Rating: 
Summary: No Clarke to lift you in orbit
Review: Fan of A.C.C., I was expecting some great hard-SF depiction of the future. I've found instead an improbable world, dominated by the Chinese and the Islamists (the authors got rid of the Europeans in Israel's nuclear suicide to keep the story at a conveniently simple level). Clarke has never been at ease in describing politics or economics. He prefers simple, idealistic rich universes to fund his original but costly technological ideas. In Richter 10, this unease is evident when you see how flawed the money-raising process is. Arguing that predicting earthquakes will save money is naive to an unbelieve stage. Let's say San Francisco will be destroyed in six months. How can you prevent a huge economical catastrophe (the human costs set aside)? By moving the city somewhere else?Imagine the impact on real estate insurance, should short-term earthquake prediction be possible. They would never accept to insure buildings destined to be surely destroyed soon by shifting plates, because they are protecting the benefactors against probabilities, not certitude of property destruction. What would be the impact of earthquake prediction on mortgages? On banking loans to industries potentially threatened? Landowners and proprietors would suffer a critical loss of wealth because the demand for real estate would plummet down. The incertitude and speculation is the key to the capitalistic system, especially the ultra-liberal one described in the book, which misses the huge social, economic and political consequences of earthquake prediction. But even in the worst situation, there is still enough funding to keep up the costly hero's work. The most original fund raise in the story is a bet on the precise day of the earthquake. The hero just borrowed several billions of dollars to a friend to cover the bet. He won and the friend, very happy, put him on his last will and conveniently died when the official funding dried out. The hero is obsessed by earthquake. Guess what? He lost his parents and the full us! e of an arm in one of them during his childhood. Since that time, his old wound is ticking when an earthquake will occur. I would have saved lots of tax-payer money by putting the guy in a plane and flying him day and night over tectonic faults as human earthquake detector. The hero's scheme includes the total and definitive suppression of earthquakes by welding the tectonic plates together. How? By exploding old, useless H-Bombs so deep the radioactivity would be "trapped forever". Read the description of the bombs themselves and try to match it with Tom Clancy's explanation in "The Sum of All Fears". If someone understood how the Richter 10 H-bombs are working, please send me a e-mail with the schematics. But that is not the issue. Since the convection currents of the magma would not be affected by the welding process which is superficial, and the friction between the lava and the crust is not null, could someone explain me how the energy would be dissipated? I'm not geologist, but I figure that new plates and fracture zones would appear, generating even more violent earthquakes. Huge volcanoes would break through the crust, sending additional billions of tons of cinder and gases to the atmosphere. So we have the choice between super-greenhouse effect accompanied with sea-level raise or forever nuclear-winter depending on the properties of the gases expelled. Don't expect to find a single discussion about this in the book, the characters are only concerned by the philosophical issues of spot-welding tectonic plates. It would be against Allah's will. I was also amazed to read that twenty-first top-notch technology is relying on physical simulation and display 3-D devices (the revolving "Globe") instead of using pure computer-generated, less costly models. Why not use an hologram or a giant screen? At least it would have saved some pages of confusing and unecessary desciptions. The end of the book is relying somewhat (in a way that is totally foreign to my undestan! ding) on an utopic colony on the hidden side of the moon (to not being confronted to the earth legacy). The authors are lacking so much conviction it appears like an unecessary add-on. I don't see how A.C.C. could have put some on himselt in that story. That's my main critic! Printing Clarke's name in big, bold letters with a little Mike McQuay under it was dishonest of the editor because it attracted the wrong public! I was hoping for a Clarke novel, full of great, plausible schemes for the entire human race. I've found a uncoherent depiction of a grim, uncoherent future supporting what is a good suspense story. This book is not bad, anyway. It is simply not adressed to the right public. I would propose it as a good alternative to "Armageddon" or "Deep Impact" like lectures on the beach, while setting all scientific, economic and politic accuracy aside. For the fans of real SF catastrophic novels, refer to Niven's "Lucifer's hammer" or Bear's "Forge of God".
