Earth: A Novel Kindle Edition

It's not often that you read a book that was written 25 years ago yet it still feels like it is accurately describing both the present and the future. When you combine that with a story line that scientific minds can really appreciate, you have the potential for an amazing book. I don't remember how I stumbled across the David Brin's blog, but I immediately was hooked at how he analyzed current events with an eye towards the future. He is not shy at all about bragging how he predicted this-or-that in his 1990 book Earth, so I knew I had to read it.It's a heavy read at nearly 600 pages, filled with science and multiple plot lines that all converge at the end. However it is broken down into many small sub-chapters, so no matter how little time I had, I was always tempted to just pick it up and start reading. There were basically no dull moments the entire time, and the ending comes as a decent surprise. I almost never read fiction as I feel like it's a waste of time to spend so many hours on a book and to learn nothing, but this book is the best of both worlds.I'm definitely looking forward to reading some of his more recent books.

I have read almost all of Brin's books, and this one is by and far my favorite book.The book has a unique structure, which adds to its charms. The book takes place in the near future, which makes the book easy to identify with. The Internet is as much a character in the book as the characters of the main story line. I think that the excerpts between chapters, which include sometimes irrelevant chatter from the internet user groups, makes the story that much more believable.The book could easily have tipped into being environmentalist propaganda. But, the story treads a fine line of messages about the fate of the earth, and the effects of a short sighted outlook. If anything it definitely makes you think about the "What If's."In all, Brin weaves a story that starts as multiple seemingly disjointed threads. The threads all come together in a an action packed and explosive ending. The eventual outcome may be a little far fetched, but the overall story is a fun ride with lots of highs and lows.

Love this book. Bought it fresh when it first came out and refer to it in conversations/make reading suggestions about it especially now that oligarchs seem to be taking over the real world. Lost the dog eared/beat up copy in a move a year ago and had to reorder to fill the void. Rereading it now. It has held up very well-- technology has changed some but not as much as you might think and hubris certainly hasn't. Great book.

I know that a book has affected me when its ideas keep popping up in my conversations. Earth is one of those books, because it covers so many issues that I consider to be hot topics: privacy, the information super-highway, restrictions in scientific research, evolution of consciousness and the future of the entire human race.I read a couple of reviews here criticizing the shallow characterizations, but all of the characters seemed like real people to me. It has a great villain you'll love to hate, and loads of intelligent people having intelligent conversations.If you don't like books that jump back and forth between several sets of characters and plots, then you won't like Earth. I happen to enjoy this format, to see how the various people and situations merge in a grand finale; and believe me, this book has a heck of a grand finale!

I real this something like 10-12 years after it was published and found Brin to be prophetic in his projections into the future. It shows how quickly technology is changing that things he was projecting to happen in 30-40 years are already here in some forms. Aside from all this, like the best scifi, in this novel he presents a fleshed out world that the reader can escape to with lots to think about. On top of all this, this is a fun ride, a page turner as the action heats up. One of the best scifi stories I've read in the last decade or two. Highly recommended!

A complex, prescient work of hard sci-fi. Long, and a bit tedious at times, I am richer for having read it. If are still not clear what climate crisis may mean in not so distant future, this is an excellent read.

Oh, I'm so disappointed by this rambling, overstuffed effort. I lost the will to live half way through but had to find out what happened, so ploughed on often discarding swathes of chaff. It feels wrong to so criticise a writer who attempts to incorporate this much science and speculation in a book. Yet that's the core issue I have with it - that he shows no restraint, that he/his editors didn't say "stop" and cull his precocious use of arcane words - that he uses so many storylines some of which add very little if anything to the book - hat he stretches credibility (and this Speculative fiction!) with Atlantis flying, the Ark going into space, the perfect nature of his protagonists, etc, etc.....I am now leaving David Brin's building!

David Brin is among the worlds foremost science fiction authors and also highly educated and a environmentalist himself. So he knows the environmental 'milieu' quite well and the fanatics we find among them. Brin had to construct a quite difficult technology to show what one of his protagonists are willing to do in order to "save the planet". It is an elaborate book and it received a Hugo nomination for best novel in 1990.

Found this pretty hard work to keep my interest going. Looking back and reading the afterword it clicked. David refers to a huge amount of influences and ideas from other sources. This novel tacks them all together and also has interjections and narrative that i eventually wound up skim reading as many had no place in the narrative and felt like 'fillers'. This also led to characters being bit part players with zero intellectual involvement with their story - i didn't care if they lived or died. I became more interested by how the book was put together than the story. Also it got exciting in only the last 50 pages which is always an issue. Ok but as a lifelong fan of the genre this was one of the few books that i considered stopping reading but finished and was glad it was all over by the end.

A truly great book I replaced a badly damaged paperback with the kindle edition as soon as I saw it had been released. I'd heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in near future SF. The picture it paints of a damaged world and the struggle to avert one global catastrophy while amid another is vivid as it is disturbing.

A superb story, prescient of so many technological developments, I have read and re-read this book several times over the past 18 years.However, the Kindle version is chock-full of transcription errors and mistakes in what I assume is an OCR-scanned edition. It really really should have at least been proof-read before being released in eBook format. Please correct this (or pay me to do it for you) and re-release.