New Earth

New Earth by Ben Bova
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[Audio Version]
Imagine a future where climate change is threatening the human population. Imagine the good fortune of finding an earth-like planet waiting to be explored and possibly colonized. Unfortunately, it will take your team 80 years to get there, 8 years before earth receives their first transmissions and another 80 before they get home. So far, so good. Except, I guess things are so bad on earth that it’s unthinkable to send their best. So somehow they manage to put together a team consisting of the dumbest experts imaginable.

Had I been reading this book either in a traditional format or on a Kindle I think I might have put it down and continued on to something else after a chapter or two. It’s possible that because an actor was reading to me, and I was stuck in traffic anyway, that I was a little more patient in allowing this story to play out than was warranted.

So, without going into spoilers, how can I be so down on the book and yet listen through to the end? I can’t say. It may be that this book was the sci-fi novel equivalent of an episode of Gilligan’s Island. You know what happens in the end. You know that the castaways will do something petty and stupid to bring about that end. Yet, because you like some of the actors you stick around and watch the inevitable take excruciatingly long to happen.

I’ve not read Ben Bova before. It’s my understanding that he is a well-respected author and that this may not represent his best work. Oh well, while I’m not about to rush out looking for another Bova novel to read, I won’t let this one stop me from picking up another should it appear that it might interest me.


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