The City and the Stars (Millennium SF Masterworks S)

One of the classics of the genre, first published in 1956, but a chilly read withal. It is set in the far distant future, in the city of Diaspar -- a city that its residents believe to be the last home of humankind, and a place they can never leave. One person is born with a unique personality; unlike the other residents, he is not living a long series of lives, one after the other, but has appeared de novo. Of course, he sets forth to solve the mysteries around Diaspar, the fate of human kind, the stars, etc. etc. Interesting, but the people in it don't seem very human.

Many years ago when I was quite young (11 or 12 perhaps) I first read this novel's sister book, Against The Fall Of Night, on the recommendation of my mother. I loved it and soon moved on to The City And The Stars, which I enjoyed even more. Over the ensuing twenty years I have re-read it several times, and cannot think of any SF book that I have consistently enjoyed more.
This is not "gadget SF", where the plot turns on clever use of some little-known technical gizmo. Nor is it "hard SF" that delves deeply into the domain of hard chemistry or physics to drive the story. Instead, this is a "big picture" novel.
A million years pass. A billion years. What happens to the human race? What social impacts might occur after every question we know how to ask has been answered? How might people live when advanced science begins to resemble our conception of magic? This is speculative fiction at its finest, and my favorite Clarke novel.

"The City and the Stars" is a sort of extended version of "Against the Fall of Night". This confused me as a young adult as I read both versions and did not, then, understand why Clarke would do both titles. "the City and the Stars" is the longer and more polished version and is somewhat better.

I always felt that Clarke seemed to have an odd view of humanity in this novel. I never understood why he would have only one person who found it hard to live with such a long status quo. Nor am I happy as to why humankind would choose to live in a status quo.

In any case, after a long status quo, one person is born who looks for a way out of that status quo and finds it.

The story is a good one.

This was the second Clarke book I read, after "discovering" him in my early teenage years. The central theme appealed to me - that of a restless young man at odds with his conservative society and eager for new experiences and adventures. The fully-immersive computer games - "sagas"- that the inhabitants of the city play are pallid and unrealistic to Alvin and he yearns for something different. He wonders about the world outside the city, but finds no one willing to even discuss it, due to the very real fear that the residents of Diaspar hold for the world and universe outside.

Diaspar is a city so completely insulated from the outside world that it has remained unchanged while more than a thousand million years have reduced the green hills of Earth to a desert wasteland. In this city, the occupants do not die, but, after about a thousand years, when they have grown weary of their lives, they review their memories, delete what they do not wish to keep and return their personalities to the central computer's memory banks, to be reborn tens of thousands of years later. They emerge from the Hall of Creation as full-grown adults, but with no memory of their previous lives. "Parents" and tutors are assigned to the reborn citizens to help and educate them and when they reach their twentieth year, all their retained memories of their past lives come back and they begin another cycle. Alvin, on the other hand, is a special case. His restlessness is partially explained when he reaches his twentieth year and his tutor reveals to him that he is unique - that he will not recover any past memories because he has not lived before. He is the first person born in Diaspar for ten million years.

Even before this revelation, Alvin's associates - he has no one that he can actually call a friend - grow impatient with his constant straining against the rules and soon the only people close to him are his tutor, and a stranger - Khedron the Jester - who appears to him one day after Alvin learns that he is a "Unique". Khedron's function, which was "programmed" into him by the city's builders, is to, from time to time, throw a little sand into the smoothly-running gears of his society to give his fellows some moments of interest in their otherwise dull and eventless lives. He admits that sometimes his jests have not always been appreciated. Bored with his life and resentful of the role that was imposed upon him, he attaches himself to Alvin and, without fully realising what his is doing, sets the young man on the first steps to events that will change the world. One of the things that Alvin quickly learns is that there have been fourteen other "Uniques" through the ages, all of whom disappeared without trace, although he later learns where they disappeared to.

I was taken by Clarke's setting of a city so far into the future that even the oceans of Earth have disappeared, while the human race lived out their lives in their utterly protected creche, but was also repelled by the utopian aimlessness of their lives. A society so ordered can only stagnate and, no matter how much the residents of the city might think their lives full of stimulus and enjoyment, Disapar's stagnation is profound and enduring. Alvin the Unique is just what this decadent society needs, which was probably exactly what the builders of Diaspar planned for - the possibility is raised that the Uniques are actually the reincarnations of the city builders, themselves. In Lys, protected from the outside desert by its encircling mountains and the only other place on Earth where humans live, Alvin quickly discovered the extent of the gulf between the two branches of the human race when he met children, who had not been seen in Diaspar for a thousand million years. He realises in that moment what his people had lost when they chose immortality and ultimately comes to recognise that to regain their lost humanity, the people of Diaspar will need to give up their endlessly repeating lives and restore the cycle of birth, life and death. Hilvar, the young man from Lys who befriends Alvin and later visits Diaspar, considers that, despite the teeming population, the city is half empty because it lacks children.

