The City and the Stars
Temporally and thematically epic. One one level it's about a 'young' man, Alvin, discovering a way to transit from his centrally programmed hyper-technoligized city, Diaspar, to an ancient Athenian-style city-state known as Lys. Along the way Alvin and his Lysian friend Hilvar discover a massive crater with an ebony-like surface that plays host to a robot that's billions of years old, and holds the key to an age where Earth still had its oceans.
It's a metaphorical SF novel about civilizational death. Obelisks included because it's Clarke. It's nicely paced. Sub-250 pages (at least the 1980s Gollanczs PB edition I read was). The planetary exploration in the latter half, an animal called the Polyp, and Diaspar's design made for really interesting reading.
Temporally and thematically epic. One one level it's about a 'young' man, Alvin, discovering a way to transit from his centrally programmed hyper-technoligized city, Diaspar, to an ancient Athenian-style city-state known as Lys. Along the way Alvin and his Lysian friend Hilvar discover a massive crater with an ebony-like surface that plays host to a robot that's billions of years old, and holds the key to an age where Earth still had its oceans.
It's a metaphorical SF novel about civilizational death. Obelisks included because it's Clarke. It's nicely paced. Sub-250 pages (at least the 1980s Gollanczs PB edition I read was). The planetary exploration in the latter half, an animal called the Polyp, and Diaspar's design made for really interesting reading.