Publications: Reviews

THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE (Millennium 2000 257pp £6.99)  and THE SENTINEL (ibooks 2000 299pp £9.99) both by Arthur C Clarke

The Fountains of Paradise (1979) in its new reappearance as Volume 34 of  the SF Masterworks series, is sometimes regarded as being Clarke’s last wholly successful novel. I tend to disagree, but it is certainly one of his best and most characteristic.

Vannevar Morgan conceives what he considers to be the greatest engineering feat ever -- the construction of the Space Elevator, literally a line anchored to a point on the Earth, and connected to a satellite in orbit directly above it. And the only suitable place for its Earthly starting-point is Sri Kanda, a sacred site on the Indian Ocean island of Taprobane (the fictional version of Sir Arthur’s beloved Sri Lanka).

The Fountains of Paradise is characteristic Clarke --  he combines lucid scientific exposition of a possible future with a mysticism and lyricism that would seem to contradict each other, but which Clarke has always combined throughout his career. The twin and competing themes of the novel -- the construction of the Space Elevator, and its irreversible effect on Taprobane, and so the world, are held in page-turning tension throughout. As Clarke writes in his Afterword: “sometimes -- Gigantic is Beautiful.”

I welcomed The Sentinel when the collection was first published in 1983. This reprint is also welcome, containing as it does “The Sentinel” itself -- the 1940’s short story that became the basis of 2001: a Space Odyssey. The other eight stories are all fine pieces, and also contain many of the themes that eventually resurfaced in that novel and film.

“Guardian Angel” became the first part of the classic novel Childhood’s End. “A Meeting with Medusa” is a stunning account of an expedition into the atmosphere of Jupiter -- with a difference. “The Songs of Distant Earth” was expanded into the novel of the same name, and contains all the ingredients that Clarke has combined uniquely for nearly sixty years -- an attention and enjoyment of scientific and engineering detail, alongside a mystical and Stapledonian perspective of the hugeness and grandeur of the universe, and the ephemeral nature of humanity’s place in it.

Definitely required reading (and the atmospheric illustrations by Lebbeus Woods are a bonus).

Copyright (c) 2001 John Howard