One of those " life has overtaken science fiction" stories

This one took several days to read. Arthur C. Clarke's writing is very dense. The story was not actually very complicated, but it took many pages to work through it. The characters were fairly flat but their names were long and exotic (not outer-space exotic, just Sri Lankan).  This is a 2001 reprint of a 1979  novel, and some of the technology has actually been surpassed (the Internet, for example). Lots of engineering ideas, so if that floats your boat, go for it. There are visitors (robotic) from another galaxy, but I don't see what they had to do with the main story.Some interesting bits of history, culture, art, philosphy, but they didn't gel together for me. I remember enjoying some of Clarke's earlier works, especially Childhood's End, which would always make me cry.

It cost me $3.50 at St Vincent de Paul. Almost worth it.