The Crucible of Time

Very compelling read. I like the basic theme of the inevitable march of scientific progress, the struggle of visionaries against circumstance and ignorant people. It's a good story, a race doomed to extinction by the bad luck of their planet being in the path of meteors. The repetition of events through different generations got a bit much, I think the book could have been 20% shorter without losing anything. But as a nice allegory to humans sticking their head in their sand about environmental disaster, it's good.

One side theme I really liked; the idea that the people in the book have periods of mass insanity. Brought on by famine, or deliberate fasting, or occasionally the pheromones of other insane people. A more explicit cause for a society acting insanely, I like that it was such a binary off/on thing. If only humanity were so simple.