The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Last Theorem
Book Review: A sad final work
Summary: 2 Stars
I grew up reading SF, and Arthur C Clarke was one I enjoyed regularly. From the late 1980's on, however, I became less enamored with his work. To be honest, I feel he did a better job with hard science and characters that would "fit" in the world he matured in (1940's-1960's). This book also reminded me of what a poor SF author I'd considered Pohl to be: most of this work is pure Pohl. Putting these two thoughts together, this work was plagued by characters I did not care about, and lacks any scientific "hook" that drives the novel forward. Finally, the sociopolitical frame work used by the authors as the environment in which the plastic characters operated was, for want of a better term, silly. I have lived in some of these island countries, and believe me, they could not pull this off.
Regarding science, I did learn that any form of space elevator would take weeks to get material and people up to geosynchronous orbit, but this was offset by the ridiculous expedient of moving Sri Lanka a few hundred kilometers south in order to make the space elevator possible in Clarke's adopted country.
Book Review: A sad way to remember Clarke for
Summary: 1 Stars
I picked up this book in great anticipation and I really, really wanted to like this story. I just (painfully) finished this book today, and words to describe my thoughts include "disappointment", "unsatisfactory", and "thoroughly bored". I hope people do not remember Clarke by this piece of work, and I really think this is a total embarrassment to his illustrious writing career.
PLOT: Basically, I grinded through the entire book expecting the author to make his point soon and tie the entire story together. It was a case when I really wanted to put the book down, but felt that the author has a trick up his sleeves on the next page. This never happened. Ideas were raised and not followed up on, which make you wonder why it was mentioned in the first place. It seems like a mix-match of many different ideas without any direction. Some of the plots cooked up by the author also seem ridiculous and quite childish. It's one of those that makes you cringe as you read through it.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: Superficial at best. Characters do not have a life and soul, and I never developed any emotional response to any one of them. Attempts at portraying real feelings make me feel like I'm reading the work of a 3rd grade student.
I'm never posted any reviews on amazon before, and I'm wondering why I felt the strong need to write something here. I think it's because I feel betrayed by Clarke.
Don't waste your time on this poorly written and conceived book.
Book Review: An inspiring end
Summary: 4 Stars
I got this book because it was the last one written by Arthur C. Clarke. It may not have been the most creative work, but it was good to see that Clarke had hope for the human race. There was more fiction than science here, but there were some interesting-if unoriginal-insights.Book Review: Clarke's Last Book
Summary: 2 Stars
This was Arthur C. Clarke's last book, written in collaboration with Fred Pohl (Clarke died in 2008). The authors are, as everyone knows, two Immortals of science fiction. Unfortunately, their collaboration produced little more than an outline of a novel that never really came together.
In Clarke's future history, some Alien Invaders decide to wipe us all out, but back off when we finally shape up Just In The Nick Of Time (have you seen this plot before?)
Meanwhile, Pohl gives us the story of a hero who discovers a remarkable proof of Fermat's Theorem, which has nothing at all to do with Clarke's plot!
Neither author's contribution stands well on its own, and the resulting book is even less than the sum of its parts. Unless you are obsessively collecting the complete works of Clarke and Pohl, I'd skip right past this one, and go instead to Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pohl's Heechee series, or any other of the great books from SciFi's Golden Age by these two masters.
Book Review: Clarke's Worlds, Revisited
Summary: 2 Stars
I wish I could say that this last book by one of the greats of the field is a masterpiece, but unfortunately it's not. Instead, this book covers many of the same ideas that Clarke has worked with before: space elevators, solar sailing, omnipotent aliens, AI and computerized immortality, achievement of world peace, and set mainly in Clarke's beloved adopted homeland of Sri Lanka. There is little that is new here.
Like most of the late period Clarke books, this one has a co-author, in this case a writer who has been around almost as long as Clarke, and his influence shows in this book, I think, in deeper, more fleshed-out characterization than most of Clarke's works have, which is a definite positive. There have been few depictions of real mathematicians in sf, and the portrait painted here of a man fascinated (some would say obsessed, a trait common to those bitten by this particular mathematical bug) by Fermat's Last Theorem is well done. Those in the immediate vicinity of this protagonist are also drawn with more than light pencil sketches, as we see his family, school friends, instructors, and eventually his wife both form part of what he is and sharply influence what he does with his life. As part of this depiction, there are descriptions of certain fairly simple mathematical puzzles and games from pentominoes to the combinatorial numbers relationship with the binary number base, things most people who are interested in math at all will have at least heard of, and these provide some concrete and understandable looks at the world of number theory.
However, the alien angle is very poorly done. Not only are these beings (multiple races) inadequately described in terms of their motivations, biology, and culture (I could never visualize them as real beings), the sections of the book that detail their actions is written in almost self-mocking language at sharp variance with the tone of the rest of the book. This is not too much of problem for the about the first three-quarters of the book, as this material is limited to a few paragraphs here and there, and doesn't interrupt the main story flow, but near the end when the alien's actions become a major portion of the plot, it seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the story. Worse, the alien actions provide a far too easy `out' from the problem of achieving world peace without devolving into a police state or a dictatorship that had been so nicely set up earlier.
There is an entire subplot dealing with the protagonist's son who shows up with a certain type of brain disability that looked like it should go somewhere significant, but there was nothing ever really made of it.
The ending of this book feels very rushed and compressed, with many events glossed over or only hinted at. I think if this section had been written at the same detail level as the rest of the book, it would have made for a far stronger work.
Overall, this book provides a nice return to the ideas and themes that made Clarke famous, with more real characters than is typical for him, but its faults eventually overcame its good qualities, leaving me quite disappointed.
Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)