"The Ghost from the Grand Banks" (novel): Deep sea treasure hunt

On the face of it, this story is about an unsuccessful attempt to salvage the wreck of Titanic, the well-documented passenger ship that sank on its maiden cross-Atlantic voyage early in twentieth century. But that is just the facade.

Real story is about technology & business issues involved in deep sea salvage operations. With some human interest elements. And many unrelated tangent tracks.

Grand Banks in title refers to Grand Banks of Newfoundland - some place in North Atlantic where Titanic sank. Ghost, of course, refers to ghost of Titanic.

This is not among the best of Clarke. But, depending on your technical background & patience, it may be readable.

Story summary (spoiler).
Most of the story is set in early twenty first century. A little bit, involving aliens, is set eons later, & generally represents a tangent track similar to one found at the end of "The Fountains of Paradise".

There are actually a whole lot of tangent tracks - reviving the long dead in certain circumstances; Mandelbrot Sets (certain mathematical abstractions); a giant octopus chase; mapping the sea bed; glass making; mostly COBOL code date related software bugs popularly known as Y2K, & a rather fancy AI-based solution to it; ...

Main story involves three entities: Some British entreprenures funded partly with US money will salvage one of the two parts of the Titanic wreck; a Japanese company will salvage the other half; Internation Seabed Authority (ISA) is a watchdog & is part of UN.

Two separate entities for raising either half allow examination of more than one technology for raising the wreck.

Britishers will make some kind of harness around their half, & raise it by floating billions of tiny air bubbles covered in glass under it.

Japanese will make a huge iceberg under sea that entirely covers their half of the wreck, & use rockets for additional lift! On objections from environmentalists, they use an alternate technology: generate billions of amps of electric current at sea bottom for electrolysis; resulting oxygen & hydrogen will fill baloons that will lift the giant ice cube to surface!

Entire operation is wrecked at the eleventh hour by a big undersea earthquake. Quake has set an undersea avalanch of mud that has buried Titanic so deep no humans will ever get at it. There is also a rather filmy sequence around this time where an ace sea veteran is killed.

Move ahead eons. Current continents are now under sea; current sea bed is part of the new continents; new mountains have risen. In the intervening period, Mercury, Venus & Mars were colonized & terraformed.

But there has been a disaster: a black hole no one can locate has eaten up Pluto. This apparantly triggered the migration of humans off this solar system eons back - in search for safer home elsewhere. Solar system, including Earth. is now abandoned. Saturn has lost much of its ring system.

An alien civilization apparantly picked up human signals in times long past, & one of their spaceships has come to investigate. After spending some years examining earth & finding no signs of intelligence now or in past, they pick up a magnatic anomaly deep inside a mountain! You guessed it - it's the long buried Titanic!

Fact sheet.
The Ghost from the Grand Banks, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First published: 1990
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: B

See also.

1. "The Fountains of Paradise": Idea of introducing aliens in the last few pages in a story that is otherwise down to earth is very similar.
2. "The Deep Range": Another Clarkian story that is primarily concerned with the earth's seas.
3. "Richter 10": Certain earthquake scenes are very similar. A volcano named Mount Pelee at some island called Martinique is also common.
4. "Imperial Earth": There is a museum in New York involving salvaged Titanic. One of the tracks in Ghost is about making a museum out of a part of Titanic somewhere in Florida in the US.
5. "Cold War": Short story where an artificial iceberg will be made at sea, & towed to Miami beach is very similar in idea to covering part of the wreck in a giant man made iceberg.
6. "History Lesson": Aliens investigating earth eons after it has been dead, & locating a kind of beacon that tells intelligent beings once lived here.

"The City and the Stars" (novel): Harry Potter style fantasy

Best thing about this book is readability - at least the first 80% of it. Most of the time, I found it difficult to put it down. And that is when fantasy is not really my genre!

Last 10 or 20% is garbage - where some ultimate answers are given. Something that should be best left to Hitchhiker's Guide.

If you like Harry Potter, this will probably be an interesting book; if Potter bores you, this will too. Very simple test to determine your compatibility.

As an additional bait for Potter fans, you have a character called Vanamonde. He is not the villain here, but doesn't the name rhyme with Voldemort?

This is principally an adventure story - a restless man bored with his comfortable life, & seeking something different. It also has a very liberal sprinkling of Hindu mythology during first one third, a hell lot of fantasy all through, & some science fiction.

Among the cool stuff, you find everything you can name for a book labeled Speculative Fiction! There are immortals, telepathy, materialization/dematerialization devices, machines that respond to thoughts, aliens, energy beings, hive intelligence, spaceships that move faster than light, anti-gravity, worm holes in space-time, alternate universes, genetic engineering marvels, artificially created suns & planets, a variant of reincarnation, robots that can put Issac Asimov's robots to shame, weapons that can pulverize moon, self-sufficient closed habitat, virtual reality, computer games, utopia, religious cult, creatures that look like plants that move around, ... you name it! It's a massive cocktail.

So put reason aside, & enjoy the fantasy ride.

Story Summary (spoiler).
The story is set more than a billion years in future. Earth has lost its seas, & is nearly all of it desert. Moon no longer exists; it was destroyed by humans when it threatened to crash into earth at a time now long forgotten.

