Richter 10 - Hardcover

Mike McQuay; Arthur C. Clarke

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553097083 ISBN 13: 9780553097085

Publisher: Bantam Books, 1996

Synopsis

The only surviving member of his family after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, young Lewis Crane devotes his life to seismology and is terrified when he predicts "the big one." 40,000 first printing. $40,000 ad/promo.

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Reviews

Two formidable SF talents converge splendidly in this disaster thriller, which offers sleek action-adventure writing, world-class tumult and a coherent near-future based on sound yet innovative social and scientific speculation. Thirty years ago, as a child, Lewis Crane was scarred physically and mentally by the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994. Now he spends his days tracking earthquakes to minimize their damage. He also harbors a secret hope that he can, through a daring plan to fuse the earth's plates by exploding nuclear devices along their fault lines, stop the earthquake menace forever. Lewis is aided and stymied in these actions?and in his attempts to warn of the monster quake implied in the book's title?by a gallery of realistic characters and well-developed political factions, including the suppressed but still potent Nation of Islam, a powerful women's bloc and the Chinese business interests that now really run America. The plot permutations are as rich as the premise and settings, involving maturing characters, shifting allegiances, betrayals, open conflict and hidden agendas. Clarke's trademark technological mysticism and McQuay's tight plotting (as evidenced in his SF detective novels) make for a moving, convincing and engrossing yarn.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Collaboration between the veteran Clarke (The Hammer of God, 1993, etc.) and the late McQuay (Puppetmaster, 1991, etc.) about near-future earthquakes, politics, and environmental disaster. By the 2030s, the Nation of Islam (NOI) is orchestrating a civil war in California (and demanding an independent state of its own); China is the dominant world power; and the global ecology nears collapse because the ozone layer has vanished, while southern Europe and the Middle East have been wiped out by Israel's nuclear self-immolation. Lewis Crane survived the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994 but lost his parents--and now he's the foremost authority on earth tremors. His obsession is to be able to predict earthquakes precisely; on an altogether nuttier plane, he dreams of preventing earthquakes by welding the Earth's crustal plates together with nuclear bombs! Armed with the computer simulation he needs to complete his research, Crane predicts a giant earthquake in Middle America and accepts the backing of Li Cheun, the Chinese businessman who runs the US. But Li betrays Crane for political gain, while the earthquake fails to materialize on time (though it does happen). Later, the NOI attacks Crane's mountain headquarters, killing his wife. So Crane turns his attentions elsewhere, buying real estate on the Moon and starting a colony secure from Earth's imminent breakdown. Long-windedly un-Clarke-like but engagingly peopled, and, while improbable, never dull. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Clarke's latest novel, a collaboration with the late Mike McQuay, capitalizes on the growing demand for grand-scale sf disaster novels. Lewis Crane is a brilliant seismologist whose obsession with perfecting a method of accurately predicting earthquakes is driven by the loss of his family in the disastrous L.A. earthquake of 1994. While currying favor with preeminent politicians to get funding for his quake-prediction foundation and for his scheme to eventually eliminate quakes altogether by fusing the earth's tectonic plates, Crane forecasts a major shakedown for the Mississippi Valley that doesn't happen as scheduled. Now branded a charlatan, and realizing he made a key mistake in his previous calculations, Crane must reconvince a skeptical public that, in mere months, his prognostication will yet prove true and that the quake that verifies it will be of uniquely devastating magnitude. Clarke and McQuay provide a fascinating peek into the science of seismic geology as well as plenty of rumbles in the action department. A taut, well-written thriller that should satisfy both Clarke's fans and the many devotees of disaster novels. Carl Hays

Sf guru Clarke (The Hammer of God, LJ 5/15/93) teams up with McQuay (State of Siege, Bantam, 1994) in this novel about a young seismologist in California who pinpoints the location and date of The Big One.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553097083
• ISBN 13: 9780553097085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 373