Episode: 4540
Title: Arthur C. Clarke: Other Novels, Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4540/hpr4540.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:30 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4540, for 2025-12-26
Today's show is entitled, "Arthur C. Clarke: Other Novels, Part 1"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:14:20
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "A look at some of Arthur C. Clarke's other novels."
Hello, this is Huka welcome you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our ongoing
series on science fiction and fantasy and we've been working through some of the works of Arthur
Seek Clark. We looked at two of his big series. Now I want to get back to some of his
other novels of interest. We might get several shows on those and there's just one more series that I can
talk about. But the first thing I want to do is just kind of slip this in as a footnote
so to speak to all of this. Something called the Clark Azimov Treaty. Now this is kind of a in-joke
sort of thing. But the fact is that both Clark and Azimov were well-known for writing both science fiction
and science fact and there was a good nature rivalry between them as result. Now they eventually
settled on something called the Clark Azimov Treaty which explained that if either of them was
ever asked who was the best, they would agree to say that Clark was the best science fiction writer
and that Azimov was the best science fact writer. Of course they were both aware that this was a joke.
They both lost out to Ray Bradbury for the rich row Hugo and of course Robert A. Heinlein was
very active as a writer at this time. But it's a footnote worthy of mentioning and inject a little
humor into the discussion so to speak. So the first novel I want to talk about in this episode is
called the Sands of Mars published in 1951 and it's an early novel of Clark since the date would
suggest. This was later collected in an anonymous omnibus volume called the space trilogy
along with two other novels. Islands in the sky written in 1952 which is a juvenile
is what they call it back then. Now today we would call these young adults and that's a story
about a boy getting to visit a space station and the other novel is Earthlight from 1955 a story
about a spy on a moon observatory. Now the three novels are not in any way related and the title
of the collection can be confusing because there's a much better known space trilogy being that
written by CS Lewis. We may talk about that at some point I don't know. But you know you might see
that you know if you're hunting a used bookstore you might see that space trilogy and now that you
know what's in it you can decide if it's something you'd want to pick up. Now this novel the
Sands of Mars is to me another example of the careful use of the best science of the time though
things have changed since it was written. Now by the time Clark was writing this we had figured out
there weren't any canals on Mars so you don't see any Mars canals appear in the story.
We did see color changes that looked to be seasonal and vegetation was a plausible explanation
for this so we do see vegetation in the novel. The protagonist of the story is a famous science
fixture author named Martin Gibson. He's been invited to travel to Mars as a guest of the crew of
the spaceship Aries and of course Aries is the name of the Greek god equivalent to the Roman god Mars
so it's a natural name for a ship that is devoted to traveling between Earth and Mars.
Now Gibson starts his journey by heading for the space station orbiting Earth before transferring
to the Aries and this is another good example that even in the 1950s Clark had figured out that this
made a lot more sense than trying to lift off directly from the Earth and indeed it is how NASA
plans to move forward though they're looking at a space station orbiting the moon as the gateway to both
the moon and Mars. Now back to the story the most junior member of the crew who is still
training to be an astronaut is assigned to Gibson to answer any of his questions and this provides
an opportunity for what's essentially a flashback of Gibson when he was at university but it plays out
his you know conversations between him and this junior crew member. Well when he was at university
had a relationship with the lady and they broke up and what we find out is of course this young
astronaut trainee is actually Gibson's son from those days. Then they land on Mars and Gibson meets
with the people on Mars. They go exploring outside the colony and meet some native wildlife
which they find munching on vegetation. Now later we discovered that these plants are part of a
secret project that Earth does not know about to add oxygen to the atmosphere of Mars.
Then we learn that the scientists on Mars have a plan to ignite photos and turn it into a second
son to help warm Mars. Now this can be done using a mason resonance reaction which frankly is just
plausible sounding techno babble and if you think hey wait a minute this sounds just like what he did
with Jupiter in 2001 well you can give yourself a gold star. The Gibson is very attracted by what
he has learned on Mars and applies to be a permanent resident he's accepted and has given the
job of selling Mars to the people of Earth pretty much a director of public relations for the planet
which is something a famous science fiction writer should be well qualified to do.
This novel is a good example of a mostly plausible hard science fiction novel of its time.
Some of its extrapolations would be disproved later but when they were written they were plausible
that was put in was definitely impossible. Now the next novel I wanted to discuss here is
the deep range which was published in 1957. Now earlier when we gave a little biographical
information on Clark we mentioned he was very interested in the ocean and in scuba diving.