There are only two human communities on earth (or elsewhere) - physically very close together, psychologically completely disconnected. A closed habitat called Diaspar, & a collection of countryside villages called Lys.

Amazingly, members of these communities still look essentially like humans of today. Remember, we are talking of geological time. In this time, humans were created from probably pre-fish life forms! But we already agreed to put reason aside.

Our hero, Alvin, is a 20 year old child in a community of immortals. These immortals live in Diaspar, the closed habitat of a billion humans of which only about a 100 million are alive at a time.

What does that mean? This habitat is run by a robot that can digitize all information needed to recreate a human being, plus all or any of his/her selected memories. New individuals are continuously being created - but this creation is essentially materializing them from stored digital data. They live may be a 1000 years; then get dematerialized again into digital data to be rematerialized after a random amount of time in future.

This means there are no real children. You come out of the House of Creation fully developed, but your old memories will not return till about 20 years of age. And you are treated as a immature till you are may be a couple of centuries old.

There is an essential difference between these immortals, & current humans. They have a severe inbuilt fear of open spaces. None of them can even stand the thought of going outside the closed habitat. This situation is very similar to earth-inhabiting humans in Asimov's three Spacer novels (Caves of Steel, & two that followed it).

But our hero is different. He is one of the only a dozen Uniques the House of Creation has produced in all these billion years. He doesn't fear outside, & is in fact itchy to go there.

The story is of his adventures - to close by Lys country side community, to far off steller systems, & of helping rid his people of their fear of open spaces.

Influences.
There are at least two later books of Clarke that borrow major plot elements from this book: bio-magic in "Rama Revealed", & a somewhat sensible religious/philosophical discourse in the middle of "3001 The Final Odyssey".

Creatures that are plant-like & move slowly are also found in Space Odyssey sequels.

"The Light of Other Days" shares general style with this book in that it also tries to squeeze in every theme known to sf into the story!

According to Clarke's introduction, this book is a major rewrite of an earlier book - "Against the Fall of Night"; about 25% text is common. But I have not read this earlier book.

Fact sheet.
The City & the Stars, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Adventure, with a sprinkling of Hindu mythology, fantasy, & some science fiction
Rating: A

"The Fountains of Paradise" (novel): Extraordinary plot, ruined

This could have been among the best science fiction stories by anyone, but Clarke just keeps going on tangents rather than sticking to the main story. I felt a bit sad at the end; what a waste!

This also is among the most down to earth stories of Clarke, in company with "The Deep Range". Except for various diversions. Also, these two stories share a tenuous link via Thero, a kind of Dalai Lama of a fictional Buddhist sect based in Lanka; this was first introduced in Deep Range, & also gets substantial coverage in Fountains.

Story summary (spoiler).
Main story is about a concept called "space elevator". Depending on your perspective, it can be seen as an ordinary elevator of extraordinary size (some 40,000 km high), a space vehicle, or a subway.

Idea is to outdate the rockets that take off from earth, & make space travel affordable for ordinary people.

In a massive construction project, a space station will be connected to earth via a physical tower - a kind of very thick cable. All spacecraft will leave off the space station rather than earth - means much cheaper & environment friendly takeoff. You can buy a ticket for joy ride up the elevator, or for actual travel to moon, mars, or elsewhere.

It is the story of an entrepreneur civil engineer. Beginning with the concept, to getting funding, overcoming political opposition, handling displaced people, apart from the various technical aspects. Though handling displaced people has been treated as a joke here. I guess Mukesh Ambani might have done a more convincing job presenting this story, but Clarke does a good enough job - so long as he sticks to the main story. Main story is set sometime between 2100 AD & 2200 AD.

This main story is interwoven with several completely unrelated tangents: the story of a feudal empire in Lanka around 100 AD; story of an alien robotic spacecraft moving through our solar system aka "Rendezvous with Rama"; story of the Sun cooling down to turn earth into an icy wasteland aka first story in "History Lesson"; story of visit to earth of aliens that look like a more physical version of the Swarm in "The Possessed"; a rather juvenile story of our heroic boss of the whole enterprise rescuing some stranded explorers up in the tower during an accident. There might be more, but I can recollect these off hand.

It took me nearly 3 weeks to cover first 20% - story begins on one of the tangents. Around 20% mark, real story begins & for a while you cannot put the book down.

Then the alien robotic spacecraft visits. It is both similar to Rama & different. For one thing, it is very talkative - likes to converse with humans. It is cylindrical, but main craft has dimensions only in meters rather than kilometers. But it has a 500 km diameter antenna for communicating with its home world!

Then again the main story continues well for a while, amid reports of changes happening to the Sun.

Rescue drama begins when you are may be 60 or 70% through the book, & occupies most of the remaining pages. It is not only juvenile, but very filmy - everything that can go wrong does but one at a time, keeping you reading far longer than necessary.

Last 5% is set in about 4000 AD. We meet an alien who is a more physical version of the Swarm of "The Possessed". This is also where we have not only the original space elevator in working condition, but many more across earth, all linked together in space - forming a ring habitat; interior of this habitat will be detailed in the first one third of "3001 The Final Odyssey". You also see earth that is essentially uninhabited because it has now turned into an icy wasteland aka first story in "History Lesson"; humans live in ring habitat up in the sky, & also on Venus & Mercury which are now both habitable.