There is a number of plot holes in the story, some of which are explained by the difference in what we knew about the forces of Nature when Clarke wrote the book and what we know now. For example, we know a lot more now about the Sun's evolution than we did sixty years ago and the thought now is that in a thousand million years time, the Sun's increasing luminosity will probably make Earth uninhabitable. Other reviewers have commented on the long-term effect on Diaspar of tectonic movement, even though the implication in the story is that there is none - Earth's mountain ranges having mostly weathered away. Plate tectonics were not even a theory, let alone an accepted natural force when Clarke wrote this story, but I feel that the movement of the Earth's crust would not have presented a problem to Diaspar, as long as the city was located well away from the edge of a continental plate, with its subduction zones and associated volcanism, or mountain-range building due to collision with another continental plate.

Another was an almost oh-by-the-way mention of the destruction of the Moon in a time before the building of Disapar in its final form, which was made necessary by the fact that it was falling towards Earth. That one sentence threw away everything we have ever known, or thought, about the Moon and its gravitational interaction with Earth. At the present time, the Moon is slowly moving away from Earth, as it has been doing since its formation. Clearly, something in the future caused the Moon to dramatically reverse that process, but this is not explained.

Clarke either missed, or ignored, the forces of natural evolution. For all their history the inhabitants of Diaspar have been protected by their city, living, 'dying' and being re-created - unchanged - over and over through the millennia, while the outside world slowly aged. The people of Lys, however, had no such artificial evolutionary pause button imposed upon them and yet, after more than a thousand million years in the outside world, they are unmistakably and instantly recognisably human. It is as though evolution came to a complete stop in Lys - in a thousand million years, humans in the world outside the artificial stasis of Diaspar should have become either "unimaginably altered or extinct" (Carl Sagan). I always had trouble with that aspect of the story.

The City and The Stars is classic early Clarke, with his characteristic poetic prose that has always made him so easy to read. His science, apart from the niggles I have mentioned, is credible and he has also embellished the story with a sub-plot containing a cautionary tale of the terrible penalties that can be exacted when science is mis-used. Incidentally, in this sub-plot, he predicted black holes, long before we even knew they existed.

My copy of this book is getting quite dog-eared now - I have had it for forty-one years - but its enjoyment quotient has never diminished. Four stars for this one.

only Clarke can write in this half-visionary, half-scientific fashion and make it feel real: convincing. Perhaps it was his experience of writing government white-papers that has stood him in good stead. All I know is he writes with an effortless fluidity and somehow manages to make complex concepts sound normal and..... right!

This may have been the first sf I ever read. I am certain few others have ever topped it. [Note this is a 1956 expanded rewrite of the original version entitled "Against the Fall of Night" 1953]
Clarke forms a world in the very distant future whose inhabitants live for hundreds of years on a ravaged planet earth in the oasis of the city. The city is an incredibly advanced utopia but an island of machines and somewhat bored inhabitants.
The main protaganist is the youngest member of the community who ventures out into a voyage of discovery and onto another community which has also survived the ravages of time. The reuniting of the two tribes of mankind each a distinct culture at opposite ends of the spectrum is problem and goal of "Against the Fall of Night".
This is science fiction storytelling at its best. A great story and a must have for all fans of the genre.

I reread this every few years. I bought the book from the Science Fiction Book Club when I was a youngster (I'm in my 70s now).

We might call this simply young-adult fiction, but the themes in here are masterful I think. Yes, it is an oldie, written in the days when sex and violence were not omnipresent.

Read it for the great tale that it is.

Another good work by Arthur C. Clarke. A vivid story about humanity interacting with technology and their far off future together. Hard to believe this was written before most of the sci-fi blockbuster novels and movies were produced. His imagination really shines here with some deep thought about existence, birth, death, resurrection, reincarnation and possible immortality of the human race, with courage and wisdom overcoming faults and flaws.

