A Fall of Moondust - Arthur C Clarke

 I remember this as a study text in third form English.   I instantly recalled the opening: passengers board what is effectively a tour bus on the Moon.   But I don't remember finishing the book or, indeed, anything other than mild disappointment.   This was because I was a third former in the year of Space Odyssey.   None of us had seen it then, and I still haven't, but Kubrick's vision of waltzing space stations was our preconception of the imagination of Arthur C Clarke.   Not this...   Not the future, our future, as humdrum.

Now the world has reached the era in which A Fall of Moondust is set, the second quarter of the 21st century, and the disappointment is very different.   Now I am disappointed that I can't get on a moon-bus like the Selene and scoot across the Sea of Thirst where dust flows like water.   Sixty-plus years after the book was written, part of the fun is seeing what Clarke got right and what he didn't.  He was certainly right about communication satellites, which play a part here.   He was wrong is what names people would have and which population would oversee the future of space travel.   One thing he got spectacularly wrong but which is nevertheless fascinating is that by 2030 many people would be born and brought up on the Moon and thus unsuited to life back on Earth.   The stewardess of the Selene, for example, recoils from the idea of carrying a baby in Earth gravity.   That's a nice touch, I thought.

Something that Clarke got spot-on in 1961 was that the big thing in popular entertainment by the end of the Sixites would be disaste\r movies.   That is what A Fall of Moondust effectively is - a once in a millennium moon tremor sees the Selene sink into the Sea of Thirst without trace.   It's a brilliant concept.   I cannot fathom why no one turned into a sort of Posiedon Adventure in space.   Perhaps it's the mundanity of Clarke's style put producers of.   Clarke, for all his hard science, cannot envisage life in anything other than surbuban Middle English of the mid-1950s.   He does, however, do a good job of maintaining the tension throughout.

As a newly-minted teenager I seem to have scorned A Fall of Moondust in its drab school edition.   Almost sixty years later I stuck with it, learned quite a bit about attitudes and ideas of the time, and, frankly, had a great time with a good read.

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Other books by Arthur C Clarke reviewed here: Earthlight, Childhood's End and Prelude to Space.   Use the search box on the right to find them (I did).

Earthlight - Arthur C Clarke

Two hundred years in the future (from 1955) Earth has colonised the planets of the Solar System. Generations of humankind have been born and lived off-Earth. The situation is not much different from that of the British Empire in 1939 - the subordinate states are too big, the dominant hub too small and too demanding. The Earth is considered to be withholding essential heavy metals from the Federated planets. Conflict is inevitable and imminent.


For this reason Bertram Sadler, accountant, is sent to the Moon to try and track down whoever is leaking secret information to the Federation. The Moon consists of Central City and peripheral specialised bases, like the Observatory Sadler is officially auditing. But the Observatory's work is hampered by unknown traffic. It turns out an unauthorised base is being built nearby. Is this the first act of war by the Federation?


It all sounds like the perfect plot for a sci fi thriller. But, this being Arthur C Clarke early in his career, there are no thrills. Indeed, we are lucky to get a plot. What Clarke is interested in is the science. Sixty years on, of course, the science is faintly risible. Men have colonised the solar system but are still reliant on teleprinters and analogue radio. Even television scarcely figures. The standout sections for me were the ones about light beams on the Moon and the limited effect of atomic weapons in space. I sincerely hope Arthur C was right on both counts.