The Songs of Distant Earth

The Songs of Distant Earth (Del Rey, 1986) by Arthur C. Clarke.

If you've read any/many of Clarke's short story collections, you've probably encountered Songs before. It originally was a short story. He took the core of that story and expanded it nicely. It's not a shoot-em-up, there's relatively little "action" but there is plenty of character and conflict. Earth sends out colonies as a series of robotic ships carrying genetic seeds. When the ship finds a habitable planet, the ship helps to raise the first generation of colonists, who then try to make it on their own. As there is no faster-than-light travel or communication, colonies spend long periods of time without hearing from the mother planet. The colony world of our setting is visited by a ship from Earth. It was not originally scheduled to visit, but has to stop to do repairs. There's a bit of interaction between the two groups, some positive and some negative. There's quite a bit of sadness, as the ship that is visiting is the last from Earth; Earth has been destroyed. Eventually both groups separate, with many changes. Like I said, not much action, but a lot of good writing. As with Clifford Simak and Ray Bradbury, Clarke manages to pack a lot of ideas into relatively few words.

And, as usual with the Clarke novels from Imperial Earth onwards, there's a good afterword that lists where he found the various ideas and concepts used in the story. I've found these afterword to be a bit dangerous for me, as they inevitably lead to massive purchases of books on subjects such as fractals, etc.!