Helpful Score: 3
I love reading David Brin's books, but read this one ages ago. Since it has been so long, I am borrowing a review from Amazon.
Reviewer: Jedidiah Palosaari "Not My Real Name" (Dar Baida-Casablanca, Morocco)
An amazing pre-sentient work, Earth explores the world fifty years from now with astonishing accuracy and vividness. Writing before the development of the world wide web, Brin describes nearly completely what we have today, and will likely in forty years, with a world culture dependent on the web for all it's information. It is a possible future, but a very likely one. Here, there is mandatory time spent on the net, as it is too important for survival, and though one may not have enough for food in the next day, still access to the world web is free. With this and the ever presence of personal vid-cams has come the complete death of privacy. Warming has continued apace, and so Bangladesh and the Maldives are gone, with floating cities to take their place. The world has finally realized the importance of the environment- only because it is forced to- and dropping a cup in the water can get you prison time. White folks are in trouble especially from the lack of ozone layer, and new religions have arisen- Gaiaism and interestingly neo-Raism, with the recognition of the sun as a power that can destroy lives through skin cancer.
I have to reduce this from five stars only because the last quarter of the book becomes more magic than science fiction or scientific realism, and the improbabilities become too great. But I would highly recommend this work for the vision of a very likely future which we should all be prepared for.
Reviewer: Jedidiah Palosaari "Not My Real Name" (Dar Baida-Casablanca, Morocco)
An amazing pre-sentient work, Earth explores the world fifty years from now with astonishing accuracy and vividness. Writing before the development of the world wide web, Brin describes nearly completely what we have today, and will likely in forty years, with a world culture dependent on the web for all it's information. It is a possible future, but a very likely one. Here, there is mandatory time spent on the net, as it is too important for survival, and though one may not have enough for food in the next day, still access to the world web is free. With this and the ever presence of personal vid-cams has come the complete death of privacy. Warming has continued apace, and so Bangladesh and the Maldives are gone, with floating cities to take their place. The world has finally realized the importance of the environment- only because it is forced to- and dropping a cup in the water can get you prison time. White folks are in trouble especially from the lack of ozone layer, and new religions have arisen- Gaiaism and interestingly neo-Raism, with the recognition of the sun as a power that can destroy lives through skin cancer.
I have to reduce this from five stars only because the last quarter of the book becomes more magic than science fiction or scientific realism, and the improbabilities become too great. But I would highly recommend this work for the vision of a very likely future which we should all be prepared for.
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