This is not a book worth skipping. But I had to skip a lot of pages on first reading; then came back to go through the fillers.

Putting the height of space elevator in perspective.
It is easy to read numbers like 36 or 40 thousand kilometers tall. Yes, it sounds tall - but how tall?

This is about the size of the perimeter of earth. Or about 3 times the diameter of earth!

This is also 7% the distance to moon. 15 such structures, & you can drive to moon!

An ordinary commercial jetliner will make you sit for over 40 hours to travel this distance.

How realistic is the concept of space elevators?
There are actually a lot of documents on the subject. I include only a few "not boring" articles meant for general public.

1. "Space elevators"
2. LiftPort's space elevator projects' discussion at Slashdot.
   

Fact sheet.
The Fountains of Paradise, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Science fiction, with a sprinkling of fantasy & ancient feudal history
First published: 1979
Rating: A
Hugo Award winner in novel category in 1980

See also.

1. This article includes illustrations of space elevator anchors at earth end & sky end (near the bottom of the article).
   
2. "The Ghost from the Grand Banks" also has an unrelated small subplot at the end where aliens investigate a now barren earth.
3. All Hugo Award stories.

"The Curse" aka "Nightfall" (short story): Fate of a bombed city

Among the least entertaining stories by Clarke. The only good thing about it is that it is really short!

Story summary (spoiler).

Story describes the state of a dead small town some days after a nuclear bomb was dropped on it. It is completely descriptive - no humans, animals or dialogs - and of course the mood is sad & nostalgic.

The town involved is Stratford-upon-Avon, apparently a very well known city in England, located on the banks of river Avon. The city is both the birthplace of William Shakespeare, & where his grave is located. Both the grave & the river make an appearance towards the end of story.

Story apparently gets its title from the last line of the translation-to-modern-English of the well known epitaph on the gravestone, though the story quotes the original epitaph when identifying the grave:

"Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare
to digg the dvst encloased heare
Blese be y man y spares thes stones,
and cvrst be he y moves my bones."

Story dateline has an anomaly I could not resolve. The city was accidentally bombed some 300 years after Shakespeare died. The story is told a few days after the incident. That would place it about the year 1616 + 300 = 1916 AD. Yet the bomb dropped is a hydrogen bomb!

Acknowledgment.

Till I saw Sarah's comment below, I had no idea of the identity of either the city or gravestone, nor any idea of the importance of both to England. Thanks Sarah.

I substantially revised the text above on June 22, 2007 after following Sarah's links, & after rereading the story.

See also.

1. Other stories with nearly the same subject matter: Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains", & Arthur Clarke's "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth ...". Bradbury's version is the lightest read.
   
2. Henry Gee's "Are We Not Men": While I didn't quite like either, if you liked Curse, you might like this story by Gee too. Very similar telling style, though on a different subject.
   

Fact sheet.

"The Curse" aka "Nightfall", short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First Published: 1953
Rating: C

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Reach for tomorrow"
3. "More Than One Universe"

"The Awakening" (short story): Man shall not inherit the earth!

Frankly, I am getting bored with Clarke's doomsday stories - there are just too many of them!

Story summary (spoiler).
Earth is so prosperous at this future date that boredom is the biggest problem. Too many men committing suicide because of lack of excitement in life.

Our hero, if you can call him that, decides to do something interesting. He gets a spaceship built, with an inner chamber that is essentially a machine controlled chamber for human hibernation.

He takes off into space, parks himself into a solar orbit beyond Pluto, & goes to sleep in the hibernation chamber. The machines controlling hibernation chamber have instructions to awaken him unfathomable eons hence; ship likewise has instructions to bring him back to earth after awakening.

At the time of awakening, something in the machines fails; he is not awakened really, but stays in hibernation.

Ship faithfully brings him back to earth. But earth has changed unrecognizably. Gone are its seas, Alps, & Himalayas. Also gone is the moon - it crashed into earth at some time in far away past (I was taught that moon is moving away from earth, a few centimeters a year!)!

Well - the ship lands at the best site it can find. Some members of the current master race of earth come, awaken him using their technology but only for a while. And he realizes it is not the man that inherits the earth, but ...

Fact sheet.
The Awakening, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Fantasy
First Published: 1951
Rating: C

See also.

1. "The Parasite" - another story of a prosperous future human society with bored individuals. But the two stories are developed very differently.

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "Reach for tomorrow"
2. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
   

"The Forgotten Enemy" (short story): Ice age returns

Story summary (spoiler).
Our Sun, in its run around galaxy, has entered a vast cloud of generally harmless cosmic dust. No one knows how long the pass will take - decades or thousands of years.

Result is: much less heat of the Sun reaches earth. And earth has entered the process that will take it into the long forgotten ice age.

The story is about the anguish of a man who has seen his world shattered by the event.

Fact sheet.
The Forgotten Enemy, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Fantasy
First Published: 1950
Rating: C

See also.

1. "Transience" - where our Sun enters a more dangerous kind of cosmic cloud, a nebula.
   
2. In Asimov's novel "Currents of Space", a floating cloud of carbon dust hits the sun of an inhabited planet, with disastrous effects.

