Context is underrated; reading this novel in 2022, in the midst of so many examples of humanity's damfool self-destructiveness is weird. So many decades of aspirational scifi were based on what seemed like reasonable if fanciful speculation... then what happened?
Anyway, this 1985 novel based on a 1957-8 short story is a pleasant enough diversion, not one of Clarke's masterpieces, but a classic enough genre piece.
We do however take issue with the in-story reference to Buddhism as a religion which has never been responsible for bloodshed.