I just reread this as an exercise in revisiting books I loved when I was younger. Earth didn't really hold up. It was fun to read, but Brin has a problem with exclamation marks. He uses so many of them that it causes you to want to ex them out with a little red pen and go around showing people (who didn't ask) that "The glacier exploded," is SO much more dramatic and effective than "The glacier exploded!" I was interested in Brin's take on consciousness and the Gaia Hypothesis (which I think is the high point of the book) though he completely (and tragically) misapprehended Dawkins's notion of the selfish gene.

In short, it was fun because I'd read it before but I won't be recommending it to any of my friends (who have similar snobberies about exclamation points)