Songs of Distant Earth, The

by Arthur C. Clarke (1986)

4/10

I’ve been on a Clarke spree of late, and this was the best of the trio that included Childhood’s End and Imperial Earth. It was the most complete of a novel, though still suffering from many of the issues that marred the other two.

First is that the writing is not very good, and when I say “most complete of a novel” in comparison to the other two books, know that this is an extremely low bar that needed clearing. There’s not much action, and actually Clarke seems to have been mostly content in superficially exploring his very limited thought exercise: what if humans “seeded” to live on a distant planet were then contacted by a different group of humans that left earth hundreds of years after them, and who needed their help to reach their ultimate destination? It’s intriguing enough, but without more of a plot — which there isn’t — there’s not much to sink your teeth into as a reader.

We do have a few main characters, although Clarke spends so little time with them while jumping around to other subplots and episodes that we don’t develop much attachment to them. What is arguably the “climax” of the book occurs off-page and we’re just told about it afterwards. Oh and there’s Clarke’s signature anachronisms and cultural chauvinism, asserting that Beethoven and Bach will still be considered the height of musical achievement almost 2000 years in the future.

All in all I’m not super impressed with Clarke. I remember liking Rendezvous with Rama well enough, but I don’t remember much of it so I’m guessing it is fairly similar to these ones. I admire his rationalist thinking, and his relatively bold vision. But then again he wasn’t the only one boldly envisioning things even at that time, and his progressive scientific atheism is tainted by his absurd cultural chauvinism.

Asimov was a worse writer but had more memorable novels and ideas. Clarke’s most lasting legacy will actually be a screenplay.