"The Light of Other Days" (novel): Eminently forgettable

This is easily among the worst novels I have ever read. And not just by Clarke, or in English.

Almost every para is a jargon-filled garble. One of the most unreadable & tedious books, & without any kind of coherent story.

I forced myself to read first 20% without skipping anything. Then began skipping paras, later pages. There is a whole lot of pages I skipped, but I am completely sure I didn't miss anything of significance!

This book deserves to be in garbage bin rather than on a bookshelf.

Story summary (spoiler).
Key actors are the main protagonist, Hiram Patterson, & his two sons - Bobby Patterson (his clone), & David Curzon. Hiram is a brilliant but ruthless entrepreneur, is working to become immortal, & is portrayed as an extremely dislikable character.

Most of the story is set during a few years beginning 2034; last 20% is set in 2080s; & last few pages are set centuries later.

Main story revolves round a gadget called "WormCam" that Hiram's company invented. A device that acts as a soundless video camera whose lens is virtual - located anywhere in the universe, & at present or at any past time! Where & when targets need to be specified by operator.

Most of the pages are filled with enumeration of the kind of applications made possible by this device - with hardly any story.

Towards the end, when we move to 2080s, the world has changed. Mankind is in the process of redefining itself as a "Joined" organism - a kind of hive intelligence where brains of individuals are linked together via some derivative of WormCam. These linkages are initially done surgically; later, babies are born with these features genetically inherited! It is easy to see an attempt to define the ultimate goal of human existence, in the tradition of "Childhood's End".

We are also told, a few pages before end, that organic life exists on earth because of benign push given billions of years ago by intelligent creatures with sulfur-based chemistry that were also native to earth, & swent extinct soon after because of a meteorite impact. This description reminded me of "The Next Tenants".

End, centuries later, has a single incident where future descendants of humans can talk to those in the past - in the tradition of "The Parasite", though with better intentions. And they plan to resurrect every human that has ever lived & died in the past! In fact, while introducing "The Parasite" in "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke", Clarke notes that Parasite "may have been the subconscious basis for the novel The Light of Other Days".

Fact sheet.
The Light of Other Days, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke, & Stephen Baxtor
First published: 1999 (?)
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: C

See also.

1. Palador of "Rescue Party" is the first occurrence of hive intelligence in a story by Clarke.
2. This story has style-similarity with "The City & the Stars". Both attempt to squeeze in every known sf theme in the story! But City is a very readable book.

Notes.

1. Time travel in this story actually involves viewing events of time now in remote past. There is no physical movement to remote time.
   

"Richter 10" (novel): Taming the earthquakes

First half of this book is outstanding; next quarter is good; last quarter is positively lousy, & completely unrelated to rest of the story.

The most irritating thing I find in all Clarkian novels - the tendency to spend a lot of time on threads totally unrelated to main story - is here in full glory. In spite of this, I have no hesitation in calling the first half the best among all Clarkian novels I have reviewed to date (current one is #17).

This story is actually not written by Clarke. It was written by late Mike McQuay to outline provided by Clarke - in a manner similar to Rama sequels.

Story summary (spoiler).

The story spans the lifetime of the main protagonist, Lewis Crane, beginning late 20th century.

There are three memorable scenes in the story, all in first half: a little boy rendered a cripple & an orphan by an earthquake in US; a callous administration letting an entire village die unnecessarily in Japan; & unscrupulous politicians & businessmen letting thousands die unnecessarily in big quake in US. Each of these scenes borders on horror, & yet there is a lot of optimism.

First scene introduces the hero, Lewis Crane. In a milder, but still very moving, variant of similar opener in Jean Auel's "The Clan of Cave Bear", the little boy loses use one arm, his parents, & his house in an earthquake in California.

Next we encounter Crane as an adult, world's foremost expert on earthquakes, a Nobel laureate, a top grade entrepreneur, & founder of the Foundation - his research organization. And now finally ready with his first big earthquake prediction months in advance - at a Japanese island called Sodo. The quake will destroy most of the island, & one entire inhabited village called Aikawa.

Only trouble is: no one believes Crane. Villagers & local government are unhappy because this prediction has ruined tourist traffic. Crane has collected world media for the event at a small spot on the island that will survive, & but a lot of media is covering the event from air.

And here we get the second big scene. Mayor arrives with cops to arrest Crane & deport him because they see him as scaremonger. That is when the quake hits. Everything is to prediction. When the dust settles, the village is a beach.

Crane is now a celebrity & harbinger of the evil. That is when he decides to raise funds for his bigger & super secret project: banish quakes by stopping all tectonic activity - by fusing together the plates comprising earth's crust at strategic places, about 50 locations in all. Using atomic bombs in a way that will direct their power towards earth's core, without any damage to surface.

