The Many Voices of Sir Arthur C. Clarke

I'll be reading a lot of Clarke's books this year. Mostly they are re-reads, but they are old friends and I like to revisit old friends every now and again. Some I have read or re-read relatively recently, others I have not visited for decades.

Like Simak, Clarke is a master of sparse writing. We need that every now and again, too much of a good thing, over and over again, becomes boring. It is not that Clarke lacks for ideas, any one of his books, even short stories, have enough ideas to keep several other authors busy for a long time.

And look at some of the subject matter covered! The Fountains of Paradise with space elevators, those puppies maight actually become reality. The Hammer of God with rogue comets; look at our recent efforts with Deep Impact. While it may be a long time before we see the quantum overdrive of The Songs of Distant Earth, there seems to be something going on in "empty space".

It has been said that Clarke does not do characters well. Upon reading some of these again, I tend to disagree. There are some finely drawn characters in books such as The Ghost from Grand Banks and The Songs of Distant Earth. Many of the short stories in The Wind from the Sun have excellent characters.

And even if he doesn't "do characters", he can raise a lot of emotions. The grand sweep of time, the grand scale of the cosmos, the end of the Earth, the meeting with aliens (on Earth or in the Universe). Wonderful stuff!

To be honest, the reason I'm reading and re-reading so much of his stuff is because of what I've heard recently about Clarke's health. I'm visiting with an ailing friend, one who has had almost as much influence on me as any relative. Perhaps through the visit, I'll help him get better.

The Ghost from Grand Banks: One of several books in which Clarke explores his love of the story of the Titanic. This book is probably the closest to our own time of any Clarke's books, in fact, much of the story is already in the past. Some interesting stuff about obsession (of several kinds) plus fractals and the genius of mathematics.

The Hammer of God: Clarke's contribution to the killer comet/asteroid sub-genre. In fact, the book was optioned by the folks that made the movie Deep Impact.

Rendezvous With Rama: This was Clarke's first novel past 2001: A Space Odyssey and remains one of my favorites. It's a typical "compact" novel where ideas are sprinkled throughout that would take volumes for other authors to explore (contrast this slim book and all of its ideas with the three sequels "co-written" with Gentry Lee and you'll see what I mean). Rama is a mystery object, discovered falling towards the Solar System. First thought to be a comet or asteroid, it is discovered to be a vast artificial structure, a ship, a sort of extraterrestrial Noah's Ark. A ship from Earth manages to rendezvous with Rama and the crew makes their way inside to explore. Not as big as Niven's Ringworld, Clarke does a better job of conveying the vastness of this artificial structure. Political intrigue, strange aliens, incomprehensible technology, even Clarke's first use of s-e-x. Highly recommended.

The Songs of Distant Earth: Expanded from a story that he wrote relatively early on in his career. One of his best when it comes to character realizations, and chock-full (as usual with more ideas per page than most other authors explore throughout an entire book. One of his best.

The Wind from the Sun: This collection contains stories that Clarke wrote after the Space Age began (earlier collections, e.g., Tales from Ten Worlds, The Other Side of the Sky, Reach for Tomorrow, etc., were all written before Sputnik.) Some are set in space, some set underwater and some set in various places on Earth. It's a fine mix, especially A Meeting with Medusa and its hair-raising trip into the atmosphere of Jupiter using a "hot air" balloon. You can get all these (plus Clarke's other short stories to date) in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (a fine collection, but marred by lousy proofreading on the part of the collection's editor).

Contents: The Food of the Gods; Maelstrom II; The Shining Ones; The Secret; The Last Command; Dial F for Frankenstein; Reunion; Playback; The Light of Darkness; The Longest Science-Fiction Story Ever Told; Herbert George Morely Roberts Wells, Esq.; Love That Universe; Crusade; The Cruel Sky; Neutron Tide; Transit of Earth; A Meeting with Medusa.

Counts as 18 entries in the 2005 Short Story Project.