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "Reach for tomorrow"
2. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
3. "Of Time and Stars"

"The Fires Within" (as by E G O'Brian) (short story): Aliens that are not aliens!

Asimov's "The Gods Themselves" is probably the only other story I have read that can compare with this in inventiveness of unfamiliar life forms in fiction.

From the facts cited, this story was obviously written when much less was known about the interior of earth. But that doesn't dilute the fun of the story.

Story summary.

Most of the story is told in flashback. So let's begin with flashback.

A professor has a brainwave: cannot we use sonar (acoustic reflections) to "see" what lies beneath the surface of earth.

He builds a device that lets you "see" on a display what lies at any depth under the surface of earth. Oh, maximum depth depends on power input; the maximum the professor ultimately reaches is a couple of tens of miles.

Initially, the device is a curiosity. Then it becomes a useful industrial machine - very interesting for geologists. And then comes the inevitable twist in the tale.

It is obvious that as you go deep into earth, the pressure of rocks above grows, & also the temperatures increases. 10 miles down both are unbearably huge.

When the device was first tested, they found a lot of dead earthworms. Obviously they were killed by the energy released by device.

OK - so here is the twist. Professor is expecting that more than a few miles down, you will not really see any features - cavities would have been filled in, & it will be all molten rock. And that is what he sees, until he reaches a certain level - some 10 or 12 miles down.

What is seen are huge physical features where none are expected. Some investigation later, it is clear that they cannot be natural. Some theorizing later, the conclusion is: obviously there are intelligent beings living in that seething mass, & that they can float through all that rock, & build their cities there!

Rest of the story is told by the intelligent beings living down under, in the hot underbelly of earth - 300 years later. Oh, yes, & they are tentacled - Clarke's favorite feature in unfamiliar life forms.

Looks like they always thought no life could have (obviously) existed on the surface of earth since it was near vacuum & so cold it was near absolute zero (compared with their environment)!

Until they detected these sonars probing down under. That is when they tried making contact with the fragile humans. The tone of ending says that meant the doom of humans - they could never withstand the heat these creatures brought up.

End is worried musing by one of their own - they live only 12 miles deep. What happens if they should be contacted by anything living below them?

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Reach for tomorrow"
3. "Of Time and Stars"
4. "Across the Sea of Stars"

Fact sheet.

First Published: Fantasy, August 1949, under the pen name "E G O'Brian".
Rating: B

"Rescue Party" (short story, free): First of Clarke, also mother of all his stories

According to Clarke's opening remarks in the story collection "Reach for Tomorrow", "Rescue Party" is not only his first published story, but shares the roots with another story - "History Lesson". Also see the note on first story near end of this article.

After reading it, I am getting a feeling that this also is the mother story of all of Clarke's life. Just too many ideas in his later stories already appear here! And it must be among the most influential science fiction stories by anyone; see Influences section below.

Full text of this story is available online (link via Sf Signal & Free SF Reader). I've not read this online version.

Story summary (spoiler).
This doomsday story is set in about 2200 AD.

Sun is about to blast, & will take earth & rest of solar system with it. A kind of galactic administration of aliens not aware of the existence of humans suddenly learns two facts:

1. That our Sun will burst - less than 10 hours before the event.
2. That it contains a world inhabited by intelligent beings. It seems - these beings discovered radio 200 years back, & one of their transmissions has just been intercepted by a alien station 200 light years from earth.

There is a ship of galactic administration just about a billion miles of earth. It is entrusted with the job of rescuing what intelligent creatures it can from the doomed earth. It will have just about 4 hours on earth, after accounting for the time needed to reach it & then to escape.

Will they be able to help humans?

Influences.
I enumerate here those of Clarke's stories that carry influences from this story. Note that I haven't probably read even half of his total work - so this list will likely expand in future!

1. Expand this story a bit, & you get "The Songs of Distant Earth". Another very similar story is "The Star".
2. Alien ship in question is a cylindrical one, with kilometer scale dimensions. Its elaboration will yield "Rendezvous with Rama". Plus the ships in its 3 sequels.
3. "History Lesson" is similar in that Sun is changing in a way that dooms earth. But rather than exploding, it cools - to turn earth into an icy wasteland. But both the response of humans to the event, & story ending, are very different.
4. In "History Lesson", aliens begin drawing funny conclusions about humans by interpreting the scenes in a movie reel. Something very similar happens here; early in their search on earth, they find a portrait of a man & begin wondering how the poor bipeds managed with just 4 limbs & 2 eyes - may be they have more eyes in the back not visible in this primitive 2D portrait!
   
5. There is a brief mention of a black rectangle that gives the illusion of having infinite depth. This reminded me of the various Monoliths (TMAs) in Space Odyssey series.
6. Tentacled aliens in this story might have morphed into octospiders seen in various Rama sequels.
7. Galactic administration entrusted with their duties by powers beyond the beginning of time reminds me of the end of "Rama Revealed". The powers beyond the beginning of time also appear to be indistinguishable from Brahma, the Creator, of Hindu Trinity (other two are Vishnu - the Executive, & Shiva - the Destroyer; these two don't have any avatars here).
8. While beginning operation rescue humans on earth, these tentacled aliens carry a paralyzer because they will likely have to do forcible evacuations because of lack of time. In "Rama Revealed", octospiders actually use paralyzers when they "kidnap" a woman.
   
