hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4460.txt

Episode: 4460
Title: HPR4460: Arthur C. Clarke
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4460/hpr4460.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:55:15

---

This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4,460.
For Friday the 5th of September 2025, today's show is entitled, Arthur A.C., Plark.
It is part of a series science fiction and fantasy.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, this begins our fifth look at Arthur A.C., Plark.
Hello, this is Ahukah, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our series on science fiction and fantasy.
And we recently finished our look at the first of what we call the Big Three of the Golden
Age.
That would have been Isaac Asimov.
I'm going to go into the second one now and that's Arthur C. Clarke.
Asimov Clarke and then Robert Heinlein, which you get to later, are the Big Three.
Now Arthur C. Clarke was born in 1917 in Somerset, England and was a space enthusiast
from an early age.
In 1934, while only a teenager he joined the British Interplanetary Society.
And about 10 years later, in 1945, he proposed a system of using geostationary satellites
to provide communication.
Now, he did not invent the idea of satellites and others that already noted the advantages
to geostationary satellites.
But he made the connection that they would be extremely useful for communications and
actively publicize this idea.
So in his later TV programs, he does identify himself as the inventor, which is only a slight
exaggeration.
Now during World War II, he did serve in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist.
So clearly some scientific background from early on.
And then from 1946 to 1947, and again from 1951 to 1953, he served as president of the
British Interplanetary Society.
Now in 1951, he also published a book called The Exploration of Space, which was later
used by Werner von Braun to convince US President John F. Kennedy that a trip to the moon was
possible.
Now, he was a commentator for CBS News when the Apollo 11 moon landing took place in 1969.
Now he also had a strong interest in the ocean and in scuba diving and moved to Sri Lanka
in 1956, remaining there until his death in 2008.
Now in addition to his writing, he had three television series, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious
World, Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe.
But it is, of course, his writing that made him famous.
Now, he was known as what we call a hard science fiction writer, meaning that he avoided
elements of fantasy and concentrated on realistic science, even if sometimes extrapolated a bit
into the future.
But when you look at his body of work, it is not clear that this is entirely accurate.
Still, you should expect science to feature prominently in his books without the obvious
fantasy elements that someone like, for instance, Robert A. Heinlein did in a number of his
books, and he, Heinlein, seemed to move very easily between hard science fiction and fantasy.
But of the big three, I would say azimuths, at least as scientific, if not more so than
Clarke.
And the fantasy elements do, in fact, appear in his first major work, which we're about
to discuss.
Now, against the fall of night was originally published as a novella in 1948, then expanded
into a novel in 1953.
He then rewrote some of it and expanded it further as a novel called The City and the
Stars in 1956.
Now this has been considered a classic work that should be on everyone's bookshelf,
but we'll have more to say about that at the end.
The original novella accounts for about a third of the final novel, and in hindsight, while
it is classic, it is also a bit of a mess.
The setting to the story is two and a half billion years into the future, and while the
current state of science suggests we don't make it that far, this was not known when
Clarke wrote the novel.
Still, that detail isn't really important.
It is set far in the future, leave it at that.
The oceans have dried up, which is realistic, given what we know.
There is a city called Diaspar, and as far as they know, they're the only city on the
planet.
It is completely enclosed and underground, and the residents never leave, and no one comes
to visit.
The history, as they know it, is that there was a conflict long ago, where humanity,
which had begun to venture out into space, was beaten back by savage invaders, who left
a remnant alive on the condition that no one ever leaves the planet.
But now no one ever leaves the city, it is safer that way.
Now the city of Diaspar, and you should think that Diaspar and Diaspora are strongly related
words here, is run by a central computer.
And its memory banks contain all of the memories of each inhabitant.
From time to time, the central computer provides a new body, and puts the stored memories
of a person into this new body.
So the inhabitants are in practice immortal.
But one day, Alvin is born, and Alvin is someone who has never lived before.
This is the first time in centuries that this has happened.
