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.
Hmm odd I had a very different response to road to the sea...I mean it seemed pretty much on the nose with human behavior. But then I believe in the ever expanding frontier a golden age concept that has gone out of fashion recently.
He certainly does not make characters as memorable as say LeGuinn and some of his longer novels do not work well (the Ranma series comes to mind..first book wonderful when focus is on the technology, later ones slowly getting worse and worse till a terrible ending). Childhoods end though I though was very interesting and the 2001 series ended well. Certainly he is more of an idea/philosophy/theme writer than a character one. For example the ones I mentioned above I can relate the plots and ideas to you but the characters not so much. (The central idea in childhoods end for example still amazes me).
Much like Robin Hobb of red mars fame in that way (without the crazy uber-liberal politics).
You should try to find transience it is very worth reading.
