Clarke and the unexpected
Aug. 19th, 2003 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinSomething I've noticed lately: Many novels and stories by Arthur C. Clarke involve the interaction between people and grand events, often astronomical in nature, over which they have no control. Take this too far and you get stories in which the characters are passive bystanders who don't really do much, like in too many "Space: 1999" episodes. Clarke occasionally falls into that trap, especially in his later work (say, 2061, which had me wondering where the other half of the book went). But more often he strikes an interesting balance.
The plot of Earthlight has mostly to do with espionage against the background of imminent war between Earth and the colonized planets. But at the same time, the lunar observatory at which the story takes place is excitedly watching the first supernova in our galaxy in hundreds of years.
In Rendezvous with Rama, the space-monitoring system that finds the alien Rama ship is set up after a catastrophic asteroid impact that wipes out half of Italy. Rama itself comes and goes and performs its mysterious tasks of its own accord-- all the characters can really do is react to it. But Clarke manages to get an interesting adventure out of it anyway.
The case that surprised me the most was The Fountains of Paradise. The novel is mostly about the struggle to build a geosynchronous space elevator (with historical flashbacks to a slightly alternate-history version of ancient Sri Lanka). But halfway through the story, an alien artificial intelligence suddenly visits our solar system, chats amiably with everyone for a while, then goes on its way.
I don't think that your typical textbook authority on fiction writing will tell you to pull this kind of thing-- it's not considered fair play. The story is supposed to come out of the interactions of the characters after you've provided the setup. But in Clarke at his best, it just provides some of the surprise you get in the real world, perhaps too often.
The plot of Earthlight has mostly to do with espionage against the background of imminent war between Earth and the colonized planets. But at the same time, the lunar observatory at which the story takes place is excitedly watching the first supernova in our galaxy in hundreds of years.
In Rendezvous with Rama, the space-monitoring system that finds the alien Rama ship is set up after a catastrophic asteroid impact that wipes out half of Italy. Rama itself comes and goes and performs its mysterious tasks of its own accord-- all the characters can really do is react to it. But Clarke manages to get an interesting adventure out of it anyway.
The case that surprised me the most was The Fountains of Paradise. The novel is mostly about the struggle to build a geosynchronous space elevator (with historical flashbacks to a slightly alternate-history version of ancient Sri Lanka). But halfway through the story, an alien artificial intelligence suddenly visits our solar system, chats amiably with everyone for a while, then goes on its way.
I don't think that your typical textbook authority on fiction writing will tell you to pull this kind of thing-- it's not considered fair play. The story is supposed to come out of the interactions of the characters after you've provided the setup. But in Clarke at his best, it just provides some of the surprise you get in the real world, perhaps too often.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-19 11:47 pm (UTC)Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-20 12:18 am (UTC)And I assumed at first that it was, as you say, the Blitz Mentality, or a reaction to the loss of empire in the 20th century. But it's actually older than that-- you can see it in Olaf Stapeldon (where Clarke might have gotten it) and certainly in H. G. Wells. And it's older than them too; British popular writers were going on about this stuff endlessly in the 19th century.
I don't entirely understand it. It's not like Japanese popular movies, where you can trace it pretty clearly to World War II combined with a natural preoccupation with earthquakes and tsunamis.
Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-21 09:32 pm (UTC)Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-22 12:28 am (UTC)Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-22 01:04 am (UTC)The most ridiculously pulpy of his novels that I've read is Double, Double (1969), which includes scientists, nasty journalists, rock musicians (in a band called !), and an evil monster from the deep that probably resembles the T-1000 more than anything else. I enjoyed it a lot. One of the things about it that gave me some enjoyment is that after you read it you could spend a fair amount of time recombining the different elements of the book in different ways that would result in completely different plots. Not necessarily to everyone's taste, of course.
Time-Jump (1973) is a nifty collection of short stories of his that I recommend highly. Most of the stories contain a lot of dark humor. Also, there are a bunch of selections from a Consumer Reports-type magazine from the far future, where products such as wish-granting machines and cut-rate time machines are reviewed.
The whole 'humanity is destroyed' thing is present in some of the earliest works of his I have, but I think that as time wore on there was more and more of an underlying theme that humanity pretty much had it coming, which trend culminated in the latest work of his that I own, the incredibly evil Children of the Thunder (1988), which was so misanthropic that I couldn't really deal with it and, after I finished reading it, I vowed never to read it again.
Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-22 07:12 am (UTC)Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-24 02:49 pm (UTC)Re: What would you call that?
Date: 2003-08-25 04:18 pm (UTC)