Bridge to the stars (The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke)

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke
Date:	26/01/01 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great (and plausible) scientific ideas, an interesting plot, a well-envisioned future world

Disadvantages: A bit dry in places, some bad dialogue, weak characterisation

If there's one thing you can rely on in an Arthur C Clarke novel, it's attention to detail, and 'The Fountains of Paradise' is certainly no exception. The novel, first published in 1979, received the two main science-fiction novel awards; the Hugo Award in 1980 and the Nebula award in 1979. Having languished out of print for several years, the book has finally been republished by Millennium as part of their excellent SF Masterworks series.

THE PLOT

Set in the 22nd century, the book concerns a visionary architect, Vannevar Morgan, who was responsible for the gargantuan Gibraltar Bridge, linking Europe and Africa. He now has a far bigger goal, to contruct the most ambitious "bridge" of all time, a bridge to the stars. His idea is to design and oversee the construction of a tremendous space elevator, extending some 36,000 kilometres from Earth's surface to a geostationary satellite. This elevator would allow people to leave the Earth in an easy, less costly, and less polluting way, reducing the ultimate cost of travel between planets, because there would be no need to burn fuel within the Earth's atmosphere.

However, quite aside from the bureaucratic, political problems of undertaking such a scheme within the confines of the Terran Construction Corporation, Morgan also has to worry about finding an equatorial site to which his satellite can be tethered. He has his eye on the small island of Taprobane, a fictional island from Clarke's imagination, heavily based on the island nation of Sri Lanka. Taprobane provides a conveniently high mountain, Yakkagala, very close to the equator, with relatively stable climatic conditions. Unfortunately, the mountain is the site of a Buddhist monastery, adding to Morgan's woes.

THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE

The future world Clarke has created for his novel is very impressively presented. Mankind has made its first contact with alien races, having encounter
ed an automated satellite dubbed 'Starglider' which has travelled to our Solar System from Alpha Centauri. Starglider has the ability to interpret Earth's radio and television signals, and learns to communicate with the human race. Starglider has encountered many other races in its travels across the galaxy, and reveals some of its discoveries to the population.

Unfortunately, Starglider's revelations about the absence of religion in the many other developed races it has encountered, and its interpretation of human philosophy lead it to conclude that "the hypothesis you refer to as God ... is unnecessary". The break down of most theistic religions swiftly followed, leaving only religious movements associated with lifestyle, rather than worship.

Clarke has also constructed some well constructed myths to accompany the fictional island of Taprobane, again loosely based on Sri Lankan myth, describing how Kalidasa, an ancient ruler, sought to recreate Paradise on the island, and build a stairway to heaven from Yakkagala.

THE SCIENCE

Of course, as ever, it is the scientific concepts that really drive the novel, and the main idea here is the space elevator. The idea wasn't entirely new when Arthur C Clarke proposed it, in fact, the idea was first posited back in 1895, when a Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky suggested the idea of a 'celestial castle' in a geosynchronous orbit attached to the Earth by a tower. The first modern idea came in 1960, again from a Russian, Yuri Artsutanov, however, it wasn't until an article appeared in Science in 1966 written by an American oceanographer, John Isaacs, that the idea was presented to a wider audience. Despite the journal's reputation, Isaacs's article went virtually unnoticed, and the idea only really became publicly known when an American Air Force researcher published a technical paper on the subject in 1975. This was the paper that ins
pired Clarke's novel.

In Clarke's novel the space elevator was to be constructed from "carbon nanofibres", and it's astonishing that a report produced by NASA, in 1998, on the applications of nanotechnology, reported that carbon nanotubes would be an ideal compound for the construction of a space elevator cable. Such tubes possess a "strength in tension similar to diamond, but bundles of these ... tubes shouldn't propagate cracks nearly as well as [diamond]". An August 2000 feasibility study by NASA into the idea of a space elevator confirmed that the idea of a space elevator is a very plausible one, and suggests that construction of a space elevator could well be under way by the end of the 21st century. As Clarke himself said when asked when the space elevator would become a reality, "Probably about 50 years after everybody quits laughing!"

You can download your own copy of the NASA feasibility study from http://flightprojects.msfc.nasa.gov/pdf_files/elev ator.pdf

THE WRITING

As with all of Clarke's novels, the writing style does let it down somewhat. Many non-scientific readers might find the passages concerned with the problems of constructing a space elevator very dry, even though these conversations seem to have been kept relatively brief – presumably an effort on Clarke's part not to slow the flow of the novel. Dialogue seems to have been kept to a bare minimum, and those conversations that do take place seem a little stilted. The argument could be made that many of the conversations in the book take place between scientists talking about science, and this might explain their technical and serious discourse, but this is a bit of a cop-out, if you ask me.

The characters in the novel are fairly thin too, from the single-minded, driven Morgan, to the ambitious and devoted television reporter Maxine Duval.

Having said this though, I'm not entirely
convinced that the unconvincing dialogue or implausibly weak characterisation actually harm the book. The ideas really do shine through, and although some might find the scientific passages dry, there was easily enough here to keep me reading, and I did really enjoy the book. Another great addition to the Science Fiction Masterworks!

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