The City and the Stars is my favorite book. Set unimaginably far in the future and yet written in the 1950's with the technological knowledge of that time. The story involves the reader's imagination from the very start, trying to visualise the splendor of the city of Diaspar in the mind's eye. The concept of mankind evolving down two completely different paths cut off from each other for eons was brilliant. This is science fiction/fantasy at it's best. With today's computer special effects I await a film version with keen anticipation

I appear to be in a minority here, in not believing the book to be a work of genius and a grand look at important philosophical ideas.
The book is similar in some aspects to the later, and I believe better, Childhood's End in that the plot is about the transfiguration of human society. In Childhood's End a great transfiguration into another level of existence and in this one the waking up of two moribund earth societies in the far future.
Slow and ponderously we move through the book, exploring the earth and the universe. We find the universe empty, almost completely devoid of the galactic empire that permeates the legends of earth society. Though there is a point, and it is realized at the end of the book spending 212 pages exploring empty vistas is not my idea of entertainment.
At the end, mankind has awoken and again given an opportunity to grow and become more than the fearful earthbound race it had turned into. We end with much work to do and the idea that it is the journey that is worthwhile, not the destination.
This golden age classic sadly is showing it's age. The ideas now co-opted and familiar to everyone and the plodding plot barely able to hold a reader's interest. The final payoff just barely makes it a worthwhile read, and there is some historical significance of this early example of the conceit of examining deep philosphical issues.

This saga of humankind's far future is a classic of mid-20th century science fiction. Clarke, as always, is the eternal optimist about time and technology, but as this story shows, even he had his doubts about our destiny. And as always, he gives the reader a good story and a lot to think about after you finish it.

Calling this "classic" science fiction seems like too droll of a description. This book will not let go of you once you've read the first sentence. The characters, the plot, the suspense and the reward are fantastic. It pulls you in so completely you won't even feel like you are reading -- as if you are traveling the moving ways through Diaspar itself, watching the Jester's tricks or struggling against the bonds of the City. I've picked up City and the Stars, flipped to a page in the middle and gotten instantly drawn into Alvin's story again and again and again. This is by far my favorite science fiction book ever. Buy two copies and put one in a sealed plastic bag for the time when your first, ratty and torn copy turns to dust!

Not a five-star book simply because it wasn't 100% grabbing, but this was still an excellent book with a great story, well worth reading, for sure. There wasn't a lot of conversation, and I think that's why it seemed kind of lonely (hence the four stars), but it's fascinating none-the-less.

Some big ideas about the very far in the future which, like in the best of sci-fi, is really all about the here and now. Mostly narrative, not a lot of action. Not a page turner, but a good read when you are not in a hurry.

Few sci-fi books can claim to be this good. It has everything: future wonders, epic creations and scenarios that you could only see in science fiction, characterization, STORY, suspense, a beautiful and poetic ending, and, as always with Arthur, it never loses site of the human element. This is one of those books that should simply be on everyone's must-read list, as one surprise after another happens in it.

Engaging sci-fi with classic sensibilities (in both a good and bad way). The plot seems a bit fatalistic, like the story’s on a rail, but after a slightly slow beginning (likely for worldbuilding purposes) it moved so fast that I didn’t mind. Characters were generally uncomplicated, problems were generally too easily resolved, but a fun read with some really heady sense-of-wonder moments.

An inspired novel,starting out with a 'holodeck' type of scenario {for 1948 originally,then rewritten in 56 that is amazing,no?} One of my favorite sci-fi books...Has humanity experienced something like this before...T'would make a mega movie I bet.

I first read this book in 1957. I loved it of course, but I had no idea where it ranked against anything else. I was 11.
Over the following 10 or so years I read on the average of one sci-fi book every two days. I have read two in one day.
We are talking about Poul Anderson, Bliss, Delray, Tenn, Asimov, Heinlein, .... I read some great science fiction.
The City and the Stars is not equaled. I have reread it four times with diminishing, but great pleasure.
I respond to the themes, the imagery, the characters, the joyous invention, the wish fulfillment, the humor, the riddles, the sheer fun of it. It is pure science fiction and pure story telling.
Buy it, read it, love it, and admire it.
- Bill Weylock