9. Galactic survey ship, & the survey administration, here is very similar in concept to the one in "Encounter at Down".
10. Aliens keeping a watch on development of earthlings, among other promising beings across galaxy, is found in Space Odyssey series, & in "The Sentinel".
11. Benign aliens helping intelligent beings everywhere in galaxy is an idea you also find in "2001 A Space Odyssey". Though its sequels somewhat dilute it.
12. Anti-gravity devices mentioned here are also seen in "3001 The Final Odyssey", but with a different application - to power a spaceship.
    

I am also aware of some stories by Issac Asimov that have ideas very similar to those in this story:

1. You find Issac Asimov's Gaia here, as Palador; one of his Foundation sequels - "Foundation's Edge" - introduced it; another of his novels - "Foundation & Earth" - further developed it. Another of Asimov's novels - "Nemesis" - also has a planet scale hive intelligence. Palador in this story is very similar to Gaia, not the one in Nemesis.
2. The idea of a Sun blasting, & rescue of an entire planet, is also the theme of Asimov's novel "Currents of Space".
3. Galactic administration described here could have been Asimov's Empire, though Clarke doesn't really elaborate the administration part. And Asimov's Empire was of human origin, & his stories on the subject focused mostly on the politics.
4. I recall more than one of Asimov's sequels to Foundation series that had anti-gravity devices, though in different applications - as an ordinary elevator & a spaceship.

Trivia.
You get a feeling of the age of the story when you see mentions of "vacuum tubes" (as in computers), or of cupboards full of some 5 million punched cards! But they don't hamper readability.

Is it really the first story by Clarke?
When I originally wrote this article, I had referred to Clarke's "Reach for Tomorrow". Here is the quote: '"Rescue Party", which was written in 1945, was my first published story'. The publication actually happened a year later, in 1946.

I now (on 25 August 2007) hold in my hands "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke". And here is the quote from introduction to first story in the book - "Travel by Wire!": "'Travel by Wire!' was my first published story."

Actually, the later appears right. "Travel by Wire!" was published in 1937 in Amateur Science Fiction Stories; "Rescue Party" was first published May 1946 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction.

Based on Clarke's other remarks introducing "Travel by Wire!", he seems to think this was published in one of the fan magazines while "Rescue Party" was in a mainstream publication; also that Travel is probably of lower quality than his later works. I actually find Travel to be among his best stories.

Fact sheet.
Rescue Party, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Science fiction
First published: 1946 (in "Astounding Science Fiction")
Rating: A

Series: "Rescue Party" (A), "The Songs of Distant Earth" (A)

Collected in.

1. "Reach for tomorrow"
2. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
3. "Across the Sea of Stars"
4. "The Sentinel (collection)"
5. "More Than One Universe"
6. David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down"
   

"History Lesson" (short story): Perils of concluding from little evidence

This really is two stories rather than one - a doomsday story, & an ET story. Both themes appear to be rather dear to Clarke's heart - going by number of stories he has written on these themes. Title comes from second story.

Story summary (spoiler).
Let's first talk about the second story - since title is named from this.

Assume an alien race from skies comes across a single photographic movie reel, without sound, from earth, & were to try reconstructing our life & culture? It is this speculation that essentially occupies the second half. E.g., is the orifice that often opens & closes in the lower half of the top round portion of these erect bipeds some kind of breathing device! That is a sample.

First story reminds me of the story of 108 tribes in the epic novel "Return of the Aryans" by B S Gidwani. Aryans obviously came after Clarke's story, but most of its stories are based on very old Indian literature & archaeological records. I don't really know the connection - except that two stories are nearly identical - in tone, theme, as well as presentation.

A tribe of humans is running from a disaster, crossing mountains on its move southwards - in search of new life. In Aryans, the tribe was running from famine & crossing Himalayas; in this story, tribe is running from advancing glacier, & crossing an unnamed mountain.

Now, lets fill in the blanks. For some reason, the Sun has cooled - without any other obvious effects. This has set Venus towards becoming friendly for intelligent life, & has doomed earth in a permanent ice cover.

First story is the about last days of humanity - glaciers are advancing from north & south - meeting mountains near tropics. While mountains the tribe is crossing are not named, you might be able to guess.

While earth is dying, Venus is in bloom. Thousands of years hence, Venus is dominated by an intelligent lifeform that is essentially reptilian. As they discover space travel, & come examining the third icy planet that could never have held life, they detect a faint radio signal. A kind of atomic powered beacon was secured up in a mountain cairn by the last tribe of humans as a sacred relic, along with a few other things - among them the photographic motion picture.

Second story is the attempt to interpret these relics & reconstruct the life as it was on earth - by Venusians.

Now the silly part. There is an echo of this Venus bloom in Clarke's more recent novel - "2010 Odyssey Two". Venus has cooled in former; Europa has heated up in later. In both cases, a life-friendly world has been created, & evolution moves at speeds way beyond anything witnessed on earthly evolution. There is another twist to Venus tale - in just 5000 years since bloom, not only are there conscious beings, but space farers comparable in competence to modern humans! In 2010, at least it took 20,000 years to reach the stage of stone age humans. Never mind that dumb earthly humans took something on the scale of billion years to achieve these feats!

