Pieces on Speculative Fiction

The final spurt through the rest of the book didn’t do much change my earlier stance, World’s End was a book that didn’t thrill me. Nevertheless I have hard time of giving it less than three stars, because there weren’t any obvious flaws. Besides the fact that I never managed to get engaged by the story. The plot wasn’t predictable to any meaningful degree, characters weren’t cardboard cutouts and writing was good enough. Rainy afternoon romp, nothing more, nothing less.

My first impressions post said most that I have to say about World’s End. While I do like Chadbourn’s use of different myths, I prefer it when the use is less epic. Secret history/behind the scenes/invisible world is the aproach for me. Hopefully the two latter parts of Age of Misrule are more engaging, but I fear that it will be quite a while before I read those.

This books is a classic, it won five awards(including Hugo and Nebula) when it was published 1973. In my opinion it is very good example of Clarkes hard science fiction before he tried to write about things he didn’t really understand, like relationships or characters. This book is about exploration and wonder. I give it four stars out of five.

The novel starts by describing decentralized solar system in 22nd century, where Mars, Mercury and several moons are inhabited. Systems designed to detect asteroids detect one moving at huge speeds towards our solar system. Closer inspection shows that it isn’t what it seems.

The premise of the book is typical to science fiction: first encounter. This is explored through a panel of scientists who debate related issues and through the protagonist space captain Norton who leads the expedition to find out more about Rama, the mystical object that has arrived to the solar system. Read the rest of this entry »