Next major scene is a big quake prediction in some parts of the US bordering Mississippi river; in between, we have seen Crane directing rescue at a volcano (Pelee) affected island (Martinique) in the Mediterranean - but that was a minor thread. Only problem is: elections are soon due, & someone has figured a way to benefit from the quake. In a bizarre twist, field data of Foundation is intercepted & forged by the villain. Result is: Crane prediction is too soon by a few months. Crane loses credibility.

When Crane figures out the reason, & the fact that quack is still coming, there is a problem in communication - he needs to get credibility. Enter Harry Whetstone, his billionaire benefactor & friend. He convinces Harry to bet most of his $3b wealth on his prediction. And our friends go public with a wager: at 2:1 odds, our friends offer wagers of $50 each that quake will happen on new date. Wager is quickly lapped up.

Come D-day. Government is publicly denying any quake possibility. Public is against our friends, though there are sympathizers. In a relief camp set up at a safe location near to-be-worst-affected areas, Crane & his benefactor are arrested.

Of course, the quake hits as predicted. Our friends are on the scene directing relief. Crane emerges larger than life after the event. He has returned the $3b borrowed from friend, & now has enough money for his Foundation from the won wager that he no longer need depend on any external sources.

To kickstart his big project - the fusing of tectonic plates, Crane has some help from earth. About 20 years down, there will be a quake that will split much of California from rest of US, & make it a Pacific island. With widespread loss of life & property. And this event can be avoided - by putting the first "spot weld" joint somewhere in western US that will also substantially cut down the number of quakes worldwide.

He enlists political support, sets up a secure facility on the lines of US bomb making project in 1940s.

Rest of the story, about a quarter of the book, is bizarre - to say the least. And second rate, at least to me. And links with many tangent threads that have already been introduced into the story.

Falling apart of Crane with his main technical man Dan; Dan joining a muslim fundamentalist organization; terrorist attack on the secure facility that destroys the facility & kills Crane's wife & child; formation of an Islamic state within US. And introduction of more tangent threads - creation of a colony on moon, & their mining of water from permafrost on Mars rather than from Earth!

Among the other tangent threads in the story are: Middle East as a radioactive wasteland, a radioactive cloud that has been moving around earth for decades, ozone layer gone, Europe & US as Third World, & the world dominated by Africa & China. At one stage, we are told the world is 70% muslim, & US is mostly black & hispanic! These threads spread all through the book.

There is a stage where some sanity could have been introduced into the plot. Dan's key technical objection to Crane's fusion project are probably sound: there would not have been any life on earth if earth could not renew itself with tectonic activity; how do you know you are not banishing future life from earth? But this angle is never developed & quickly abandoned.

The book describes a lot of tech toys - brain implants, mood enhancing drugs, wrist-worn computers, projector-based televisions that normally use clouds & outside of public buildings as display surfaces, aural implants, flying cars, ... I wonder why just quake taming was not enough sf!

End of the book is the big quake in California. Crane & Dan have made peace, & will be committing suicide in the quake together!

Key characters.

1. Lewis Crane: Hero - the man who will banish the earthquakes.
2. Dan Newcombe aka Abu Talib: Close associate of Crane. The man who imparts mathematical rigor into Crane's predictions.
3. Lanie King: A computer simulation expert. Girlfriend of Dan, & later wife of Crane.
4. Harry Whetstone: Billionaire friend & benefactor of Crane. Plays a crucial role at one point in the plot.
5. Burt Hill: Kind of majordomo of Crane. The man of administration who ensures Crane can focus on important things, & not have to worry about details.
6. Sumi Chan: A Chinese woman in US who has faked her appearance, & hidden her sex from world for some weird & unfathomable reason. People think she is a he. Rises to be a US president in his male avatar, & later becomes second wife of Crane.
7. Kate Masters: A politician, & a friend of Lanie & Chan.
8. Mohammed Ishmael: A separatist & a terrorist. Prominent through the book, but is part of a tangent plot unrelated to main story.

Fact sheet.

Richter 10, novel, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke & (Late) Mike McQuay
First published: 1996
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: A

See also.

1. Jean Auel's "The Clan of Cave Bear": Opener where a child is the only survivor of an earthquake is very similar. Though Jean's story is more heartrending.
2. Robert Heinlein's first published story, "Life-Line" (1939). There is much similarity in plot - both stories involve predicting something that is well beyond our current capabilities, both see the main protagonist die at the end, & in both, the main protagonist plays a similar stunt to get recognition from public as a prophet rather than a charlatan - by betting a large sum of money with whoever prove the prophet wrong.
   
