Earth (David Brin)

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Earth
by David Brin

*
I picked up this book (luckily at a used bookstore), fresh from reading Startide Rising and expecting some grand end-of-the-world scenario, maybe a beefed up version of Greg Bear's The Forge of God. Instead I got a smorgasbord of preachy articles disguised as stories on environmental awareness and the importance of preserving our ecosystems. Or something along those lines. Anyway, the bottom line is: DON'T start reading Earth on the basis of critical acclaim (unbelievably, it has received vast amounts of undeserved praise) UNLESS you're absolutely crazy over David Brin and have a lot of time on your hands. Otherwise it's just not worth it.

Story: a miniature black hole falls into the Earth's core and threatens to consume the planet in two years. Before we can witness the glorious destruction of our home world, we must be treated to a long, long series of sessions dealing with the environment in the future—fifty years in the future. So some things have changed: no more postmen, lots of space flight, increased danger of UV radiation. But most things haven't changed a great deal. Or else there's more to it than that, and I'm too bored to care.

Now, some of you might think this isn't a very fair review, especially when I tell you that I never actually finished the novel. But before you start flaming me, I will say that I read over half the book (about three hundred pages or so) and I STILL couldn't bring myself to finish it. So how good can a book be if I find the first three hundred pages a total waste of time? (I even read it on vacation in Montreal, and there's nothing to do in Montreal.)

The story is bloated, loose, devoid of the slightest tension. The characters are woefully insipid: they treat the impending doom of Earth like some sort of mild ecological upset rather than an Apocalypse. At least The Forge of God was written with passion and anguish and the characters genuinely seemed to suffer. What was it that Asimov once said about some other book—"If dullness could kill, reading this would be a death sentence." (Did I mention that Earth is boring?)

One last thing. I like David Brin. I'm quite eager to read his other novels, and I don't hold too much against him for writing this one. No, my hate is reserved for the idiots who wrote the blurbs that precede the novel: "Fully dimensional and engaging characters with plausible motivations…will certainly keep readers turning pages…the Moby Dick of the whole Earth movement…" Um, did these people write this stuff while being held at gunpoint or what? Anyway, consider yourself warned.

Buy Earth at Barnesandnoble.com.