Cradle

by
Arthur C. Clarke

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Cradle

by Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee

3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 · rating details · 1,764 ratings · 47 reviews

Cradle is a 1988 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. The major premise of Cradle is contact between a few humans from the Miami area in 1994 and the super robots of a damaged space ship submerged off the Florida coast. Telecommunication advances such as videotelephones and highly efficient underwater scanning equipment used in the story bridge from th...more

Hardcover, 0 pages

Published July 4th 1990 by Random House Value Publishing (first published 1988)

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Mar 12, 2013 Brett Jobling rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Even 25 years after it was first released, this is a turd that is still steaming. It took me four months to read this drivel (i read about 6 other decent novels in that time). I've read Arthur C Clarke before and i'm a fan - but this atrocity was completely bereft of the vision/prophecy and fascinating SCIENCE that he brings to Sci Fi. So i can only blame Gentry Lee who is credited as 'co-authoring'. Surely ACC only leant his name to boost sales? The plot is inane, the characters ridiculous, the...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Joe rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a scifi novel from an author that I normally love. Unfortunately, this book was disappointing. The main plot, involving contact with aliens, was passable but boring. The side plots were ridiculous and unnecessary: adult video games, swinger treasure hunters, and so on. The characters were either two-dimensional or cartoonish. Also, the book seemed to serve as a vehicle for heavy-handed social commentary.

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Jul 03, 2011 Stephen Gallup rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Considering his fame and the number of books he authored, it's surprising that I've had little exposure to Clarke. Like everybody in my generation I saw the film version of 2001 numerous times, and there was another novel of his (the title of which I cannot recall) that was in three parts. The first two parts fascinated me but the last was an utter let-down, seemingly written by someone else.

Anyway, I decided it was time to sample his writing again. Unfortunately, I should've chosen something ot...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Chris Hawks rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

http://www.saltmanz.com/blog/2006/11/...

Yesterday (11/02/06) during lunch, I finished my most recent book: Cradle, by Arthur C. Clarke and Genry Lee.

This is same team that wrote the last 3/4 of the Rama series (following Clarke's standalone classic, Rendevous With Rama). Those were good books. Cradle, which was written a couple of years before the Rama sequels, is not.

Not that it's a terribly bad book. I was entertained for almost all of the 408 pages. But I'd never read it again. The book is ba...more http://www.saltmanz.com/blog/2006/11/...

Yesterday (11/02/06) during lunch, I finished my most recent book: Cradle, by Arthur C. Clarke and Genry Lee.

This is same team that wrote the last 3/4 of the Rama series (following Clarke's standalone classic, Rendevous With Rama). Those were good books. Cradle, which was written a couple of years before the Rama sequels, is not.

Not that it's a terribly bad book. I was entertained for almost all of the 408 pages. But I'd never read it again. The book is basically a character study on the 3 protagonists, with the odd chapter of sci-fi alien stuff thrown in every hundred pages or so. Contrary to most reviews I've read, I actually found the characters engaging, and the sci-fi bits to be clunky and confusing. What little plot there is involves Carol (a reporter) hunting down a lost Navy missile somewhere off the Florida Keys. To do this, she charters a boat run by Nick and Troy. They go diving and find something odd, butt heads with some rival treasure hunters, and try to avoid the Navy. It's not as exciting as it sounds.

Every main character has had one emotionally-traumatic experience in their past, and the authors take a chapter or two out of the story to replay this. Most maddening is the Navy Commander: his personal life and problems are dwelt on perhaps more so than any of the protagonists, and yet he has almost zero impact on the story. At first, the dialogue felt forced an unnatural, but either it got better, or I just grew accustomed to it.

The aliens' side of the story is told in 3 or so single-chapter chunks, spaced out regularly throughout the book. But they're confusing, written in terms that manage to sound advanced yet wholly generic at the same time, and go on far too long for the scant information they provide. Eventually, near the end of the book, there's interaction between the aliens and the main characters, but you can already tell that there's not enough book left for anything to really happen. And it doesn't. The book even manages to end abruptly, after dragging on and on, plot-wise. No resolution or denouement; just the climax, and then "The End". Heck, my copy ends on the back of the last page, which means I hit the last sentence in the book, and then: back cover. Rather jarring, to tell the truth.

Like I mentioned earlier, though, the characters were decent. Even if they were annoying or artificial-feeling to begin with, I got wrapped up in their adventures and cared about what happened to them, even if their stories didn't actually go anywhere.

