Publications: Reviews

THE SPACE TRILOGY by Arthur C Clarke

Gollancz 2001 506pp £7.99

This bargain volume contains three of Sir Arthur’s early novels -- The Sands of Mars (1951), Islands in the Sky (1954), and Earthlight (1955). While these novels do not comprise a formal trilogy, they are all set in a sort of common future, detailing what Clarke (among many sf writers of the time) imagined would be the expansion of humanity into the solar system from its cradle on Earth.

Islands in the Sky is set on a space station on earth orbit. Although designed as a juvenile novel, it is written in Clarke’s usual clean-cut style and with his usual technical accuracy. As in all three novels, he combines adventure with sense of wonder -- something for the jaded palettes of adults who looked to the stars as adolescents!

Earthlight concerns mysterious goings-on on the Moon, and the growing conflict between Mother Earth and her developing colony.

And The Sands of Mars takes similar themes out into the scene of  Mars -- the Mars of nearly half a century ago. And while this novel therefore reads as a sort of alternate-world piece rather than one set on the Mars we know about today, it is still a fine novel, and one that well illustrates sf’s capacity for being both forward-looking, and, now, nostalgic. Sir Arthur’s introductions are also well-worth reading, and justify the continued availability of The Sands of Mars, as well as the other two novels.

Copyright (c) 2001 John Howard