See also.

1. Earth turns into an icy wasteland at the end of "The Fountains of Paradise" also.
2. An alien ship also visits a barren earth at the end of "The Ghost from the Grand Banks", & after much searching, is able to pick up a beacon that tells the story of intelligent life that once flourished here.
   

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Across the Sea of Stars"

Fact sheet.
History Lesson, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Fantasy
First published: 1949
Rating: C
Listed in Contento's Top Ten Most Reprinted Stories.

"Transience" (short story): Good prose, but ...

This must be among the few somewhat confused stories by Clarke.

This doomsday story talks of earth's destruction, along with that of rest of solar system, & the coming & going of man without the slightest effects on the universe in the long run. That is theme behind the title.

Story summary (spoiler).
Of the four parts in the story, first is by far the most interesting. Tentative exploration of the world by a child who could have been the son of Moon Watcher in "2001 A Space Odyssey" - at the down of human history.

For the most part, it is not a sad story. For, the story is told through 3 young children, each playing alone on the same beach, but across vast gulfs of time. First is the child from the down of humanity. Second is a modern human child. Third is the child of among the last people to leave earth - for some unknown & safer destination.

There is not much given by the way of explanation as to why this doomsday is coming. Two pieces of news are offered:

• Solar system has moved close to the center of galaxy, from it familiar position far in one of the arms of the spiral. Why? Don't ask me.
• "Dark Nebula", whatever that is, is slowly creeping towards solar system. Or may be it is the other way around. Anyway, the two are about to meet. Since nebulae are where the new stars are born, our solar system will apparently become raw material from which the mother nature will shape new worlds eons hence.

I recall an Asimov novel where humans colonize a star system inside a nebula - to hide things from mainstream humanity. How come one nebula is so benign, & other so dangerous? Don't ask me.

I liked the part where the world is seen through the eyes of the first child. Other two are rather average. End is decidedly boring.

Fact sheet.
Transience, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: B

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "More Than One Universe"

"The Star" (short story): Interesting, if a bit religious

While I don't recall a Clarke's remark to the effect, the conclusion is unmistakable: this story as well as the novel "The Songs of Distant Earth" are essentially variants of Clarke's first published story - "Rescue Party".

All three share an identical doomsday scenario: the star shining on the home of an evolved life form explodes killing all life & planets. In Songs & Rescue Party, it is the Sun shining on earth that explodes; in this story, it is the sun shining on an alien world 3000 light years from earth that exploded 6000 years back.

Full text of this story is available online (link via BestScienceFictionStories), as also an MP3 version (link via SF Signal & Free SF Reader). I haven't seen either of these online version, but quick skimming of text version suggests it's the text I read.

Story summary (spoiler).
Humans have figured out a way of traveling really great distances - at least 3000 light years in less than a human life time. A survey ship comes upon this remnant of a star - a tiny version of its earlier self, surrounded by several concentric shells of dust that are still expanding & are what remains of its outer surface & planets after explosion.

But one outer planet about the distance of Pluto from our Sun survives - barely. Much of its outer ice covering is gone, but a rocky surface remains. That is where our surveyors land. And they find a vast building, & also some remnants of radio signals in rocks.

The building is a huge vault. Apparently, there were intelligent space travelers living on one of the inner worlds that no longer existed, but they had not yet mastered interstellar travel. They had taken extreme pains to stock the vault with the best of their culture & artifacts.

And they had taken a lot of pain in explaining this in a variety of ways to any intelligent aliens that might in future come upon what remained of their world. They did not want all signs of their existence wiped out. Now the humans are burdened & honored with paying homage to them & preserving their relics.

The story is told through a Jesuit priest on board the surveyor - in somewhat religious undertones.

Personally, I found both Songs & Rescue Party better stories. But this is not a bad story.

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "More Than One Universe"
3. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".

See also.

1. This story is unrelated to H G Wells' "The Star", which inspired Clarke's "The Hammer of God".
   
2. "Improving the Neighborhood" is a much shorter variant of this - but earth dies here, & aliens mull over the kind of sentients we were.
   
3. All stories with religion as a theme.

External links.

1. Jeff Vehige discusses this story from a Christian religious perspective. I am not familiar with Christianity, & could neither relate to those nuances, nor considered them important. But others might care.

Fact sheet.
The Star, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First published: 1955
Rating: B
Listed in Contento's Top Ten Most Reprinted Stories.

"If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth ..." (short story): Sad & nostalgic

One of the less entertaining stories by Clarke. It is yet another of the many doomsday stories in the aftermath of World War II - dealing with radioactive destruction of earth.

Story summary (spoiler).

Story is almost entirely descriptive & flashback, with few dialogs. In the Armageddon, all life on earth is destroyed. Only human survivors are those living in a colony on moon. Story is told through the eyes of a 10 year old, & is essentially a wistful longing for the world that was.

See also.

1. Other stories with nearly the same subject matter: Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains", & Arthur Clarke's "The Curse". Bradbury's version is the lightest read.

Fact sheet.

"If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth ...", short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First published: Originally "written at Christmas 1950", & published in Future, September 1951
Rating: C

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Expedition to Earth"
3. "Of Time and Stars"
4. "Across the Sea of Stars"

"The Next Tenants" (short story): Obsolating humans!