When Alvin has curiosity about the rest of the world, something the deeply conservative
and agoraphobic inhabitants of Diaspar usually lack.
He wants to see the outside world, and eventually he discovers that there was once an underground
transit system between cities.
It has been abandoned, but he is eventually able to find an entrance into it, gets it open,
and takes himself to another city called Liss.
Now, people in Diaspar didn't even know that Liss existed.
It's the opposite of Diaspar in most ways.
It is outside, in a green valley, and the people have cultivated philosophy and developed
telepathy.
They live naturally and are conceived and born in the usual manner, living and dying without
immortality.
But they are against the high technology of Diaspar and seem to reject most technology.
They are also very xenophobic and conservative in a different way.
They are afraid of space travel and all mechanical devices.
Now there, Alvin makes a friend called Hilvar.
The two then investigate a strange light and discover a fortress called Shalmarine,
which is where the savage invaders were fought off with fearsome weapons so long ago.
There they discover an old extraterrestrial and a robot.
Apparently someone called Master came there with his followers and this robot.
And the robot and the old extraterrestrial are all that is left.
Now the robot has a mind block put in place by the master that prevents the robot from
giving out any information at all.
The master and his followers were some kind of religious cult that talked about something
people that they called the great ones who have left but will eventually return someday.
Alvin convinces the old extraterrestrial to let him take the robot to see how the world
has changed but also gives the robot stern instructions not to let him return to lists
even if he begs to.
Because he believes they will use their mental powers to stop him because they are so anti-technology.
They get back to diaspar, Alvin and the robot and he use the central computer to break
the block on the robot.
Then they find the spaceship of the master outside diaspar which is where it had apparently
landed and it is still functional.
So Alvin gets Hilvar again and then they go into deep space in the spaceship where they
encounter Vanimond, a being pure intellect.
But Hilvar with his telepathic powers can converse with Vanimond.
Very convenient for the plot there.
They bring Vanimond back to earth and it turns out that everything they thought they knew
was wrong.
There never were any savage invaders and Shalmarine was actually built to blow up the moon which
for some reason was going to collide with the earth.
Now in point of fact the moon is gradually moving away from the earth, albeit very slowly.
It is receding at about 3.8 cm per year so nothing to worry about in the near term.
And the remnants of humanity still on earth are there because they refused to participate
in a great project that the rest of humanity had engaged in to produce a pure intellect.
Now as it happened the first attempt was a disaster that produced something called the
mad mind.
It was immensely powerful but also insane and it devastated the galaxy before being imprisoned
in a strange artificial star called the black sun.
Vanimond was the second and successful experiment in pure intellect and is apparently destined
to combat the mad mind when it eventually escapes its imprisonment.
Now the rest of humanity having constructed Vanimond is then contacted by aliens from
outside the galaxy who urgently request them to come and so they go to the aliens and
they're gone.
Now the city and the stars, the final version that Clark came up with was supposed to be
an improvement over against the fall of night but the changes are in the details really.
In the earlier novel, Alvin's companion is Theon, son of Saronis, instead of Hilvar.
And there are details about the societies of diaspiring lists that are different.
What they find in the fortress of Shalmarine is an old man instead of an extraterrestrial.
But it is noteworthy that against the fall of night remained in print long after the
city and the stars was published and many people continued to prefer the earlier version.
But whichever version, it is hard to make a serious claim that this represents hard science.
It is an early work from a developing writer and shows a lot of influence from the pulp
stories that Clark undoubtedly read as a teenager.
If you want to be well educated in the history of science fiction, this is unavoidable but
to a modern reader, I suspect it will seem a little bit weird.
I happen to like the old pulp style of writing.
The sense of wonder, as they call it, but this is definitely an older style of writing.
So this is Hookah for Hacker Public Radio, signing off and is always encouraging everyone
to support free software.
Bye-bye.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contribute link to find out
how easy it really is.
Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the Internet Archive
and our sings.net.
On this advice status, today's show is released on our Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License.