Long Afternoon Of Earth (USA)

Rating:
Summary: Made me think and made me wonder
Review: I first read this book when i was 15 years old and I was an instant Brian Aldiss fan. This book is kind of short, but it's one you want to read slowly so that you don't miss anything. And it can be hard to miss things since at times there is a lot going on. The end of the book is my favorite part because its really bizarre. If you like sci fi that's not all aliens and technical than I bet you'll like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Made me think and made me wonder
Review: I first read this book when i was 15 years old and I was an instant Brian Aldiss fan. This book is kind of short, but it's one you want to read slowly so that you don't miss anything. And it can be hard to miss things since at times there is a lot going on. The end of the book is my favorite part because its really bizarre. If you like sci fi that's not all aliens and technical than I bet you'll like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Spend your time in another way
Review: I think the basic idea of this book's not so bad, but the development of the story is not fluent: every chapter seems to have been idea without a precise idea of where the story was going to. Not memorable.

Rating:
Summary: Life at the end of time
Review: Much of this book is stunning in its scope and originality. We are in the far distant future in the last days of the earth before the sun goes nova. The sun is so much hotter that all animal life has died and plants have taken over the earth making it an incredibly lush green jungle. All animal life has died but one species -- man -- and he is barely hanging on, literally in the branches of the great banyan tree that spans the continent. It's this view of man, not as lord of creation but as the last survivor of the animal kingdom that gives the book its power. That and the image of a green earth that is an incredibly dangerous place. It's a plant eat plant world. We follow the adventures of a boy as he discovers the world and we start to follow the adventures of some other humans that get accidentally taken to the moon by a mile long flying vegetable that is one of the stunningly creative ideas in the story. I gave the novel four stars instead of five because it is too short. With everything that happens you expect a grand ending and instead it feels rushed. The adventures on the moon are cut short and forgotten and the boy's adventures seem abruptly ended with a kind of conventional happy ending. Despite this one great flaw, this is a book well worth reading for it's sheer generosity of imagination. In it's own unique and crazy way, it's a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Life at the end of time
Review: Much of this book is stunning in its scope and originality. We are in the far distant future in the last days of the earth before the sun goes nova. The sun is so much hotter that all animal life has died and plants have taken over the earth making it an incredibly lush green jungle. All animal life has died but one species -- man -- and he is barely hanging on, literally in the branches of the great banyan tree that spans the continent. It's this view of man, not as lord of creation but as the last survivor of the animal kingdom that gives the book its power. That and the image of a green earth that is an incredibly dangerous place. It's a plant eat plant world. We follow the adventures of a boy as he discovers the world and we start to follow the adventures of some other humans that get accidentally taken to the moon by a mile long flying vegetable that is one of the stunningly creative ideas in the story. I gave the novel four stars instead of five because it is too short. With everything that happens you expect a grand ending and instead it feels rushed. The adventures on the moon are cut short and forgotten and the boy's adventures seem abruptly ended with a kind of conventional happy ending. Despite this one great flaw, this is a book well worth reading for it's sheer generosity of imagination. In it's own unique and crazy way, it's a classic.

Rating:
Summary: The 5* are for educational sci-fi value and reading-pleasure
Review: This book cannot be judged by today's sci-fi standards. Allthough it lacks the unrelenting agglutination to proved science ( which I'm all for ), it has other great adventages ; It's huge scope-as a child it really shown me for the first time that man's mind and curiosity know no bounds. The way man-in the story- is just another type of creature and nothing more , that has taught me humility.

THE PLOT : chronologicaly we're millions of years in the future. the earth is no longer revolving on it's axis , and show one side to the sun constantly.

A huge , single tree has taken over the whole lit side of earth , and all the life that exist live under it's shadow (if it's strong and wild enaugh to survive), or on and between the branches (if it's feeble like the 30cm green humans).

It's the story of Gant. A human that has glimpses of racial-memory through an intelligent fungus that has taken over him , and has it's own reasons to gain manouevrability and take Gant on a trek across the world and even to moon.

A book written in the old style of sci-fi , which I call "pre-campbellian".

Very , very recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Exactly what the name suggests
Review: This is one of those books to force the mind away from the everyday, the mundane, the what's-happening-today-in-Bongo Bongoland-and-what-are-we-doing-about-it that has our minds squeezed so tight we can't think further than the next daily broadcast of the world news and the next spoon-fed opinion from our favorite demigogue. The planet earth has a future that might, or mightn't include a fragile, two-legged creature who thinks he owns it all. In this book it includes him, but he doesn't own it.

The Long Afternoon of Earth is a lesson in perspective, in humility, in one of the many possible futures of mankind when all the wars have been fought and forgotten, when all the nations and political parties have had their sparks of glory and died. It's a world of no heroes, no cowards, no real signifance except the same one mankind faced in his deepest history: survival. There's a touch of wistfulness here, a touch of melancholy. But it's a good lever to pry your mind away from the mess your dog made on the livingroom floor, the mess your favorite politician made on the floor of your big ideas, the mess your nation made on the face of a planet that goes on and on, where human affairs and the centuries are an insignificant spark.

Read it.

Rating:
Summary: A "Hothouse" Earth of the very distant future.
Review: This noted novel was originally a series of science fiction short stories which appeared in 1960 and 1961 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (in fact, the series was awarded the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction short stories of the year). Certain critics have remarked that this is one of the best science fiction books to appear in the early 1960s. I have later learned that the American publisher made considerable editorial changes in the original novel; much later, Aldiss republished this work without those changes. Unfortunately, this is not that newer version. But, the book is required reading of any serious student of science fiction literature. The novel takes place on an Earth in the extremely distant future. This Earth has ceased to rotate about its axis; thus, one side faces the sun while the other side is constantly in the dark. Almost all animal life has disappeared, with just a few representatives left. Plant life has taken over the planet, much of it feeding on other plants or what remains of animal life. The land on the sunny side is covered by a giant banyan tree upon which other plants live and thrive. In this tree also live the remnants of humans, who are now one-fifth their original size and have no memory of what they once were. The "hero" of the story is a young male named Gant who, in his travels, is infected by a sentient fungus called a morel. This fungus is able to uncover man's racial memories and, in so doing, helps Gant to learn to think and analyze for himself. Also included in the story are the Traversers, enormous gas-bag vegetable spiders that have the ability to travel through space. They regularly travel between the Earth and the Moon, which now has a more hospitable environment. However, Aldiss has the moon in a stationary position about the Earth (an astronomical impossibility even in the distant future!). Also, if I recall correctly, he places the Moon in a Trojan orbit. If so, that would place the Moon millions of miles from Earth. The moon would only be a small dot in the sky (and might not even be seen from the sunny-side Earth).