I won't likely ever read this again, and I can't in good conscience recommend it. I'll give it 1.5 out of 5 stars.(less)

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Nov 19, 2010 Felix Dance rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was totally unbelievable. I don't know what it is with Clarke in the 80s, but he just went psycho with his characters during this period (hard not to blame Lee really - alouthgh they were good in the Rama series). The first two thirds of this overlong novel goes into meaningless detail about the backgrounds of the various characters involved, and they're so formulaic - their personalities are derived from formulae whose only input are 'moving' emotional scenes from their past. It's as...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Ed rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was expecting more, having read the 2001 series, so was very disappointed. Not a very well-written book, reads more like an author's first book than one from an experienced team. The plot was very contrived with convenient coincidences moving the plot along. There was a surprising amount of sexual suggestions in the book, this was completely unnecessary and slowed the book down. There were a number of details and plot lines in the book that were unnecessary, serving only to slow down the pace...more

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Jul 02, 2011 Eric rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-novel

Easily one of the worst books I've read in years. Maybe if I read this when it first came out in 1989 and I was 13, I would have found the gratuitous sex scenes titillating. As it was, I found them distracting from what little "plot" there was. The entire book was laced with racism and misogyny. Sure one of the main characters is a woman and one is black, but the authors can't seem to go 5 pages without waving a little flag saying "Hey, we have a main character who is a woman, and one who is bla...more

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Jul 17, 2009 Jake rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, arthur-c-clarke

Cradle is a first and unsatisfying collaboration by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. It is an uninspiring treatment of a well-worn Sci-fi topic: first contact via an underwater oceanic alien hideout. Cradle also introduces readers to the rougher, more promiscuous writing style of Gentry Lee. Clarke has plenty of sexuality in his novels, but he usually spares readers the juicy details.

I would have enjoyed this novel more if Clarke and Lee had taken the story completely to the ocean. The too-brie...more

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Jun 10, 2011 Scythan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Nothing much interesting happened in this book. I liked the premise: an alien civilization is preparing to drop a "seed" of some sort on Earth, using the planet as a preserve for certain species, one of which is a superior strain of Human. However, this book reads more like a biography, with every major character thinking a whole lot about their past without it impacting the story line much, if at all. I was bored, and would have stopped reading if it weren't for the fact that I was waiting for...more

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May 23, 2012 Mario rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction, fiction, thriller

Not even mediocre at best. It's a book written by two people, and it shows. The bulk of the book is a boring, typical Crichton-like thriller/adventure story. Woven between -- sometimes in nearly incomprehensible separate chapters, sometimes as jarring asides -- is the actual sci-fi content. Unfortunately, the earth-based sci-fi was written for the future of twenty years ago and it has not aged particularly well, but it may have been better contemporaneously. The alien-based sci-fi is overly deta...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was incredibly frustrating to read. There's a decent sci-fi story hiding in there, screaming, trying to get out and be read in all its full glory, and the author is just refusing to let it see the light of day. I don't know much about this Gentry Lee guy, but I've read enough Arthur C. Clarke to recognize the parts that he must have come up with, and they're stifled in this plain brown wrapper of a redemption story.

It's not that I don't like a redemption story. They can be well-written...more This book was incredibly frustrating to read. There's a decent sci-fi story hiding in there, screaming, trying to get out and be read in all its full glory, and the author is just refusing to let it see the light of day. I don't know much about this Gentry Lee guy, but I've read enough Arthur C. Clarke to recognize the parts that he must have come up with, and they're stifled in this plain brown wrapper of a redemption story.

It's not that I don't like a redemption story. They can be well-written and interesting if such things are the author's strength and if the story calls for it. In the case of Cradle, however, neither is the case. The most interesting part of this book were the 75 or so pages of classic Clarke sci-fi; that was the strength of this story. Unfortunately, the book tries to push the real-world human half of itself on you and fails pretty miserably. Like trying to rice out a Corrolla, Clarke (and Lee) is just trying to push this story to be something it's not and in the process burying what it wants to be.

First mistake: Fully half of this book is told in flashback. Now flashback has its place, like that episode of Family Guy I saw ... (insert Family Guy flashback) ... but to rely so heavily on it just wreaks of unpolished writing. It's as though the first 250 pages of the book were one giant info dump; an incessant, distracting exposition for our unlovable characters who add little to what ought to be the main focus.

Second mistake: Our two main characters are completely unlikable. They both sound like Clarke writing himself doing an impression of two caricatures he's created, and poorly. The supporting cast has its moments but at the end of the day, the characters and their backstories are completely stock. Any show of the week on Fox might feature these people.

For most of the book I felt like it was going out of its way - waaay out of its way - to be adult-oriented. It's almost like it's jumping up and down yelling "haha, swear words and boobies, look I'm for grown-ups!" And there is a place for that, but again, not when it distracts from the real interest of the story.

Lastly, the ending is wholly unsatisfying. I know Clarke and Lee were using the sci-fi aspect as a framework for the characters' personal stories, but if you do that then you *have* to resolve the sci-fi elements and you *have* to show some resolution on those personal stories. The book needed to be literally a chapter or two longer and it would have been fine, but instead the credits roll as soon as the Death Star explodes.

