Earth, by David Brin

Earth
David Brin

I’m not a big fan of science fiction, although I do occasionally read it and usually enjoy what I read (I loved Dune enough to consider it one of my many favorite books). So when I read the brief summary of Brin’s Earth, I was hooked. Basically, the plot revolves around a scientist who, working on creating a tiny black hole in order to use it as an energy source, discovers this tiny singularity has somehow fallen into the center of the earth—whoopsie!—where it will eat away until THE VERY WORLD IS DESTROYED. Of course, a race against time ensues: can they save the earth before it is destroyed by the black hole eating away at its core?

Upon reading this brief synopsis, I thought: interesting! I’ve certainly never read something like this before, and all the reviews gave Brin’s handling of the scientific aspects a big thumbs-up (implying even a dummy like me would have no problem grappling with the physics behind black holes and gravity).

WELL.

I stuck with it—really, I did—and it takes A LOT for me to abandon a book before I’ve finished with it. Not only did I abandon this book with a good four, five hundred pages left unread, I got rid of the book entirely. Exorcising the demons, you understand.

What was wrong with it? Where to start? I’ll start with the science, since I’ve mentioned it already. Now, I consider myself no total dolt when it comes to physics (in fact, I’d like to inform you that yours truly won the coveted “Physics Bowl” plaque during her senior year of high school) and, before deciding to be a psychologist (which I scrapped in favor of the highly lucrative world of education), I had intended on becoming an astronomer (I was obviously unaware of how much math would be involved). The point is, I understand many of the concepts even if I don’t know the equations behind them. That’s enough to understand Earth, right? A book that is apparently easy enough for a layperson? Sure. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Very wrong. I found my mind wandering during this long discussion of gravity and energy and mass and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. What? Can we get to the VERY DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH, please? I don’t think I need to go into any more detail about this aspect of the book.

The next biggest problem was the characters. First, there was about a gazillion of them. It seemed as if every new page brought a new character. This was especially bad because I couldn’t have cared less about a single one of them. Fine, black hole: eat ‘em all. I don’t care. It’s not that Brin didn’t do a good job of making them seem real—in fact, the one strength of his book, as I will soon discuss, is just that—but I couldn’t give a rat’s behind if they all died in the swirling mass of chaos wreaked by a black hole.

The only aspect of the book which I enjoyed—but was not, alas, enough to prompt me to read further—was Brin’s rendering of his futuristic world. It was pretty darn good, actually. His futuristic world was VERY detailed (at times, too detailed) but was interesting and unique, and it provided an insightful commentary on current society.

In a nutshell: The book is about 500 pages too long; a good 200, 250 pages is more than enough to get this story told. The plot is excruciatingly slow, and the characters, though real enough, are bland. But if you’re a hardcore science-fiction fan, you’ll probably find something redeemable in it.

Bibliolatry Scale: abandoned