at the library.

Plus I can also recommend Phillip Reeve, Mortal Engines. It's nothing to do with PO and its notionally aimed at teenagers. In a far future cities have become mobile and prey on each other (It's called Municipal Darwinism).
It's absolutely rip-roaring and unputdownable, with moral dilemmas, and strange characters abounding. And wit: one saying people have is: It's a Town eat Town world. A predator-town in the second book is called Wolverinehampton (a pun on Wolverhampton, and yes, you can imagine it being lupine).

[J-Rod]

In light of the current news about global warming, I wonder if the book will again be a bit prophetic. I remember that because of the warming, there was only a narrow strip of arable land left on the earth to feed everyone. Seems like we might very well be on that path.