Earth

By: David Brin

Narrated by: David DeVries, Kristin Kalbli

The long-awaited new novel by the award-winning, best-selling author of Startide Rising and The Uplift War- an epic novel set 50 years from tomorrow, a carefully-reasoned, scientifically faithful tale of the fate of our world.

©1990 David Brin (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"One hell of a novel.... has what sci-fi readers want these days; intelligence, action, and an epic scale" ( Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine)

"The prime attraction of Earth is the author's unfailing resourcefulness in extrapolating a post-greenhouse-effect future that is plausible, dismaying, and amazing in equal parts…. Brin's prose ranges from regular to high octant…. His characters have vivid intellectual lives." ( Entertainment Weekly)

"Brin has conceived his story on a supremely ambitious scale, and executed it with all the skills at this command." ( Chicago Sun-Times)

A Long Time Favorite - Now an excellent audio book

Earth has long been my favorite book, having read it several times in print. Dramatic, still relevant and ultimately hopeful. Was happy to find an audio book version. They did a great job with the audio book production

Enjoyed it, but it goes slow too often (3/2020)

I sorry of enjoyed this story, in which an “gravity laser” is invented by an improbable scientist, and of course has weapons potential. Naturally, the then equivalent of the CIA comes after him. A woman astronaut gets involved, dislikes the scientist at first but eventually comes around. And and and.

Brin uses the device of starting each "part" with a series of repeated chapter titles like "Earth," "Space," etc. Many of these are non sequiturs, and confusing.

The characters get a bit hard to follow, and he pretty deep into characters that don't have much impact on the plot. When some side characters do interesting things, they often don't ever get explained. For instance one saves animals from an impossible situation, but _how_ is never revealed, nor does the event have any relevance to the plot. Neither does that character have much relevance to the plot.

People fall in love, but nobody shows passion, or any emotion, except jealousy. Sex, of any, is only vaguely hinted at.

The narrators are just barely good enough to tolerate, and their (or the director's?) work interferes with the character development. Several characters voices sound the same. Worst of all, the lead female protagonist has an unattractive man's voice with a strong Kiwi accent. He may have explained why a New Zealander is captain of an American space shuttle, I don't recall, but it has nothing to do with the plot. Weird.

Tying up those loose ends that actually do get tied up takes at least an hour, and is free of either surprises or action.

I'd return this book, but I have a lot of unused credits and Amazon recently started cancelling credits after so many months, which violates the contact I signed up for

Anyhow, I'm done with Brin.

Earth review.

I love this book. please, if Ms. Kalbli is set to narrate any further books, encourage them to not do so in a manner that presents them as hating what they're doing and bored out of their mind. All areas narrated by Ms Kalbli were flat and lifeless and uninspired. It is a shame to have such a good story treated in such a careless fashion. Other than this point I really enjoyed the book.

always surprised

I'm always surprised by how early David Brin's books were written after I've read them. I think that they must be written after 2010 to find out they were written before 1990

Two readers

The female reader is excellent. The male readers is sometimes distracting with his accents. The one he did for one of the main female characters was particularly bad. But the story and other reader is excellent