The Songs of Distant Earth

Arthur C. Clarke called this his favorite novel, and it shows. Set in the 39th century, the Magellan — carrying the last colonists from a dying Earth — stops at Thalassa, a peaceful water world that has had no contact with Earth for seven centuries. The bonds that form between the crews, and the bittersweet romance that can't survive their parting, give the story a quiet emotional depth Clarke rarely reached in longer fiction. Faith-minded families should go in clear-eyed: Clarke explicitly portrays an atheistic society as a utopia, and his own atheism is woven directly into the narrative and the characters' worldview — it's not incidental. Beyond that concern, the book is clean, moving, and among his most lyrical work, though it's more meditative than plot-driven.