Publisher Blurb: “Mankind has reached the heights of civilization. Men live thousands of years in perfect freedom and leisure—their wants are attended to by ingenious machines—peace and culture flourish in ways undreamed of in our time. And yet ... mankind is dying. The price of peace has been the loss of the needed human qualities of curiosity and drive—they have been bred out of the human race. So when young Alvin of Diaspar began asking questions, he was looked on as a dangerous freak, a throwback. But Alvin kept asking, kept looking, kept seeking out the truth ...
... and what he found offered his people a dreadful choice—battle and destruction, or a new and richer destiny!”
Tags: Dying Earth, Dystopia, Space Exploration, incorporeal beings, higher intelligence,
4,400+ reviews with an average of 3.97/5 stars rating
Best review of this book: “Read this one rather than his later rewrite "The City and the Stars." Deep-future always works better as poetry, and you can't clutter up poetry with too many details -- the bare prose and simple exposition which Clarke later abandoned make a clean frame for this lovely story.
That spooky feeling you got when the time traveler in HG Wells disembarks into the silent garden of the Sphinx at twilight? This is a whole book of that. It's also an antiquarian mystery, an essay on the implications of deep time, a theological fantasia, and a muted, sublimated love story.
Set aside a winter evening. Brew some tea. Banish the outside world, and read this in a single sitting.” - Evan from Goodreads wrote that back in 2009