Arthur C. Clarke first published The Songs of Distant Earth in 1986. It was based on a 1956 short story of the same title, and Clark had supposedly stated that it was his favorite of all his novels. I remember reading it decades ago, probably right around when it was published, but I had forgotten all about it.

It plays in a world about 2000 years in the future where Earth and the entire solar system was destroyed when the sun went nova. Humanity had almost a millennium notice of the event occurring, but as is usual with humanity, it does not always act rationally when obvious doom looms. We have seen this with what Al Gore called global warming in the last century.

The story plays on the planet Thalassa, a human outpost started by a seed ship, a robotic vessel that carried frozen human embryos and the technology and automation necessary to establish a colony on an alien planet. Thalassa is a water world with just an archipelago of three islands, similar to Hawai’i on Earth, and with no other continents. Humans have lived there in a relative paradise and stability for centuries.

When a starship arrives with millions of refugees from Earth, the balance of culture and society on Thalassa may be upset.

Clarke explores the logistics of a world where travel at relativistic speeds between stars is possible. In such a world, ships may arrive at any given populated planet only every few hundred years and the event would be marked with historical significance. The story also illustrates the cultural implications of inter-planet communications when a starship leaves one planet, scheduled to arrive at another three-hundred years later. All friends, lovers and children left behind would be centuries dead by the time the travelers arrive at their destination and are able to ship messages back.