Arthur C. Clarke: Other Novels, Part 1

The Clarke-Asimov Treaty

Both Clarke and Asimov were known for writing both Science Fiction and Science Fact, and there was a good-natured rivalry between them as a result. They eventually settled on the Clarke-Asimov Treaty, which explained that if either them was ever asked who was the best they would agree to say that Clarke was the best Science Fiction writer and that Asimov was the best Science Fact writer. Of course they were both aware that this was a joke. They both lost out to Ray Bradbury for the Retro Hugo, and of course Robert A. Heinlein was a very active writer at the same time. But it is a footnote worth mentioning.

The Sands Of Mars (1951)

This is an early novel of Clarke’s, and was later collected in an omnibus volume called The Space Trilogy with two other novels, Islands in the Sky (1952), a juvenile (what we would now called Young Adult) story about a boy getting to visit a space station; and Earthlight (1955), a story about a spy on a Moon observatory. The three novels are no in any way related, and the title of the collection can be confusing because there is a much better known Space Trilogy written by C.S. Lewis.

This novel is another example of the careful use of the best science of the time, though things have changed since it was written. We had figured out that there weren’t any canals on Mars, so they don’t appear at all. We did see color changes that looked to be seasonal, and vegetation was a plausible explanation, so we do see vegetation in the novel. The protagonist of the story is a famous science fiction author named Martin Gibson. He has been invited to travel to Mars as a guest of the crew of the spaceship Ares, and of course Ares is the name of the Greek God equivalent to the Roman God Mars, so it is a ship that is devoted to traveling to Mars and back. Gibson starts his journey by heading for the space station orbiting Earth before transferring to the Ares, and this is another good example that even in the 1950s Clarke had figured out that this made a lot more sense than trying to lift off directly from Earth. And indeed it is how NASA plans to move forward, though they are looking at a space station orbiting the Moon as the gateway to both the Moon and Mars.

The most junior member of the crew, who is still training to be an astronaut is assigned to Gibson to answer any of his questions, which also provides an opportunity for what is essentially a flashback of Gibson when he was at University, and we will eventually discover that this young astronaut trainee is actually Gibson’s son from his college days. Then they land on Mars, and Gibson meets with the people there. They go exploring outside the colony, and meet some native wildlife, which they find munching on vegetation. Later we discover that these plants are part of a secret project that Earth does not know about to add oxygen to the atmosphere of Mars. Then we learn that the scientists on Mars have a plan to ignite Phobos and turn it into a second sun to help warm Phobos, This can be done using a “meson resonance reaction”, which frankly is just a plausible sounding technobabble. And if you think “Hey, wait a minute, this sounds just like what he did with Jupiter in 2001”, well you can give yourself a gold star.

Gibson is very attracted by what he has learned on Mars, and applies to be permanent resident. He is accepted, and is given the job of selling Mars to the people of Earth, pretty much a director of Public Relations for the planet. Which is something a famous science fiction writer should be well qualified to do.

This novel is a good example of a mostly plausible hard science fiction novel of its time. Some of the extrapolations would be disproved later, but when they were written they were plausible, and nothing was put in that was definitely impossible.

The Deep Range (1957)

As we mentioned earlier in our biographical information about Clarke, he was very interested in the ocean and in scuba diving. He moved to Sri Lanka, and made some underwater archeology discoveries there. And it should not be surprising that this interest would show up in his writing. As has been pointed out by marine scientists, we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the ocean floor of our own planet. Of course, in some sense it is easier to get the Mars than to get to the ocean floor, so perhaps it isn’t surprising.

The protagonist of this novel is a former astronaut named Walter Franklin. The reason he is a former astronaut is that an accident during a spacewalk left him floating and isolated for a long time, and the resulting psychic stress gave him a severe case of acrophobia. This washes him out of any further space work, and permanently separates him from his family on Mars. He then transfers to the Marine Division, which is responsible for feeding a major part of the world’s population through the farming of plankton and the herding and slaughter of whales. That last part would not go over well now in the 21st century for a lot of people, and in the novel it becomes a controversial point.

The book follows Walter’s journey in three parts. The first shows him as a trainee adapting to his new career choice, and in this section he meets the woman who will become his second wife (since he is cut off from his first wife on Mars). In the second section he has risen from trainee to being a veteran Warden, as in Game Warden. His job is protecting the Whale Herds from predators. Mostly these are orcas and sharks, and the Wardens patrol in their single person subs. But then it gets a bit more interesting when a giant squid seems to be preying on the whales. Then there is the Giant Sea Serpent.

In the third section Walter is now the Director of the Bureau of Whales, and he has to deal with the usual administrative details you would expect for a Director. But then a challenge appears that threatens the very existence of the Bureau. A Buddhist monk has started a campaign to stop completely the harvesting of whales even though this represents an eighth of the world’s food supply. And as this campaign goes on Walter is starting to come around to agreement with the monk.

In the last chapter Walter and his second wife say goodbye to their son who is going to space, where he will meet up with the family that Walter had to leave behind on Mars.

This book illustrates the point that Science Fiction is about the future, and not necessarily Space travel. And you know they say you should write what you know, and Clarke’s love of the sea made this the kind of book he had to write. Other novels with the ocean setting include Dolphin Island (1964), another juvenile/Young Adult novel, and The Ghost from The Grand Banks (1990), about the Titanic.

The Fountains of Paradise (1979)

This book is about the construction of the first Space Elevator. The idea is you could build a massive structure going from the Earth to space, and use it to bring materials from the bottom of the gravity well into space without needing to use rockets. Clarke puts the other end of this elevator in a space station located in geosynchronous orbit, about 36,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.
One of the prerequisites for this is a new fiber material that is immensely strong and light, and the opening of the book is a demonstration of such a material which he called hyperfilament, and described as “continuous pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystal”, but in later interviews suggested would more likely be some kind of carbon tubes made of BuckminsterFullerene. At present this is perhaps more likely, but most scientists do not see this as practical in any near-term way. And the development of reusable rockets has already reduced the cost for sending materials into space to the degree that the economic incentive for space elevators has been greatly reduced.

The book is mostly concerned with all of the challenges involved in getting this project done. Some of them are technical, but others are more political and social. This in some ways relates this book to Heinlein’s story The Man Who Sold The Moon (1950). The engineering concerns suggest a location on the equator as the Earth end of this elevator, and Clarke had Sri Lanka in mind for this. But in the book he creates a fictionalized version of Sri Lanka, an island he called Taprobane. The details of this fictional island match up mostly with those of Sri Lanka.

There are also two other stories that frame the main story. One is set in the past and concerns a fictional King Kalidasa, and this is based on the stories of the Sri Lankan King Kashpaya I. The other story is set in the future and tells of the first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. By now there is a circular structure surrounding the Earth and 6 space elevators connect to it. And in the middle of the story an uncrewed robotic chip of alien origin passes through the solar system. If this reminds you of Rendezvous with Rama. give yourself a gold star.

The Fountains of Paradise won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1979, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1980.

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