Earth | David Brin

Another of my random-book-grabbing expeditions; maybe it's that I can read almost any book, or that libraries only have good books, or maybe I have psychic powers, but I always seem to end up with nice reads even if I just pull a random book down. I actually found this one when I was looking for the Da Vinci Code, but I like sci-fi and this looked massive and juicy so I took it. (I borrowed three books on this day, to keep me sane while I hunched in a corner of Swimming Sports with the smell of chlorine in my nostrils and a backache.) This was a particularly interesting read, and it left me with a lot to think about.

Earth is a science fiction novel, set in the future; but unlike most futuristic novels I've read, somehow despite all the things gone wrong in this world it doesn't register as a dystopia. As Brin puts it: 'As writers go, I suppose I'm known as an optimist. So it seems only natural that this novel projects a future, (now less than forty years from now), where there's been just a little more wisdom than folly... perhaps a bit more hope than despair. In fact, this is just about the most encouraging tomorrow I can imagine right now. What a sobering thought.'

Earth paints a picture of the world of 2038, fifty years onwards from when the book was first written; a world where technology and the Internet is more immersive and critical than ever before, a world where a human population of ten billion struggle to extract the last out of the mother planet's dwindling resources and save the last of the wildlife from extinction, mostly futilely, a world where the demographics are aging fast and young people's freedom is crushed by the increasing numbers of the old, a world where people try to claw back desperately from their sinking homes as the rising sea levels swallow the land city by city, and a world where a new religion has risen- a religion that worships the mother, Gaia, as a subconscious reflection of the pressure being put on Earth that will soon become unbearable if something isn't done. And amidst it all, a young British physicist, an old physics professor and a Maori billionaire discover something terrible within the Earth's very core that threatens to destroy everything... and only they can save the world from annihilation.

Earth is less of an fiction story than a projection, a prediction of a future for humankind. Brin uses many different characters' perspectives to bring together a vivid vision of the world in forty years' time, from a group of three young people with big dreams and small hope of realizing them to a female astronaut who loses her husband to the mysterious forces threatening to destroy the planet. The book forces us to take a step back and take a long, hard look at ourselves, and ask ourselves some fundamental and troubling questions: who are we really? What gives us the right to exploit the resources and the planet so generously given to us like we do? And most hauntingly: standing in the face of extinction, would we be able to put our problems past us and make a better future? Or are we only ever going to die out, riddled with our own flaws and poisoned by our own carelessness?

It's not perfect; the plot is a little bumpy and the prose sometimes not so elegant, but it's a compelling read, especially for those of us (like me) who are deeply interested in the future, and I admire both the author's hindsight and foresight; only with excellent use of both could one construct such a book.