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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : C
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When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artefact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self- aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization.Clarke wrote this novel while Stanley Kubrick created the film, the two collaborating on both projects. The novel is much more detailed and intimate, and definitely easier to comprehend. Even though history has disproved its "predictions", it's still loaded with exciting and awe-inspiring science fiction. -- Brooks Peck
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Xenocide is Card's best-selling sequel to the Hugo Award-winning Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead.
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Then it came close enough for visual inspection.
"Goliath here", Chandler radioed Earthwards, his voice tinged with pride as well as solemnity. "We're bringing aboard a 1000-year-old astronaut. And I can guess who it is. "
Thus after drifting to an icy death in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the body of astronaut Frank Poole is recovered in the outer reaches of the Solar System. Preserved at near absolute zero, it is a simple task for medical science a millennium hence to restore Poole to life--though strangely for a novel which pits religion against science, the metaphysical implications of technological resurrection are unexamined --and the first half is devoted to Poole's integration into the society of the future. If anything he adjusts with far too little grief or culture shock: apart from mourning his dog, and learning how the new technology works, he faces no major difficulties. Still, the world of the future is drawn with broad, imaginative strokes and apart from a persistent continuity error which makes Poole 6 years old in 2001, this is fascinating stuff. The plot kicks into gear with the revelation that the famous black monoliths may ultimately not have humanity's interests at heart, leading to a perfunctorily presented struggle for survival. Clarke himself notes that the ending is functionally identical to that of Independence Day, though novel and film were created simultaneously. Not the hoped-for late classic, 3001: the Final Odyssey does provide the satisfaction of closure to Clarke's epic Odyssey Quartet.--Gary S. Dalkin
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Orson Scott Card's SF career began with Ender's Game, a 1977 story expanded into an acclaimed 1985 novel. Unwittingly responsible for xenocide--destruction of an alien species--while still a boy, Ender expiates his guilt on another world in Speaker for the Dead. This confronts humanity with a deadly alien-built virus whose elimination seems to demand another xenocide. The tense continuing story takes an extraordinary leap into magical metaphysics at the climax of Xenocide, of which Children of the Mind is in effect the second half. Though that virus is now defeated, this isn't believed: the planet-eating doomsday weapon still approaches. Ender's AI friend Jane, who inhabits the galactic net and is the only agency that can move spacecraft faster than light, is being killed by dismantling the net. Ender himself is fading, passing responsibility to strange young avatars of his dead brother and aging sister created from his memories in Xenocide. Even in the shadow of death there are grippingly argued political, philosophical and moral debates--plus bitter family quarrels. A master storyteller with a knack for showing painful human relationships, Card achieves almost unbearable suspense before resolving his complex tangle and finishing Ender's 3000-year story with a touching elegy. One dangling plot line suggests that Card may return again to this universe. Solid, high-quality SF despite some implausible science. --David Langford
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