This is actually a rather well written doomsday story in the backdrop of World War II & atom bomb.

Story summary (spoiler).
On a lonely island somewhere in Pacific, a lone scientist is engaged in what could pass as a National Geographic story on social behavior of termites - only the real story goes a bit deeper.

Thinking on the lines that a human is essentially a colony of dumb cells, this man wants to make a smart termite colony out of dumb individual termites! Feeling hopeless about the future of humans, he wants someone to inherit our legacy - & super-termites fit his bill.

He breeds termite colonies, figures out ways of listening to their conversations, ordering them about, & teaching them. This teaching takes a form similar in spirit to that used by ETs against pre-humans in first story of Clarke's "2001 A Space Odyssey". He has also set up periscope type instruments that let him visually see what the individual termites are doing inside a colony - in infrared spectrum, of course, for termites don't like the light colors that we find interesting.

By the time the story unfolds, he has already taught them the use of certain tools - including a sledge for moving things around. He teaches to one colony, & other colonies learn via their mysterious communications. And they improve on these devices. He is about to teach them the use of fire; wheel is still a while away.

Will his super-termites ever stand a chance against humans - for a fight is inevitable in future: "what use would man's weapons be against an intelligent enemy who could lay waste all the wheat fields and all the rice crops in the world?"

There are many termite facts, at least some of which I know to be true - because I had done some research on termite behavior a couple of years back when they ate up some of my furniture; I am not sure about others. Here are some samples from this story:

1. "They're among the most highly evolved of the social insects, & live in vast colonies throughout tropics. They cannot stand cold weather, nor, oddly enough, can they endure direct sunlight. When they have to get from one place to another, they construct little covered roadways. They seem to have some unknown and almost instantaneous means of communication, and though the individual termites are pretty helpless & dumb, a whole colony behaves like an intelligent animal."
2. "they not only cultivate gardens but also keep cows - inset cows, of course - and milk them".
3. "We went out into the open, and walked past the avenues of tall, cement hard mounds. They were not all of the same architectural designs, for there are many different kinds of termites - some, indeed, don't build mounds at all."

Interesting reading.

Fact sheet.
The Next Tenants, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Science fiction
First published: 1956
Rating: A

See also.

1. Stephen Baxter's "Sheena 5": Humans genetically enhance squid for a certain use, & end up in a situation where they will probably be replaced with squid as dominant species!
   
2. A minor sub-plot towards the end of "The Light of Other Days" claims that all organic life on earth is the result of benign push delivered by sulfur-based intelligent beings that existed on earth billions of years ago.
   

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "Tales from the White Hart"
2. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
3. "Across the Sea of Stars"

"The Nine Billion Names of God" (short story): Amusing computer specifications

A second rate doomsday story.

Full text of this story is available online (link via Best Science Fiction Stories), as also is an MP3 version (link via SF Signal & Free SF Reader). I haven't seen either of online versions, but quick skimming of text version suggests it's the story I read.

Story summary (spoiler).
Some monks in a monastery in Tibet have been researching the real names of God for 3 centuries - apparently, the familiar names of god are not good enough.

They know the written real names of god will be exactly 9 letters long - letters drawn from their special alphabet. And no more than 3 consecutive occurrences of the same letter are permitted.

Problem is to write down all permutations of characters meeting these criteria. When a correct name is spelled, the universe we know will lose meaning.

Monks have been doing this permutation writing for 3 centuries. Now they think the computers can speed the job up - from several more centuries to a few months.

A computer that sounds like a mainframe is brought, along with 2 programmers for 3 months. These permutations are printed & painstakingly filed on paper.

Programmers were brought on-site without telling them why the enumerations are being printed. One the them learns the purpose, & is worried monks will blame them when the last permutation is printed & world keep on whirring the way it always has had. They invent a way to delay the project completion - so they will be on their way home when last permutation is printed.

While programmers are on their way back, the machine prints last permutation. When programmers look up the sky, they find the stars are rapidly vanishing.

There is one silly point, & many amusing ones. Silly is - what are the odds that target name is the last one printed!

Amusing ones relate to description of computer & programming. They tell the age of the story - it is from 50s; of course, Clarke must have been quite up to date when he wrote the story. Here are some quotes I especially liked:

• "Your Mark V Computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. We wish you to modify the output circuits ..."
• "A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession."
• "The components" of computer "are small enough to travel by air".

See also.

1. An in-passing inconsequential remark referring to this story is found in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", & in a misquoted form in Eric Frank Russell's hilarious "Next of Kin".
2. All stories with religion as a theme.

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Of Time and Stars"
3. "More Than One Universe"
4. Robert Silverberg (Ed)'s "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1964".

External links.

1. Since this is amongst the most collected stories of Clarke, opinions on it are bound to differ. My friend Rusty has a more positive review of this story.

Fact sheet.
The Nine Billion Names of God, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Rating: C
Listed in Contento's Top Ten Most Reprinted Stories.

"The Songs of Distant Earth" (novel): Unputdownable!

While this 20 year old book is not among my all time top five science fiction novels, it must come among those immediately after them. Fast paced, very readable, & one of the most optimistic treatments of doomsday in fiction. And some very interesting ideas for the technical minded.

