num_pages: 187
description: In 2020, an international space team, exploring Sigma Draconis, 19 light years from earth, discovers the remains of a highly advanced society that has left behind as its most spectacular artifact the largest telescope imaginable, carved &amp; polished from a natural moon crater. Successive space crews determine that the native culture evolved &amp; disappeared mysteriously after a mere 3000 years of existence. It's now 2028. Another mission reaches the planet with just one goal--to discover why the civilization disappeared--&amp; with just one hope--that this knowledge will prevent the same thing from happening on earth. Exhibiting that rare sense of sf mystery that distinguished Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, John Brunner weaves a haunting tale of how 30 people attack the nearly insuperable task of unriddling the mysteries of a long-buried culture. Was it a fatal virus, an internecine war, a religion of lunatic brutality or a deleterious mutation that destroyed an entire civilization? All remains hypothesis until Ian Macauley unravels the riddle. But does it provide a solution to human problems &amp; will the answer reach earth in time?
language: English
title: Total Eclipse
titlecomplete: Total Eclipse
genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, British Literature, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy
ratings_count: 465
publisher: Doubleday & Company