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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The ninth billion name of god has been called, 25 Aug 2008
There is some sadness here, while the last of the three great science fiction writers from the so-called "Golden Age" has passed away. Of the Big Three (the other being Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov) Arthur C. Clarke was the more gentle writer, as such famous stories as "The Nine Billion Names of God" or "The Star" can attest to. His grand galactic and spiritual vision (obviously from the "school" of Olaf Stapledon's transhumanism) found its way in such novels as "The City and the Stars", "Childhood's End" and "2001: A Space Odyssey"; they belong to the best of science fiction of that period.
Clarke has cooperated with other writers, notably Stephen Baxter, and for this last novel, with Frederik Pohl, another well-known and respected science fiction writer.
The story of finding a contemporary solution of Fermat's Theorem (that is: with mathematics within the time-span of that mathematician), coupled with aliens knocking at our door, is written with obvious love of Sri Lanka and its people in the forefront. But, just as Asimov and Heinlein before him, he tried to twine the various strands of earlier novels and worlds, such as "Fountains of Paradise", "The City", "Childhood's End" and "2001" into this book. And, predictable, he (and/or Fred Pohl) failed to convince. The Great Galacticans, a glittering utopia hanging before our eyes, and world problems solved with the stroke of a paragraph, it is all a bit too much contrived. It is a 'feel good' book, with much empathy but not with much depth, and a rather plodding plot.
And that is sad. Was Shakespeare really the only one who got better with age? At any rate, Clarke has started his own odyssey into the unknown, and there is much written by him to be fondly remembered. But not this last theorem.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Moving a pile of sand from one spot to another with forceps., 27 Oct 2008
That's what it's like ploughing through this much hyped great work of not much science fiction by Clarke and Pohl.
90 per cent involves the life of a not very interesting main character who discovers a proof of `Fermats theorem.'
I am sure the untold millions of mathematicians will love this plot line(zzzzzzzzz)
The actual science fiction part is stilted and so re hashed from earlier stuff, it makes it feel `corny'
Frankly, although I diligently read it cover to cover, I wont re-read it again, and I have been re-reading some really good ones 30 years later.
Expensive and not worth the money, bit of an insult to both authors.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I wish I hadn't read it., 16 Sep 2008
I really didn't like this. The character development was poor and patchy, the pace strange and there's a horrible lack of a beat throughout the whole book. Even Clarke's beloved Lanka is sketchily drawn and you feel no closer to it for having read this.
There are highlights, the structure of galactic culture, the evil 2D Americans and some of the ideas under the plot, for example, but they never really sing because of the stilted rhythm and the feeling that one or other of the authors just didn't have their heart in it.
Great idea, but not well executed, and it makes me sad to think there's nothing that can be done about it now. I wish I could unread this, and go back to thinking of Clarke as I used to.
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