MixedEarth Abides comes close to this warped paradise. It's cozy enough, but there's always a feeling of tension. This could go very wrong very quickly.
Review 1 of 2
Earth abides (1949)
Others: Mixed The story of rebuilding civilization after a plague nearly wipes out the human race.
- ISBN:
- 9780345487131
- Length:
- 368 pages
Genres: science fiction
Lists: …
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Clifford D. Simak
1952 · 254 pages · 5 reviews
Others: PositiveComment by John Clute: We know better now, of course. But they still entrance us, the old page-turners from the glory days of American SF, half a century or so ago, when the world was full of futures we were never going to have. In the mid-1940s, when he began to publish the episodes that would be assembled as City in 1952, Clifford Simak, a Minneapolis-based journalist and author, could still carry us away with the dream that cars and pollution and even the great cities of the world – "Huddling Place", the title of one of these tales, is his own derisory term for them – would soon be brushed off the map by Progress, leaving nothing behind but tasteful exurbs filled with middle-class nuclear families living the good life, with fishing streams and greenswards sheltering each home from the stormy blast. Fortunately, Simak soon gets past this demented vision of a near-future world saved by technological fixes, a dementia common then to SF writers and gurus and politicians alike, and launches into an astonishingly eventful narrative of the next 10,000 years as seen through the eyes of one family and the immortal robot Jenkins, and all told with a weird pastoral serenity that for a kid like me seemed near to godlike. In its course City touches on almost everything dear to 1940s SF, and to me remembering. Robots. Genetic Engineering. Space. Jupiter. Domed cities. Keeps. Hiveminds. Matter transmission. Telepathy. Parallel worlds. Paranormal empathy. Mutants. Supermen. It's all there, and, thanks to Simak's skilled hand at the wheel, it's all in place: suave, sibylline, swift. The whole is framed as a series of legends told by the uplifted Dogs who have replaced the human race, now gone for ever. They have been bred not to kill. At the end, only Jenkins remains to keep them from learning how to repeat history and die. It all seemed immensely sad and wise then, but fun. It still does.
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On 5+ of the same lists66%Also science fictionPersonalize your recommendations34%The End of Eternity
Isaac Asimov
1955 · 192 pages · 2 reviews
Others: MixedThe story of temporal engineers who meta-regulate the history of humanity through the centuries, eliminating risk, adventure, and space travel in the process. One man rebels in order to save the existence of someone he loves, and in the end the time bureaucracy is destroyed for the sake of individuality and human achievement. The theme is the opposite of the Foundation stories, where the central planners and manipulators of humanity always dominate.
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On 5+ of the same lists63%Also science fiction35%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations2%Babel-17
Samuel R. Delany
1966 · 192 pages · 6 reviews
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1972 · 288 pages · 5 reviews
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Arthur C. Clarke
1956 · 254 pages · 6 reviews
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Mixed