I thought I had read this many, many years ago. High school age years ago. Wrong. The book I have thought for many years was this one is something else altogether - now I have to find it.
Clarke really could put it out there. This vision of the future of humanity is chilling - and not at all like the vision of the book I thought this was, which was equally chilling in its own way.
First, there was the arrival of the Overlords, who coincidentally turn out (after many years of hiding their physical selves) to strongly resemble traditional representations of the devil. But the Overlords are not the end of the story - they are scarcely even the beginning.
I've always considered Clarke the master of the logical. He was, after all, an engineer. I thought he got "visionary" after his retreat to Sri Lanka. Wrong, again. This is his third published novel. By the way, I think the book I was thinking of is The City and the Stars. I'll have to check it out. On the other hand - of that logical thing - my favorite of his short works is a story called "The Nine Billion Names of God." Now there was a chiller - I guess he was always strongly mystical, in spite of the Rama books and any number of others.
It may be time to put him on my list of people to reread or to read for the first time in some cases.
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