Race manages to launch a fleet of ''seedships,'' each carrying enough genetic material (frozen human embryos, plants, animals and microorganisms) to stock an entire planet, along with robot mechanisms to nurture theĮmbryos until they can care for themselves. Not a very spectacular one - but big enough.'' With a millennium and a half of lead time, the human The sentences summarizing this forecast show Mr.Ĭlarke's style at its purest: ''In the year 3600, plus or minus seventy-five years, the Sun would become a nova. ''The Songs of Distant Earth'' takes place some 200 years after the sun blows up - right on schedule, according to a forecast made by a scientist at the beginning of the 21st century. Tools from both logic and poetry, intends to tell us how to live and die with dignity. The secret of his appeal lies in his revival of the oldest form of how-to literature - philosophical fiction, which, borrowing With Stanley Kubrick) and ''Childhood's End,'' are still in print after several decades.
Before that his ''Fountains of Paradise'' sold in the hundreds of thousands, and his best-known books, ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' (co-written
Despite these drawbacks, more than two million copies of his last science-fiction novel, He writes best sellers that have virtually no sex or violence in them, no family tensions, no conventional heroes or villains. The Songs of Distant Earth By Gerald Jonas
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