I encourage you to check out it's such a beautiful day as well. It's an earlier work of his, not as concise, but very poignant and filled to the brim with dark wit that is executed excellently. Also on Netflix. I think you're spot on with Clarke and his characters here. I know it came up in the Rama discussion but it's pretty obvious here where Authur C. Shyamalan's interests and strengths lie. It's also occasionally fun to wonder what motivated the awarding of the Hugo each year. I promise some "what. the. fuck." Awardees down the road.
Kinda funny how little overlap there is between the Hugos, the Nebulas and The Year's Best Sci FI. A few of my friends have suggested that Michael Crichton would have done much better if he'd given his ideas to someone else to write, as he sucks at the actual "writing" of stuff, but the ideas are great. I've often felt that ACC is basically writing a travelogue for the Conde Nast Traveler of the future.