Earth by David Brin Copyright 1990 this print 1994

The front cover blurb states "An Epic Story Of Our Worlds Future By A Modern Master Of Science Fiction" I will admit that this is an epic story. A story of the near future for the 1990s of ecological disaster, war and the over population of the world and what to do about it.

It is one of those books written in the same kind of style that Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, that is from many points of view, chopped up and interspersed with each other. It also had those pesky chapter introductions that may or may not have had anything to do with the contents of the chapter. Herbert did it much better.

Because of the clunky interspersals of points of view, which were difficult to understand until about half way through the book, I was a difficult read. It took me about 2 months to read this book, when I can usually read a book in about a week, without intense concentration on the book.

Another feature of the book was that the points of view and themes seem to have been taken from Paul and Anna Ehrlich's Population Bomb, in relationship to the attitudes about the human population. In short, the book is radically depopulationistic, as bombastic about it as Be-ill Gates and his associates. In fact, the book rejoices in drastic population reduction through all methods, including mass murder (although this is carried out by a deranged character in the book).

It also expresses pessimism in regards to CLIMATE CHANGE. The ice is melting in Greenland and Antartica to such a drastic degree that there are polders around American cities like New Orleans while other places like Florida and the areas around the Gulf of Mexico are being abandoned to flooding. The populations are being sent, reluctantly to places like the warming Siberia, northern Canada and Patagonia in the south.

And the plot conflict begins! There is a newly created, with new science, black hole that has fallen into the center of the earth. Luckily, the newly created blackhole is very small and may evaporate because it is so small it cannot suck enough matter in to survive. Then, while searching for it, another, more massive blackhole is discovered. Panic ensues and the characters from many of the disparate points of view start working together for solutions to the problem.

From this point on the book is very readable and really did not take long to finish, because it was a page turner. It still has the disparate points of view which are now tied together in a way that makes sense to the plot of the book. I will not give you any spoilers, but the book was excellent, once you get by the very slow beginning. In this respect it was much like Dune by Frank Herbert, difficult to start but enthralling later. I would recommend the book if you don't mind slow build-ups, I enjoyed it, myself.