Once upon a time man crossed the stars and spread throughout the galaxy, leaving Earth behind. They met other intelligent life forms and formed alliances. Unfortunately, this took place a billion years ago. In the interim they ran across a species that was not happy about man's success, known only as The Invaders, and by launching war they forced humanity to abandon the galaxy and retreat to Earth. During the war that resulted large portions of the earth were subject to desertification and the surviving inhabitants were forced to flee to a lone city, Diaspar.
A billion years hence Diaspar seems like nothing short of a paradise to most. Genetic modification and advanced technology have come together to create a utopia. Death is no longer an issue: The average life span of an individual is one thousand years and at the end of that period one simply feeds their memories into a computer, turns back into star dust, and waits for the inevitable technological reincarnation some time in the future. It will seem like minutes rather than the eons that have actually passed. They will be reborn as 'children' that are in their twenties (in standard human years) and will soon enough be able to access the memories of their past lives. Any food or furniture or adventure that one wants can quite literally be created out of thin air. Beautiful architecture and art surround you everywhere you go. Sex has become a purely recreational activity. There is only one caveat: You cannot go outside, even in adventures taking place in virtual reality. Occupants of the city can never leave, nor do they desire to. A fear of the outside is bred into them. At least, it's bred into most of the occupants. On the other hand, why would you want to leave?

Once every fifty thousand years a 'Unique' occurs, a human that has been born for the first time rather than being reincarnated. These individuals do not share the same inborn fear of leaving the city that everyone else does. Alvin, our protagonist, happens to be one of those individuals and he finds himself staring longingly at the stars and the desert with unfulfilled curiosity, determined that there has to be more to life than the pleasures the city has to offer, that there must be an adventure waiting if he can escape.

And so begins a coming of age story for both Alvin and humanity. (Sound familiar?) Clarke uses this tale to elaborate on some of his viewpoints on what the coming of age of humanity entails. Specifically, it is a very strong critique of political and social isolationism. It also unsurprisingly takes aim at religion. That said, as a fellow critic of religion that prefers these matters to be handled intelligently I found the critique delightfully subtle. The novel also deals with the ramifications of the fear of scientific progress and repressing the longing for adventure.

That this is a re-write of Clarke's first novel, Against the Fall of Night, is noteworthy. He states in the preface that he felt that the story from that novel could be enhanced by what he had learned about writing in the interim. Given the elegant writing and the consistent flow of the prose he was correct in asserting that he had learned a few things about writing.

On the other hand, character development is lacking. All of the characters tend to feel like foils for the thoughts and actions of Alvin, rather than an attempt at peopling this world with distinct individuals. Meanwhile, the main character suffers from very uneven character development. There are long stretches where absolutely nothing is revealed about his personality except his desire for adventure, punctuated by random bits of exposition (generally put into the mouths of other characters) that show a new side of his personality, making his personality seem like an after-thought. Clarke, in this novel at least, is clearly an idea man and not a character man. A more damaging flaw than the lack of character development is the sense of inevitability that permeates the work. There's never any feeling that the main character will truly come to harm or fail in his quest. You know from the beginning that he will complete his quest, though you will probably not guess where it will lead. It removes all tension from the story, leaving you to meander through at a casual pace without any real page-turning moments. Fortunately Clarke does demonstrate several impressive leaps of the imagination throughout the story with interesting twists that keep one reading and help drive home his philosophical points. He also manages to wrap things up with a satisfying ending, a difficult task.

In short, this is an interesting read with some great ideas in it and some fascinating leaps of the imagination and could have been a masterpiece. Unfortunately, the lack of character development and worse, the lack of any real sense of tension brings it down a peg. Overall, four stars.

When it comes to science fiction, the best is written by scientitsts. And Arthur C Clarke's work is consistently top quality. I read this twenty years ago as a high school student, yet the story was so fascinating that I recently revisited this book. Other reviewers have already recounted the outline of the story of Alvin's perils and triumphs in Diaspar, a city in the far future. There's no need to go over it again in this review. Suffice it to say that for anyone with an interest in science fiction, this one should be near the top of your list.

Arthur C. Clarke has never written anything that was really bad. However, I can't agree with the the store reviewers who say that "The City and the Stars" is a "masterpiece" or describe it as Clarke's "best" novel. The book has some cool ideas -- manmade reincarnation, for example -- but the writing stumbles whenever Clarke strives for "cosmic grandeur." Some of the writing, in fact, is painfully amateurish, as when all the characters speak in the same wooden voice, or when the history of the galaxy is laid out in a super-contrived sequence at the end of the novel.

