Brief Biographical Background

Arthur C. Clarke is the second member of the “Big Three” of the Golden Age that we will consider in this series. He was born in 1917 in Somerset, England, and was a space enthusiast from an early age. in 1934 while only a teenager he joined the British Interplanetary Society. And about ten years later, in 1945 he proposed a system of using geostationary satellites to provide communication. He did not invent the idea of satellites, and others had already noted the advantages to geostationary satellites, but he made the connection that they would be extremely useful for communications, and actively publicized this idea. So in his later TV programs he does identify himself as the inventor, which is only a slight exaggeration. During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist.

From 1946 to 1947, and again from 1951 to 1953 he served as President of the British Interplanetary Society. In 1951 he also published a book called The Exploration of Space, which was later used by Werner von Braun to convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy that a trip to the moon was possible. He was a commentator for CBS News when the Apollo 11 Moon landing took place in 1969.

He also had a strong interest in the ocean and in scuba diving, and moved to Sri Lanka in 1956, remaining there until his death in 2008. In addition to his writing, he had three TV series: Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Universe. But it is of course his writing that made him famous. He was known as a “hard” science fiction writer, meaning that he avoided elements of fantasy and concentrated on realistic science, even if sometimes extrapolated a bit into the future. But when you look at his body of work, it is not clear that this is entirely accurate. Still you should expect science to feature prominently in his books, and no obvious fantasy elements, unlike Robert A. Heinlein who seemed to move easily between hard SF and Fantasy. Still, of the Big Three, Asimov is probably at least as scientific, if not more so, than Clarke. And the fantasy elements do in fact appear in his first major work.

Against the Fall of Night (1948)/The City and the Stars(1956)

Against the Fall of Night was originally published as a novella in 1948, then expanded into a novel in 1953. He then rewrote some of it and expanded it further as The City and the Stars in 1956 . This is considered a classic work that should be on everyone’s bookshelf (but see below). The original novella accounts for about the the first third of the final novel, and in hindsight while it is classic it is also a bit of a mess. The setting to this story is 2.5 billion years into the future, and while the current state of science suggests we won’t make it that far, this was not known when Clarke wrote the novel. Still, that detail isn’t really important. It is set far in the future, leave it at that. The oceans have dried up, which is realistic given what we know. There is a city called Diaspar and as far as they know they are the only city on the planet. It is completely enclosed and underground, and the residents never leave and no one comes to visit. The history, as they know it, is that there was a conflict long ago where humanity, which had begun to venture out into space, was beaten back by savage invaders, who left a remnant alive on the condition that no one ever leaves the planet. But now no one ever leaves the city, it is safer that way.

The city of Diaspar is run by a Central Computer, and its memory banks contain all of the memories of each inhabitant. From time to time the Central Computer provides a new body, and puts the stored memories of a person into this new body, so the inhabitants are in practice immortal. But one day Alvin is born, and he has never lived before; this is the first time centuries that this has happened. And Alvin has curiosity about the rest of the world, something the deeply conservative and agoraphobic inhabitants of Diaspar usually lack. He wants to see the outside world. And eventually he discovers that there was once an underground transit system between cities, gets it open, and finds another city called Lys. This is the opposite of Diaspar in most ways. It is outside, in a green valley, and the people have cultivated philosophy and developed telepathy. They live naturally, and are conceived and born in the usual manner, living and dying without immortality. But they are against the high technology of Diaspar, and seem to reject most technology. But they are also very xenophobic, and conservative in a different way. They are afraid of space travel and all mechanical devices. There Alvin makes a friend in Hilvar.

The two then investigate a strange light and discover a fortress called Shalmirane, which is where the savage invaders were fought off with fearsome weapons so long ago. There they discover an old extraterrestrial and a robot. Apparently someone called “Master” came there with his followers and this robot, and the robot and the old extraterrestrial are all that is left. This robot has a mind block put in place by “Master” that prevents the robot from giving out any information at all. The “Master” and his followers wered some kind of religious cult that talks about “Great Ones” who have left but will eventually return “someday”. Alvin convinces the old extraterrestrial to let him take the robot to see how the world has changed, but also gives the robot stern instructions to not let him return to Lys because he believes they will use their mental powers to stop him because they are so anti-technology. Back in Diaspar, he used the Central Computer to break the block on the robot, then find the spaceship of the “Master” outside Diaspar which is still functional. Alvin and Hilvar then go to deep space in the spaceship where they encounter Vanamonde, a being of pure intellect, but Hilvar with his telepathic powers can converse with Vanamonde. Convenient that.

They bring Vanamonde back to Earth, and it it turns out that everything they thought they knew was wrong. There never were any savage invaders, and Shalmirane was actually built to blow up the moon, which for some reason was going to collide with Earth. Now in point of fact the Moon is gradually moving away from the Earth, albeit very slowly (about 3.8 centimeters per year). And the remnants of humanity still on Earth are there because they refused to participate in a great project, to produce a pure intellect. As it happened, the first attempt was a disaster that produced something called the Mad Mind. It was immensely powerful, but also insane, and it devastated the Galaxy before being imprisoned in a “strange artificial star” called the Black Sun. Vanamonde was the second, successful experiment, and is destined to combat the Mad Mind when it escapes its imprisonment. The rest of humanity was then contacted by aliens from outside the galaxy and left.

The City and the Stars was supposed to be an improvement over Against The Fall Of Night, but the changes are in the details. In the earlier novel Alvin’s companion is Theon, son of Seranis, instead of Hilvar. And details about the societies of Dispar and Lys differ. What they find in the fortress of Shalmirane is an old man instead of an extraterrestrial. But it is noteworthy that Against The Fall Of Night remained in print long after The City and the Stars was published, and many people continued to prefer the earlier version. But whichever version, it is hard to make a serious claim that this represents “hard science”. It is an early work from a developing writer, and shows a lot of influence from the pulp stories that Clarke undoubtedly read as a teenager. If you want to be well educated in the history of science fiction this is unavoidable, but to a modern reader I suspect it will seem a bit weird.