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting...
Review: I actually give this book 3.5 stars, as I don't think it quite deserves four, but it doesn't deserve three either, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.
As well as being scientifically interesting (if not completely realistic- but since when has science fiction been completely realistic), this book was also futuristically interesting. In my opinion, I found that some of the social predictions were quite reasonable.
The plot wasn't brilliant- it was quite predictable in many areas- but I found that the setting and vision of this particular future made up for the story's shortcomings. The book ended in a very over-done way (if you read it you'll know what I mean) but not so over-done to ruin the rest of the book. On the whole, this book was quite good and quite satisfying to read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Story!
Review: I don't know what the reviewers who gave this bad reviews were reading, but this is a well constructed, well written novel. I believe that some of the reviewers were simply reacting to the genre not the story. Maybe, they were forced to read the book for an assignment. This was best Clarke collaboration, I've read to date. It is a shame that there will be no further works coming from the pen of Mike McQuay. Make your own decision. It seems as if the reviews fall to two extremes. The readers have either loved or hated the book. I loved it. I would recommed it to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Why are some of you reading Si-Fi???
Review: I have read A.C.C. novel and must agree that it is mediocre. However I don't understand why some of you are reading si-fi. To say that the idea of predicting earthquakes is "implausible" is ridiculous regarding si-fi. Traveling to other galaxies is not possible, and I have yet to see a dinosaur at the local zoo. Yet we still read and watch movies about it. Coming up with new ideas and thories about our world is the whole point of science fiction, so come on get over it!
Rating: 
Summary: Abolutely one of the worst ever
Review: I only wish there were a negative symbol on the rating scale for this book. It strays from infantile political ravings (the world turns Islamic and the deep South becomes an Islamic state), psuedo-futuristic events that seem totally implausible and absolutely outlandish and unbelievable characters. Once again, the authors are at their worst when at their most intimate. Characters (who are they?) seem to appear, disappear without any rhyme or reason and the political events are so unreal as to be laughable. American keeping all minorities in ghetto by law by 2005? In 2030, white American will be 30% of the population? Chinese will take over and we will know and accept it calmly voting for "Yo-Yu" (I kid you not) or Li Chiang corporation/ticket. It seems even the authors were embarassed and tried to retrack some of their earlier statements towards the end. This is the worst piece of trash I have ever read
Rating:
Summary: Scientifically intriguing
Review: I read this book looking for escapism sci-fi, and instead found a book grounded in science FACT and having a great plot to boot. I consulted with several geoscientists and seismic experts, and they consider the book to be useful in teaching seismic theory, even though the actual prediction concepts may not be provable. Overall, and excellent read - I would like to find more books as good as this.
Rating:
Summary: cool plausible future stuff
Review: I read this over a year ago, and have thought many times about little things from the book, like www on everyone's wrist, and the daily effects of possible nuclear events. An enjoyable storyline worked around an imaginative view of plate tectonics, cool tools (the globe), and many interesting future possible details.
Rating: 
Summary: hated it
Review: I was encouraged by the source (author) of the book but was very unhappy with the result. It terrorized the reader and dragged him through trials and tragedy throughout the book. Not in the slightest bit uplifting, in fact frequently angering. I'm afraid I would not recomend this book to anyone and in fact would discourage it.
Rating:
Summary: Completely trivial
Review: It seemed like a chore to finish this book. I cared about none of the characters or the situations they were in (the racial stereotypes were especially bothersome), and the earthquakes themselves (and the damage they created) were pretty ridiculous. Sorry folks, one earthquake will not send an entire state into the ocean. And being able to predict exactly how a building will collapse, and exactly what damage will happen where (let alone being able to predict earthquakes to that degree of accuracy) is impossible not only currently, but probably forever. Save your money!
Rating:
Summary: This book is a dog
Review: Perhaps the worst book on earthquakes ever written. The plot is weak, the writing horrible, and the premise implausible. Clarke developed some incredible phobia around earthquakes, then turned the phobia over to McQuay for a book. The result is not pretty.
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