The book's main structural problem is the protagonist, a 20-year old man who defies the conventions of his society and ends up changing human history. He's present in almost every scene and drives the whole plot, but he never rises above the level of a cliche. This leaves a big hole at the center of the book.

Clarke was a young man when he wrote "The City and the Stars," and he may not have understood that he had no talent for writing about people. Once he made the literary choice to put ideas and science, rather than characters, at the center of his novels, he produced genuine classics like "2001" or "Rendezvous With Rama." That said, "The City and the Stars" is worth reading. It was the first sci fi novel ever read by my 12-year old son -- and he loved it. For that reason alone, it deserves three stars.

This expanded version of the author's earlier, equally excellent book "Against the Fall of Night," contains awe-inspiring, very imaginative and well thought out ideas and situations. The protagonist is someone I can relate to; I wish I were having his experiences. One of my all-time favorite books.

I was 14 years old when I first read The City And The Stars. And it sent my little 14 year old mind out of Northeast Texas to the center of the galaxy, a billion years into the future. I haven't recovered since. Dr. Clarke has been a mentor for me, at a distance, and it began with this novel. It would be a dream come true to somehow thank Dr. Clarke in person for all he has done for me. He opened my mind, but more importantly, he opened my imagination with this story. I'm very thankful for that. I'm gratified to read so many positive responses here. Apparently, others have had experiences simular to mine. I have an original paperback copy of The City and The Stars, dated First Signet Printing, December, 1957, on my nightstand.

Although the plot, characters, setting, and ideas are all very well down, the reason I love this book so much is its sheer scope: it makes you FEEL (as well as a book possibly can) the passing of the eons. Again and again, it manages to evoke a sense of wonder and take my breath away.

Arthur. C. Clarke is a brilliant writer and as he was a scientist in his own right he was able to make his books very believable and full of facts. This book makes you think about how far technology may go and can be quite frightening when a computer controls so much. Even today computers control things to some extent and if the information put in by a fallible human is wrong it can have disastrous consequences. This books makes you think. I am sure you would enjoy it as I have several times

Virtually everyone here seems to agree with me, so I don't think I need to repeat these sentiments, so I'll just say this. The first time I read it, I was almost home in L.A., flying back from Europe. I was young, and the mere ideas of flying and travelling was magical ones for me. We were just passing over Las Vegas in the darkness, which was much smaller in 1973 than it is today, and it was a solitary brilliant jewel on the breast of the desert. I had just read the part about Alvin's first trip to Lys, and how that isolated place reminded me of the gigantic underground switching station that he passed through, midway during the trip!

I read this story many, many years ago and when I re-read it recently, I was stunned by it again. The idea that humans would have gone so far and then returned home, only to stagnate there, is amazing. It gives one a feeling of extreme age and ennui. The characters are believable, and it does all of this without really trying to explain an inexplicably advanced technology. A good read and a great book.

This fiction story.It kept my interest. It had possibilities of really happening and at the same time never happening.The twists and turns keep me guessing "what is next?".Then it all could be a very complex dream within a dream.I recommend it to any one who likes the unknown.

I have read everyones review of this book on the store, and its good to see I'm not the only one who thinks this is the best science fiction novel of all time (and it ranks up there with any other fiction as well). Clarke is famous for his Odyessey series and the Rama series, but this is his master work. He captures the vastness of space and time perfectly (better than any other book I have read) with this novel, and that is why even though I have read it over ten times already I still don't get tired of it.

This novel is so awe-inspiring and yet so down-to earth simultaineously. The main character's struggles are rich in superb symbolism. The setting Clarke describes is fantastic.I wish a movie would be made.

This fiction story. It kept my interest. It had possibilities of really happening and at the same time never happening. The twists and turns keep me guessing "What is next?. Then it all could be a very complex dream within a dream. I recommend it to any one who likes the unknown.

This is definitely one of the best SF books I've ever read, and I have re-read it many times. One thing that bothers me is how the heck this book can be out of print. It's one of those classics that should always be available to new readers, and don't worry about it being dated because it was written in the fifties - nobody's running around with a slide rule here. Just a wonderful, wonderful book.

Great book, story up-to-date for the 21th century. Sometime I feel as if I am living in Diasper and waiting for the link to Lyss to be opened again.
Also, good service from the seller. The book was not in as bad a shape as he had described!

Despite the poor second chapter and an ending that is a collection of loose ends, the book surpasses 2001 Space Odyssey in the reach of its ideas. This is vintage Science Fiction coming from an age when SF was more about intriguing ideas than the polished story telling genre it now is.The prologue transports the reader to a time a billion years hence, to Diaspar the city that was built to be perfect -- forever.

