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Title: Sunstorm (A Time Odyssey)
ISBN: 0345452518
Author:
Arthur C. Clarke
Stephen Baxter
Publicate Date: 2006-02-28
Publish: 2006-02-28
List Price: $7.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.95
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $1.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $7.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Endlessly Ending His Career
FirstBorn has a great many plots all running at once and all leading to a final great climax. Very well written until the author ran out...... the end is so pathetic as to be meaningless..... 2001 A Space Odyssey at least had a suggestion of meaning. This was a Dead.....end
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2: Lacks continuity from the first book of the trilogy.
First book was much more of an interesting concept. I thought this would carry over into the second book. Hopefully it raps things up with a little more interest in the third book.
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3: Cool Core Ideas
Obviously you have to read "Time's Eye" first.
This book, as with most Clarke books, has some future tech that is more than a bit intriguing. That we can probably produce aluminum on the moon was a surprise to me. I love the idea of building a space sling from that material there.
Also, reading it gave me the spark of an idea to look into generating power from vacuum.
shannon norrell
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4: weak, counterintuitive, and left wing
an old civilization in a nearby star, recognizing that Earth will give rise to Energy craven Humans, plan Man's extinction by hurling a large planet into our Sun at 4 BC. That event caused electromagnetic disturbance in the Brain of newborn Jesus ( typical Talmudic attack ). It also set in motion a major energy flux in the 21st century meant to exterminate all Humans ( because there is no end to Man's energy craven zeal ). (Muhammed by the way is documented to have had periods of Loss of Consciousness, after which he wrote the Suras). Baxter's hero in this Book is an American Soldier who had become a quiet ethical disciplined Muslim( give me a break ). Baxter uses a lot of Astronomical and Scientific Mumbo Jumbo to awe the reader. So Mankind's extinction was orchestrated by an Old Civilization who because Man didn't effect a perfectly Green Earth, decided to scortch it. I have a few questions for baxter and Clarke: Why don't you extoll the Virtues of Islam and Judaizm on their own merits without the impulse to insult Christianity. is it because you can't. Also if the Jovian's impact gave rise to Christianity and Energy Glutton Christians, wouldn't that make the Firstborn responsible for the Planet's problems! That would make the Firstborn quite stupid!
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5: Worst Clarke book ever...
This is probably the worst Clarke's book (because, admit it, who cares about Baxter? he said, jokingly.) I've read. Not that it's *totally* bad, and it does keep you engrossed and turning pages from the very beginning, but:
-the scenario has not the grand scope that Clarke has gotten us used to and the idea is far from original (the sun is going to destroy the Earth? Come on, this is Hollywood stuff!). The first book of the trilogy was much more original and interesting as a premise
-He's using many of today's ideas and facts as bases for tomorrow's achievements; for instance, that Google has turned into a self-conscious legal entity. Or that the EU has turned into the Eurasian Union (and the UK is still a country of euro-asian-skepticals). This reads rather cheaply, extending current and latest trends into the future. This is not originality, is easy to do and distracts.
-Clarke always had a huge love for science, but why he feels compelled to force-feed it to us through totally fake dialogs and explanatory paragraphs, instead of quietly integrating the scientific principles into the plot is beyond me. You can't have supposedly world-class scientists explaining to each other the basic stuff for the benefit of the reader! The dialogs feel really fake and it takes you out of it. The authors even do that with rather simple physics principles that anyone interested in SF should understand by themselves
-Lamest quote I've read in a while (taken from a dialog, pp143-144): "The idea of an electromagnetic launcher dates back to the 1950s, I think. A science fiction writer. Famous in his day...". How lame is that? :6
Still reading it, hope it gets better though somehow I doubt it...
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