What the fuck was Clarke’s deal with this? It had a great premise and setup. The technology use is fantastic. And then there is the cuckolding subplot, the casual references to incest and possibly pedophilia, a whole bunch of homoerotic bullshit, and everyone is a fedora-tipping atheist. The society from both human groups is dystopian although I’m sure he didn’t intend it to be. And then it ends with
>Oh yeah, the planet might have intelligent life already, see ya!
None of his other works are so fucked up. What happened?