So why 3 stars if I have such scathing comments? Well, the fact is that despite all the above complaints, there are about 75-100 pages of classic Clarke-style really fascinating science fiction awesome in there, and those pages fly by when they aren't being sidetracked by the pesky "real world" events. The kind of stuff that makes you consider the infinite possibilities of being and proposes a fun concept for what might happen if a greater intelligence were to come to Earth is precisely what Clarke excels at; so much so, in fact, that the little bit of it that's in here is enough to redeem this novel's other literary sins, at least enough to make it worth a read if you don't have anything else on your shelf.(less)

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Oct 05, 2010 Lee rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I always assumed that Shaun Hutson's Slugs would be the worst book I ever read. People being chased and caught by ferocious, man-eating slugs was sufficient to break my usually robust suspension of disbelief.

However, Cradle was bad in a whole different way. I don't mind character development in science fiction, but the clumsy attempts at it in this novel are just embarrassing to read. A typical chapter could be paraphrased by:

Steve turned away from the courgette-shaped alien. Suddenly he was fif

...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Dave rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's not so much a SciFi novel as it is a novel that strays into a few SciFi elements. The various subplots never quite connected how I hoped, and it's hard to say if there were a lot of red herrings or just a lot of loose ends. One fun bit is this 1988 book's prediction(s) as to the technology of 1993, which are both quaint and respectable 10 years later.

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Aug 22, 2010 Aphd rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

I was interested in this book by the premise on the book and the involvement of Arthur C. Clarke. Unfortunately, the story never really developed, the character back-stories or sub-plots were largely irrelevant, and the overall execution (including the writing itself) was just plain poor.

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Apr 12, 2011 Andreas rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Giant ancient starship at the bottom of the ocean. Mystery. It’s been done to death, and this one doesn’t really stand out. It is decently written and plotted but nothing special.

http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=583

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Jan 30, 2009 Jeff rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was disappointed in this book. I suspect that it was written primarily by Gentry Lee with ACC contributing ideas. Insufferable, unlikeable charachters abound. Not enough good sci-fi. One of my least favorites.

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Feb 28, 2013 Ronald Vasicek rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I disliked this book. The whole thing about the sex problems of the commander were not needed and in poor taste. Did nothing for the book. I felt the book was generally not well done, disjointed, poorly written.

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Nov 28, 2011 Devon rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fiction

Is this even science fiction? The aliens aren't necessary...swap them out for some ordinary motivating force and the story would be largely unaffected. And when Clarke focuses on the "sci-fi" part of his story, he bores me with unimportant minutia about the design of the alien ship.

I can't believe I read the whole thing. Run away!

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Jan 12, 2013 Clayton Bigsby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Too light on the sci-fi and really lost steam towards the end. Pity since it started out really well and held my interest to the last 50 pages or so.

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May 08, 2010 Dave rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Cradle was okay. I liked the human segments with the Earth setting. Overall, it was rather pedestrian.

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Jun 05, 2013 Beau rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

80's sci-fi! I couldn't help but imagine Roy Scheider in this book.

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Mar 06, 2009 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm a big fan of Arthur C. Clarke's work. This book, however, just seemed to take much longer to develop than I am used to with his writings. At the beginning there are what seems to be 6 different story lines all running in parallel and not having anything to do with each other. So, really it was like have 6 slow stories at the beginning. Once the story lines started progressing and they started interacting with each other, the book really picked up and was very enjoyable...but it's just that b...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Andy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First half of book, snore. Second half was entertaining.

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Dec 10, 2010 Sandyboy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern, fiction

contains the worst sex scene ever written

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Mar 26, 2010 Drew added it · review of another edition

Cradle by Gentry Lee (1989)

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Oct 18, 2009 Aparna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, fantacy

LOVED it... a good racy book.

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Sep 19, 2012 Vangelis Kritikos rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Come on...

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Jun 15, 2009 Jtoo added it · review of another edition

in Finnish, 2 kierros?

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Mar 31, 2008 Fred D rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Interesting book about a first encounter with an alien race, taking place in the near future. I enjoyed Clark's description of human technology meant to depict how technology will be 10 or 20 years out. I think he was reasonably accurate. One problem for me with this book was that there was way too much extraneous character development that had nothing to do with the plot. I kept asking, "where is he going with this? What does this have to do with anything?".

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Nov 26, 2012 Ramoths Own rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was very disappointed in this book. I never
thought that I would come across anything written by
Clark that I wouldn't at least like.
I found the characters unlikable and the story was something
that I found dated, and that it didn't stand up.

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About Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke was one of the most important and influential figures in 20th century science fiction. He spent the first half of his life in England, where he served in World War Two as a radar operator, before emigrating to Ceylon in 1956. He is best known for the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-created with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke was a graduate of King's Co...more

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2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)

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