Rating: 
Summary: Good Read for When There's Nothing Better to Read
Review: Richter 10 is, inmy opinion, a book to read when you're looking to pass the time. Summer vacation is one example. Prison is another. But whatever the circumstances may be, you will find that Richter 10 is nothing if not interesting.The author(s) of the book do many things right, while still managing to screw up the story. Surprisingly, it's about an earthquake. Several earthquakes, anyway. Crazy geologist Lewis Crane is hell-bent for revenge on earthquakes after one knocked off his parents in 1994. The book takes place in the early-mid 21st century, and we see several examples of advanced technology. Perhaps some of it is too advanced, but since we went from struggling to get a glider to hang in the air to putting men in space in about 50 years, maybe it is normal. Anyway, the characters and several parts of the story are not developed very well. We never really get to know the characters, so that when something good or bad happens, we couldn't care less. The characters aren't exactly good people, either. Crane has some good characteristics, but he is pretty much consumed by his power. His assistant, Dan Newcombe, goes from being a humble scientist to a megalomaniac in a few chapters. The book, though not being too long, drags on for quite a bit. There are ample oppurtunities to end the book, but the author(s) feel the need to keep it alive. Too much of a mediocre thing can be a bad thing. As another point of negativity, the ending sucks. I won't give it away, but, eh, it wasn't very good. In closing, I recommend this book to bored people who do not have anything else to do with their time. 50% of the population, in other words.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book!
Review: The story was very immersive, and though some have denounced it because of it's technical innacuracies, I believe the good story behind it more than compensates.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book..one that everyone should read!!!
Review: This book is great, the characters come alive and you feel their pain and their joy. The story I think is one that sweeps you up and is quite realistic(however it would be in the future). I like how Clarke has made some odd-ball comments (like the United States of America and Islam) but it makes you think and that's important.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: This book was amazing! The descriptions that Clarke and McQuay give the reader in this book are phenomenal, you really get to know the characters and what they go through during the course of the story. Many of the events that take place could very well happen and the authors let you know what it would be like during an EQ. But since this is science fiction they do have some far fetched ideas aboutabout a drug to control your emotions, or having a chip implanted in yoru head so you could interact with a computer. These things aside the storyline was great and I really recommend it to any fan of Arthur C. Clarke.
Rating:
Summary: Not one of Clarke's best
Review: This book was based on an 850 page outline by Arthur C. Clarke. He farmed it out to another writer becuase of his limited knowlege and experience on California. Well, Clarke should have had a few lunches with Cal-Tech seismologists . He would have learned all he needed to know about California seismology and did a much better job himself. While writer Mike McQuay does have some interesting ideas on future socio/economic/techological developments, his ignorance of California seismology damages the quality of this work.
Rating:
Summary: This is not an Arthur C Clarke book.
Review: This book was written by Mr. McQuay based on a 850 word outline by Mr. Clarke (as Mr. Clarke explains in the afterword). McQuay ought to be listed as the author and Mr. Clarke's name ought not appear as an author (he was not consulted during the writing and simply approved the final draft). The resulting book is wildly implausable and has some of the worst cyberpunk and racial cliches I have seen in a long time. America is "owned" by sinister orientals and the fanatical Nation of Islam plots racial war. The cliches and outright "cheese" actually make this book quite funny, saving it from a lower rating.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many false stops, but still enjoyable
Review: To clear up any confusion - Arthur C. Clarke wrote a plot synopsis that he wasn't interested in pursuing. Mike McQuay read the synopsis and fleshed it out into the novel Richter 10. The novel takes place in the near future. The story: a geologist named Lewis Crane is obsessed with stopping earthquakes by fusing the Earth's plates together. To this end, he starts a foundation to predict quakes and render assistance to victims. He comes into conflict with his own employees and a seperatist group called the Nation of Islam (NOI) led by an African American of great charisma. One of Crane's men leaves to join the NOI, setting up the main conflict for the remainder of the novel. There are some obvious parallels with real life - for example, the leader of the NOI is obviously based on Elijah Mohammed, while the defecting geologist is similar to (but less influential than) Malcolm X. The vision of the future is quite dystopic (and overtly racist) - the U.S. government is a puppet for multinational (Chinese) corporations. However, the novel is not a warning or historical analogy, but simply an adventure story with lots of buildings falling over and tsunamis sweeping people out to sea. On the whole, it is quite enjoyable. The action is well-written, the technology mostly believable, and the supporting characters well-developed. Unfortunately, the main characters are generally not likable (until, possibly, in the last 50 pages), so it's hard to develop any kind of sympathy for them. In addition, the central scientific tool the geologists use - a working scale model of the Earth - is extremely far fetched. The idea that an earthquake (or any major natural event) could be predicted by a 100-foot model, to an accuracy of a couple of minutes, stretches credulity to the breaking point. Finally, there are too many Big Moments in the book. There are at least 3 points where the story reached a logical conclusion, but then went on, basically starting over with a new theme. It makes the story seem very patchwork, (in the one particular chapter, 10 years pass!) Sure, it's supposed to be an epic, but it's too choppy. Having said all that, the book is still fun and keeps you interested.