3. "The Ghost from the Grand Banks" has some very similar earthquake scenes. Also, volcano Pelee on islands named Martinique is involved.
   

"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

"Big Game Hunt" (short story): How about playing God?

This story is very similar to "Patent Pending". Both the device involved & principles involved are the same; but application is different.

Story summary (spoiler).
While understanding ECG maps of nervous system are very difficult, we know that they do represent the mental activity.

Here is the thesis of this story: Suppose I record the ECG of some lowly creature while it is doing some very simple activity - like a slug taking a right turn. Can I then drive this creature to do this activity at my pleasure by simply playing back this recording? Sounds like it will interest some pervert, but that is what this story is about.

Our inventor is happy doing these experiments beginning with very low forms of life, & then moving up the chain of life. Until an entrepreneur gets interested.

The entrepreneur actually has very modest intentions, given the scope of the machine. He simply wants to film the Clarke's favorite monster, the giant squid, in convenient surroundings & at leisure.

PS: Actually, the device described is slightly different: you need to fit electrodes physically into the nervous issue of animal, if I recall correctly. But that doesn't change anything basic about the story. And the final hunt is anyway remotely done.

Fact sheet.
Big Game Hunt, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First published: 1954
Rating: B

See also.

1. "Patent Pending": This story also has a similar ECG recording & playback device, but it is intended for distributing porn.
   
2. "The Ultimate Melody": This story is similar in that a device is used to tinker with electrical activity of the brain. But the control is exercised through auditory signals rather than clumsy electrodes.
   
3. "The Deep Range": Another story that devotes a side track to a hunt for the giant squid. Here, the squid is captures to become an exhibit in a zoo.
   

The story appears in the following collections.

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

"The Ultimate Melody" (short story): Why do you like some music tracks, but not others?

This must be one of the very few Clarkian stories that border on being somewhat philosophical.

Story summary (spoiler).
We know about circadian rhythms - those bodily cycles that said to be linked to your body's clock. I am not sure if these are what Clarke means by rhythms of the mind, but let's assume they are the same - for the purpose of this article.

Here is the central thesis of this story: When an ECG machine captures the activity of your brain, what we see on display is a wavy thing that looks like it's rhythmic. And these rhythms vary with stimulus, moods, health, etc. Could likable music's rythms have something in common with these mind rhythms?

So the hero, a doctor specializing in brain activity gets interested in the correlation. And a businessman is interested too - far, how much money can be made by a music publisher if you could always produce hit tunes?

Well - the search for the ultimate melody, to which all hit music is supposed to be but a crude approximation, is ultimately found. And a major disaster results!

Fact sheet.
The Ultimate Melody, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
First published: 1956
Rating: A

See also.

1. Henry Kuttner's "Nothing but Gingerbread Left": Uses a similar idea - employing the power of catchy chants as a weapon during an alternate version of World War II.
   
2. "Patent Pending": Another story by Clarke that involves a machine that lets you experience virtual reality. But nothing else is common between these two stories.
3. "Big Game Hunt": Another story involving direct manipulation of nervous system's electrical activity to generate desirable behavior.
   

Collected in.

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

"Patent Pending" (short story): Ultimate virtual reality!

Key concept in this little story is a machine that makes your audio system & television obsolete: record your experience, store it in a memory device, sell it as equivalent of a DVD, & someone else can play it back using his playback device.

While speculation on interpreting brainwaves is abundant, this is the first time I have read about recording your experience, & then someone else experiencing it using the playback device. There is an assumption that we are all intrinsically capable of experience that any other human can have - something far from proven. But ignore that, & I have no doubt the far off future will bring something similar about.

Story summary (spoiler).
Story begins with someone having a very good meal in a first class restaurant, recording the experience, & then hoping to sell this experience to poor souls that cannot afford an expensive restaurant!

But it quickly hits the bull's eye - perfect technology for distributing porn. Much of the story is concerned with this.

In the background is something that most Indians can easily identify with: banned "sinful activities" tend to be the most effective publicity medium for sin vendors. We are too used to see banned books, movies, TV channels & programs, sinful foods, ... - and how those bans work!

Some parts are dated - like tape as a recording device, or playback device that is as small as a television set! But key parts are still relevant. And very readable.

Fact sheet.
Patent Pending, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Science fiction
First published: 1954
Rating: A

See also.

1. "The Ultimate Melody": Another story by Clarke that involves a machine that lets you experience virtual reality. But nothing else is common between these two stories.
2. "Big Game Hunt": Story with identical idea of recording bran waves & playing them back. But with a different application.
   

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "Tales from the White Hart"
2. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
3. "More Than One Universe"