The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Engineers, Monks, Aliens, and an Elevator to the Stars "The sort of man who will never be happy unless [he is] shaping the universe," 22nd-century engineer Vannemar Morgan made his name on earth by building a bridge linking Europe and Africa, but his ambitious new project is of another order of magnitude: to make a bridge from the earth to the stars by constructing a 40,000 km tall space elevator, or "Orbital Tower." Morgan believes that the elevator would be a boon to humanity, largely replacing rocket technology by being 100 times more efficient and cheaper and less polluting, reinvigorating the moribund 200-year-old space age, and making the (fictional Ceylon-like) quiet island country of Taprobane the launching center for the solar system and even the universe. Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise (1979) is a traditional hard sf novel with plenty of scientific and technological details and sublime descriptions of natural and artificial wonders old and new. Clarke imagines a World Government running the future earth, with colonies on the moon and Mars and war an embarrassing thing of humanity's past. Writing in the late 70s, Clarke foresaw things like a global computer network that would enable people to use their Personal Internet Profiles to subscribe to news topics of interest, individual identity numbers, and smart heart monitoring devices. This is an adult novel, for Clarke narrates only from the points of view of middle-aged or older characters and does no nostalgic idealizing of childhood, as for Morgan "The dreams of childhood had been far surpassed by the [engineering] reality of adult life." Clarke goes to town researching, imagining, and describing the science, technology, and engineering required to accomplish Morgan's project, "an enterprise to fire the imagination and stir the soul." There are, for instance, the crucial hyperfilament cables made of "continuous pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystals," thinner than spider thread, to be manufactured in zero-gravity factories, up and down which cables the capsules carrying freight and passengers will travel. The other end of the "bridge" will be a satellite about 40,000 km up in synchronized orbit around the earth. The Midway Station over half way up will anchor the tens of thousands of kilometers of hyperfilament cables. Clarke also details the economics of the project, including organizing its funding, and some of the politics behind it, including Morgan trying to hide his project from his conservative and envious boss. Perhaps the most interesting detail, however, is the religious problem. The earth end of the elevator can only be placed in one spot, the tall Taprobane mountain peak of Sri Kanda, due to its position on the equator, extraordinary height, and freedom from gravitational anomalies. And there atop the sacred peak just happens to be a 2000+ year old Buddhist monastery populated by intractable monks who don't want any noisy, busy, new-fangled projects like Morgan's to interfere with their quiet, contemplative spiritual life. Much of the novel seems to paint humanity's religious inclinations and conflicts (centuries of "pious gibberish") in the galactic context as a childlike step needing to be outgrown. The Star Glider, an AI-driven probe launched by advanced aliens 60,000 years ago to travel throughout the galaxy contacting developed life forms, says things to the human scientists communicating with it things like, "Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction," and "I am unable to distinguish clearly between your religious ceremonies and apparently identical behaviour at the sporting and cultural functions you have transmitted to me. I refer particularly to the Beatles, 1965, the World Soccer Final, 2046; and the Farewell appearance of the Johann Sebastian Clones, 2056." And yet Clarke also treats the spiritual leanings of human beings with sympathy, as in the enigmatic face of an old bust of Buddha ("The eyes of the Buddha were completely blank--empty pools in which a man might lose his soul, or discover a universe"), or the ancient legend of butterfly warriors ("There is something very strange about a universe where a few dead butterflies can balance a billion ton tower"). And at one point the eminently practical atheist Morgan says, with only partial irony, "now I know that the gods are on my side, whatever gods may be." Like other novels by Clarke (e.g., 2001 and Childhood's End), this one is more interested in big ideas about civilization, nature, technology, science, religion, humanity, mortality, immortality, and the like than in well-rounded characters. Morgan is not overly compelling. His reporter friend, Maxine Duvall, muses that his intense drive and ruthless ambition make him "both larger than life and less than human." He has never married, has no children and relatively few friends, has no vices, isn't prey to self-doubt, and is cool in an emergency. The novel, however, is not just a dry account of a future engineering feat in an almost post-religious context. There is an extended exciting, if somewhat unlikely, scene in which Morgan (sixty-six and heart-compromised) attempts to bring some vital supplies to some astronomers stranded 600 km up the elevator. And Clarke at times exhibits a playful side, whether in cosmic ironies, like the name the space elevator goes by 1500 years after its construction, and in chapter epigraphs quoting works on psychology, religion, and science from real world historical figures like Freud and from fictional ones like a book by R. Gabor published by Miskatonic UP in 2069. Marc Vietor is a good reader for the auidobook, suitable for Clarke's objective narration and thoughtful approach to his subjects. People who like traditional, hard sf dealing greatly with the differences (and similarities) between science and religion should like this Hugo and Nebula-winning novel. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University