Rating:
Summary: Too many false stops, but still enjoyable
Review: To clear up any confusion - Arthur C. Clarke wrote a plot synopsis that he wasn't interested in pursuing. Mike McQuay read the synopsis and fleshed it out into the novel Richter 10. The novel takes place in the near future. The story: a geologist named Lewis Crane is obsessed with stopping earthquakes by fusing the Earth's plates together. To this end, he starts a foundation to predict quakes and render assistance to victims. He comes into conflict with his own employees and a seperatist group called the Nation of Islam (NOI) led by an African American of great charisma. One of Crane's men leaves to join the NOI, setting up the main conflict for the remainder of the novel. There are some obvious parallels with real life - for example, the leader of the NOI is obviously based on Elijah Mohammed, while the defecting geologist is similar to (but less influential than) Malcolm X. The vision of the future is quite dystopic (and overtly racist) - the U.S. government is a puppet for multinational (Chinese) corporations. However, the novel is not a warning or historical analogy, but simply an adventure story with lots of buildings falling over and tsunamis sweeping people out to sea. On the whole, it is quite enjoyable. The action is well-written, the technology mostly believable, and the supporting characters well-developed. Unfortunately, the main characters are generally not likable (until, possibly, in the last 50 pages), so it's hard to develop any kind of sympathy for them. In addition, the central scientific tool the geologists use - a working scale model of the Earth - is extremely far fetched. The idea that an earthquake (or any major natural event) could be predicted by a 100-foot model, to an accuracy of a couple of minutes, stretches credulity to the breaking point. Finally, there are too many Big Moments in the book. There are at least 3 points where the story reached a logical conclusion, but then went on, basically starting over with a new theme. It makes the story seem very patchwork, (in the one particular chapter, 10 years pass!) Sure, it's supposed to be an epic, but it's too choppy. Having said all that, the book is still fun and keeps you interested.
Rating:
Summary: RICHTER 10, RATING 3
Review: When this book eventually gets into its stride it's a lot better than you might think to begin with. Sir Arthur took to outsourcing his narratives with the later volumes of the Rama series, and at first I thought this was going to be as bad as those were. I reread it in the aftershock of the tsunami disaster of 12/26/04, something I wouldn't otherwise have done.
Clarke's true genius in fiction is as a short-story writer, and it seems to me that the great Childhood's End was the only real full-length novel he had in him. Even it hardly runs to 200 pages. The City and the Stars is slightly longer, but it is a reworking of an earlier 'novella' and gets a bit too big for its boots; and such productions as The Fountains of Paradise and Rendezvous with Rama itself are stretched to the limits of what he is comfortable with. Subcontracting was one answer, and this story is based on an outline plot by Clarke (provided at the back) fleshed out to full standard novel length by Mike McQuay. The opening chapters are bloodsome - stilted dialogue, cardboard cutouts of characters and the event that triggered the environmental disaster which forms the basis of the plot given to one of the characters to 'tell', in a plonking and ludicrous way, to other characters who must have known all about it in the first place. Matters then improve as the scientific issues take centre stage. This was really Clarke's secret. He deserves no less an accolade than as one of the major educators of our age, bringing physics and astronomy to the masses. Even in his fiction he is always didactic, always explaining this or that scientific issue or correcting popular misapprehensions. Once the science takes control of the narrative, the characterisation here becomes less important, more like the routine way Clarke himself handles it. The basic scenarios may seem fantastic and contrived, but the story is about what they would be like in real life (and real death on a large scale) supposing they did happen. One would not assess Stapledon on some basis of 'realism' and I for one am not inclined to assess his admirer Clarke on any such basis either. There is a real vision behind it all, an imaginative world. The disasters here are small beer indeed by comparison with Stapledon, and of course Clarke starts from a sound scientific grasp, something Stapledon never pretended to, and pushes the envelope to a certain extreme. How extreme he is really being I wouldn't like to judge, and not just because of recent events. This planet is a dynamic and unquiet thing.
Even the political background, which seems to border on farcical in the opening chapters, begins to fit in a little more as the book proceeds and as McQuay begins to take some recognisable stance of his own regarding it. I have no idea whether earthquakes can really be predicted let alone stopped, but if that gave us the opportunity to do something useful with the nukes at long last there would be two major benefits not one. The Richter 10 event is scheduled to take place shortly before my own 119th birthday, so I am unlikely to be a victim of it. Even my children are likely to be too old to care by then, whether or not southern California is by that time as familiar a stamping-ground of theirs as it already is of mine. I must say the thought of earthquakes is always somewhere at the back of my mind during my visits to Los Angeles. How this book will affect my thinking on any future visit I don't know, but I now have some elementary do's and don'ts to bear in mind from an informed source, much good may they do me.
|
