The Star – Arthur C. Clarke
OK, as promised, I’ll now be finishing off the Arthur C Clarke book reviews. To anyone who is new to this blog, these reviews are just my thoughts on the books that I’ve read since coming to Kazakhstan…
The list is kept at allconsuming, and currently looks like this…
Hmm, think I’d better use the more tag on this post, else the front page will be a little too long.
Anyway, back to the book. This one was very short, and is apprently a re-hash of an even earlier work by Clarke. The basic idea is that a spaceship is on a journey to explore a lost civilisation on a planet far, far away. Religion again plays a role in the story, with a priest (Catholic? Jezuit? its been a while since I read this, apologies, will go over all book reviews with the actual books in my hand once I’ve caught up to my current book).
Anyway, the planet lost all its inhabitants when their sun blew up, which the priest calculates to have happened around the time of the birth of Jesus!
Yep, this planets exploding sun was in fact the shining star that guided the 3 kings on their journey to visit JC.
The story goes a little deeper than that, but given its shortness, if I reveal much more, there’ll be little point in reading the book itself.
Although definitely still a Sci-Fi book, if you have any interest in Religion, and what effect inter-stellar travel may have on devout people in the future, you’ll find this a short good read.