Arthur C. Clarke is an acclaimed writer and his craftsmanship shows in anything he writes. This story, The City and the Stars, describes two civilizations and how each is lacking. However, his solution doesn't seem to offer any real change. The protagonist's character is reasonably well developed but not engaging. I found myself feeling the world Clarke created is depressing and without hope.

Having read this book three times, the first when I was around 14, the desire to pick it up again has only grown stronger. The themes are so incredibly unique--sparking continuous reflection while you read. The plot is so intriguing that you may find yourself immersed in the book with little effort. I agree that this could not only be Arthur C. Clarke's greatest novel, but Science Fiction's.

It has been some years since I last read this book. I have read it several times. As I recall it is one of the most compelling and moving stories in the genre of speculative fiction in relation to humanity. If you are a SF fan and a fan of ACC himself and have not read this story, you simply must! It is, beyond doubt, his finest work!

What is it that is so fantastic about Arthur C. Clarke's writings ? Probably his clarity, scope and depth of vision. Or could it be the relentless power of his narrative. Or the sheer humanity of it ? I could go on. This book exemplifies all his greatest qualities and is his finest work...please buy it and be awed.

There are many SciFi books that I hold in great regard. But this book is by far the best. I agree with the other reviewers that this is without a doubt the best story ever written. I regard this book with the same reverance and awe that Christianity has for the Holy Grail

One aspect of Arthur Clarke's writing is the intelligence and thought on which the fiction is base. Yet as one reviewer noted, Clarke seems to devolve into sillines at times. The writer that brought staggering works such as "Childhood's End" to our culture seemed to be writing a script for a bad B-movie in "The City and the Stars".

Following the death of civilization as we know it, society has evolved into a world that exists in a dome on Earth known as Diaspar. This city in the bubble is the epitome of synthetic in all aspects of life, even recycling lifes. Alvin enters as a "unique", not being born previously. As a consequence, Alvin questions why things are the way they are in Diaspar.

Alvin rediscovers another lost city because an apparent subway exists after an exceptionally long period of time of not being used. After trying to create a peace accord between the two cities, Alvin tries to create a peace accord with the rest of the universe. If nothing else, Alvin in ambicious.

Along his journey, Alvin meets alien life forms that could easily could have been rejected from the cast of "The Great Space Coaster" or some B-level horror movie. The purpose of the aliens in the plot is to explain what humans can no longer understand or know.

It is unintentionally humourous when Clarke explains humans have lost hair, nails, and external genitalia. While Clarke may have been a scientist, he must have missed the lesson on evolution.

It is quite apparent that the overriding theme which Clarke is seeking to highlight is an anti-ritualism/anti-religion theme. In the story, the human have fallen in to a pattern of ritualism and refuse to try to explain what they do not understand. Though there is nothing wrong with the theme in itself, Clarke failed to deliver a good story. Characters spent too much time on frivolous matters that take away from the story. And when the action finally occurs in the ending, it is very rushed.

I was very disappointed with this book. It has touches of Arthur C. Clarke brilliance. An interesting well written beginning frames a story with lots of potential. But somewhere in the middle of the story Clarke just loses it. Even Clarke's wonderful writing style and delivery cannot overcome the silliness of the plot.

The intelligent blob that lives in a puddle of water on a waterless desert earth for a billion years was my favorite silly character. The main character is a human that after a billion years has evolved to have no hair, fingernails or teeth. He still enjoys munching away on all sorts of food. He must have strong gums. There are the space ships and subway systems that after a billion years are still functional. (A billion years. Not a few thousand or a few million.) Once interesting characters hurtle off to the center of the Galaxy, the blob's robot does the driving, and within a few hours visit a half dozen planets, find space ship eating plants, alien artifacts, and then of course...the ultimately intelligent being in the universe..."Mr. Mind". This is the guy with no body or form, just mind. He hitches a ride back from the center of the galaxy to earth... it's all too much.

Clarke must have been smoking something strong when he wrote this. I've read other Clarke books and loved them. This one was a real disappointment. The story just runs away and becomes silly. If you are a Clarke junky I'm sure you'll disagree with me. If you aren't and want to read Clarke for the first time I suggest not reading this. Try a classic like "Childhood's End". Clarke obviously was thinking much more clearly when he wrote that...