He in fact moved to Sri Lanka and made some underwater archaeology discoveries there
and it should not be surprising that this interest would show up in his writing.
As has been pointed out by marine scientists we know more about the surface of Mars than we do
about the ocean floor of our own planet. Of course in some sense it's easier to get to Mars
than to get to the ocean floor so perhaps this isn't surprising.
Now the protagonist of this novel is a former astronaut named Walter Franklin.
The reason he is a former astronaut is that an accident happened during a spacewalk that left him
floating and isolated for a long time and the resulting psychic stress gave him the severe case
of aquifobia. This washes him out of any further spacework and permanently separates him from
his family on Mars. On Earth he transfers to the marine division which is responsible for feeding
a major part of the world's population through the farming of plankton and the hurting and slaughter
of whales. Now that last plot would not go over well now in the 21st century from a lot of people
and in the novel it does become a controversial point which Clark takes on directly.
Now the book follows Walter's journey in three parts. The first shows him as a trainee adapting
to his new career choice and in this section he meets a woman who will become his second life
since he's cut off from his first life on Mars. In the second section he has risen from being a
trainee to being a veteran warden and you should think of warden as in game warden.
His job is protecting the whale herds from predators. Mostly these are orchids and sharks
and the wardens patrolled in their single person's subs to manage the herds and protect them.
Then it gets a bit more interesting when a giant squid seems to be praying on the whales
and then there is the giant sea serpent. In the third section of the book Walter is now the
director of the Bureau of Whales and he has to deal with the usual administrative
details you would expect for a director. But then a challenge appears that threatens the very
existence of the Bureau. A Buddhist monk has started a campaign to stop completely the harvesting of
whales even though this represents an eighth of the world's food supply. As this campaign goes on
Walter finds he's starting to come around to agreement with the monk. In the last chapter
Walter and his second wife say goodbye to their son who is going to space where he will meet
up with the family that Walter had to leave behind on Mars. Now this book illustrates the point
that science fiction is about the future and not necessarily space travel and you know they say
you should write what you know and Clark's love of the sea made this the kind of book he had to write.
It's not the only one. Other novels with an ocean setting include Dolphin Island from 1964
which is another juvenile slash young adult novel and the ghost from the Grand Banks 1990 which is
about the Titanic. Now the last one I wanted to discuss in this episode is called The Fountains of Paradise.
1979. This book is about the construction of the first space elevator. The idea is that you could build
a massive structure going from the earth to space and use it to bring materials from the bottom of the
gravity well into space without needing to use rockets. Now Clark puts the other end of this elevator
in a space station located in geosynchronous orbit about 36,000 kilometers above the earth's surface.
One of the prerequisites for this is a new fiber material that is immensely strong and light.
And the opening of the book is in fact a demonstration of such a material which he calls hyperfilament
and described as an I quote continuous pseudo one dimensional diamond crystal.
Now in later interviews he suggested it was more likely to be some kind of carbon tubes
made out of something like Buckminster Fullerry. At present this is perhaps more likely
but most scientists do not see this as practical in any near term way.
And the development of reusable rockets has already reduced the cost for sending materials into space
to the degree that the economic incentive for space elevators has been greatly reduced.
Now the book is mostly concerned with all of the challenges involved in getting this project done.
Some of them are technical but others are more political and social.
This in some ways relates this book to Heinlein's story the man who sold the moon 1950.
The engineering concerns suggest a location on the equator as the earth end of this elevator
and Clark had Sri Lanka in mind for this but in the book he creates a fictionalized version
of Sri Lanka and island he called taprobane. The deals, the details of this fictional island match up
mostly with those of Sri Lanka. There are also two other stories that frame the main story.
One is set in the past and concerns a fictional king Khalidasa and this is based on the stories
of the Sri Lankan King Kashpaya the first. The other story is set in the future and tells
of the first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. By now there is a circular structure
surrounding the earth and six space elevators connect to it. And in the middle of the story
an uncrewed robotic ship of alien origin passes through the solar system. If this reminds you of
rendezvous with Rama, give yourself another gold star. Now this novel, a fountain's paradise won
the Nebula Award for Best Nothel in 1979 and the Hugo Award for Best Nothel in 1980. I explained this
before but I'll do it again. The Nebula Award is voted on by other science fiction writers.
It's an award by the science fiction writers of the America organization.
And the Hugo Award is voted on by the fans. And the Nebula Award comes out first and Hugo
Award comes out later. So that's why frequently you'll see two different years for these awards.
So anyway that is the story of some of these other novels from Arthur C. Clark.
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