Note that this story is essentially an expanded & better developed form of "Rescue Party" - mother of all Clarke fiction.

Story summary (spoiler).
Main story is about the visit (to pick up supplies) to a small isolated community by a group of visitors on their way to a far off place. In a very exotic background & locale, 1500 years in future.

Story has a cooked up doomsday background: there is laboratory evidence that Sun is about to die by exploding - means the end of solar system, including earth. And you don't have warp drive or space drive or similar contraptions of Star Trek ilk. Any action is to be based on nearly current level of human knowledge. You are given a few hundred years to prepare for it.

This background description actually occupies very few pages, & in flashback. Action occurs on a little watery world (remember Hollywood movie Waterworld?) 50 light years from earth.

There are a few sad & nostalgic pages, but mostly a very optimistic drama about the best that makes us human.

An energy source.
Among a variety of cool devices described, there is one I had never heard of before. After some checking in physics literature, I know I am not the only optimist (yeah - I know wishful thinking!) that some day our energy problems might be solved by an unconventional source with a rather exotic name - "zero-point energy".

It is a physical phenomenon first described in 1913 by Albert Einstein & Otto Stern: every volume of space, including interstellar vacuum, is bubbling with an "absurdly huge" amount of energy visible only at a microscopic level.

A bit of googling threw it up as one of the biggest hurdles in today's nanotechnology - small structures are exposed to so much energy they keep getting twisted & torn! There are hints on web of credible projects currently on based on the hope we can tap this energy.

Trivia.
This novel is an expansion of a 3 decade older short story of the same name, according to Clarke's introduction to shorter version in "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke". Short was first published in "If", Jun 1958. I haven't read the shorter version yet.

Fact sheet.
The Songs of Distant Earth, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Science fiction
First published: 1986
Rating: A

Series: "Rescue Party" (A), "The Songs of Distant Earth" (A)

See also.

1. Songs carries unmistakable influence of Clarke's short story "The Star" published 3 decades earlier. Both share the same doomsday scenario.
2. Plot of this novel, & also of "The Star", is very similar to that of "Rescue Party" - first story ever published by Clarke.
3. "Improving the Neighborhood" also has zero-point energy, but it makes earth & moon explode in an accident!
   
4. Alastair Reynolds' "Turquoise Days" appears to have borrowed a plot element from Songs.
   

The novel is also included in the following collections.

1. "The Sentinel (collection)" (unless there is another short story version with the same title!)
2. "More Than One Universe" (unless there is another short story version with the same title!)

"Childhood's End" (novel): Religion & mysticism sold as second rate science fiction

There are parts that are interesting, but I would not have missed this doomsday novel had I never laid my hands on it.

This book is essentially a reiteration of the idea of moksha as the ultimate purpose of life - as preached by any number of Hindu sects over the millennia. See note below.

Story summary (spoiler).
One fine day in 21st century (or is it 2oth - I forget) massive alien ships appear over major cities in the world. These aliens quickly subdue humanity, preach Clarke's morals, unite all the world's countries in one big government, etc. And are referred to by mere mortals as "Overlords". That is the first part. I generally found in totally pointless.

This first part is an expanded version of the short story "Guardian Angel" (1950), according to Clarke's introduction to this story in "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke". It's nearly the same text, but uses far fewer words; I found the shorter version a better reading.

Later half is where you have the sole tiny interesting story in the entire book - a smart mortal rebels, figures out the location of Overlord's Sun, & manages to board one of the Overlord commuter ships as a stowaway to visit their world.

Much of the second half can be seen a two separate stories.

1. A fantasy where our stowaway lands on the Overlords' world, & sees sights that are supposed to be eye-popping.
2. Other story is essentially of moksha - any number of Hindu sects have preached it over the centuries. There is an equivalent of Hindu Brahm - a kind of universal all capable mind that is essentially infinitely capable. We are told it was this universal mind whose bidding the Overlords do (more Hindu mythology); I think Clarke uses the term "Overmind" for this universal mind. And that Overlords have come to earth to prepare humans over the age of 10 for the doomsday that will see the end of humanity as a separate species. Through a what can be seen as miracle, kids below the age of 10 merge with universal mind. Adults lose interest in life & die out. End of the book is quick evaporation of whole earth into oblivion.

Moksha as a popular concept in modern India.
Moksha is essentially a merger of a living entity, including humans, into brahm - a kind of infinitely capable universal presence or mind - after death.

So you will be freed from the cycle of reincarnations - said to be a desirable goal, because it saves you the effort of living. Any number of sects in India preach this everyday, often using very colorful imagery, along with a recommended code of living that will help you attain this objective.

Note that brahm is also known by many other names.

The Wikipedia article on the subject is far from authoritative, but gives a general feel of the subject in a more learned language & in more detail.

Fact sheet.
Childhood's End, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First published: 1953
Rating: C

See also:

1. "Guardian Angel" (1950): Short story that is the starting point of "Childhood's End".
   
2. "The Light of Other Days": Another second rate story that attempts to define a different variant of hive intelligence as the ultimate purpose of human existence.
   
3. All Clarke stories with aliens, or doomsday as theme
4. All stories with religion as a theme.

The novel is also included in the following collections.

1. "Across the Sea of Stars"