A particularly good
sci-fi novel by the one and only
David Brin. I love this book for several reasons:
- The depiction of the earth in 2038 is so realistic, you have no problem picturing people living in such a time. As Brin says in the afterword, it has to be different enough that people can believe it's the future, yet no so different that they can't believe it's only a few decades away.
- Brin's predictions of the world data net in Earth have rung surprisingly true long before he predicted they would, in the book. I'm sure that some of the concepts Brin uses are inspired by Usenet as it existed when he wrote the book, but nonetheless, it's not hard at all to see how our modern day internet would envolve into something very close to what is portrayed in Earth.
- As in many sci-fi novels, there are many characters, and each character has a separate story line, much like in Otherland. As they slowly converge, the climax of the story is just gripping, as the heroes struggle to use gravity lasers to extract micro black holes from the earth, to prevent the eminent apocalypse that they would cause.
- The little epilogue is probably the coolest two pages I've ever read. The ending really makes you think, and basically offers a whole new theory as to how the universe came into existence.
Obviously, I would highly recommend this book anyone who remotely likes sci-fi.