Never read Transience, and I remember Trouble with the Natives as a bit humorous, but Road to the Sea was incredibly boring to me. It felt like I was being lectured on human behavior by someone with a minimal grasp of it. As is often the case with Clarke, I remember the settings and tech of his environment very well, but have a hard time really remembering the plot and barely remember anything about the characters. Excluding HAL, who was ironically a computer, his characters and frankly the plots too, tend to be kinda dull, slow, and lacking passion and that's a real hurdle in a short story. He put together some very awesome and super-realistic stuff and way out there cool ideas, and I do enjoy his work, but it doesn't entirely compensate for his only even vaguely interesting character being a computer.