Arthur C. Clarke Islands in the Sky (1952)
Here's another early Arthur featuring a cast of nerds, squares, Poindexters and Brainiacs who point at things and then furnish each other with detailed scientific explanations as to what those things are, and in the case of Islands in the Sky, they're mostly rockets and space stations. This one's a juvie, but is nonetheless enjoyable for all of its edumacational aspirations thanks to Clarke's clear, engrossing prose - and I would have added timeless to the description but for Islands being so firmly nailed to the early fifties that I'm sure some hipster will already have it filed under some ludicrous invented classification, ovaltinepunk or something of the sort. If you're sat there clapping your hands and squealing at the idea of ovaltinepunk as an exciting new retro-genre, please kill yourself now.
Anyway, a wholesome and duly studious young lad wins a competition on the telly, and the prize is a visit to a space station, and thus do we have a novel. Whilst Clarke is rightly praised for having forseen all sorts - not least being the communication satellite - most striking from a twenty-first century perspective is that this was written in a world without computers, and of complex calculations performed on a slide rule, and of apprenticeships undertaken once you've left school; so it's more interesting in terms of the history of futurism, which I didn't expect.
It's striking just how much Clarke failed to predict; which is thrown into sharp relief when the novel occasionally puffs itself up like Kenneth Clarke to point out that actually, this isn't one of your ghastly magazine stories, even though the lineage is earlier acknowledged in a passing reference to E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Skylark of Space.
Here's another early Arthur featuring a cast of nerds, squares, Poindexters and Brainiacs who point at things and then furnish each other with detailed scientific explanations as to what those things are, and in the case of Islands in the Sky, they're mostly rockets and space stations. This one's a juvie, but is nonetheless enjoyable for all of its edumacational aspirations thanks to Clarke's clear, engrossing prose - and I would have added timeless to the description but for Islands being so firmly nailed to the early fifties that I'm sure some hipster will already have it filed under some ludicrous invented classification, ovaltinepunk or something of the sort. If you're sat there clapping your hands and squealing at the idea of ovaltinepunk as an exciting new retro-genre, please kill yourself now.
Anyway, a wholesome and duly studious young lad wins a competition on the telly, and the prize is a visit to a space station, and thus do we have a novel. Whilst Clarke is rightly praised for having forseen all sorts - not least being the communication satellite - most striking from a twenty-first century perspective is that this was written in a world without computers, and of complex calculations performed on a slide rule, and of apprenticeships undertaken once you've left school; so it's more interesting in terms of the history of futurism, which I didn't expect.
It's striking just how much Clarke failed to predict; which is thrown into sharp relief when the novel occasionally puffs itself up like Kenneth Clarke to point out that actually, this isn't one of your ghastly magazine stories, even though the lineage is earlier acknowledged in a passing reference to E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Skylark of Space.
It wouldn't do in a Shakespeare play for all the characters to be floating around in mid-air. So the actors had to use magnetic shoes—a favourite dodge of the old science fiction writers, though this was the only time I ever found them used in reality.
Still, the whole thing is written with such enthusiasm and affection as to negate any pleasure taken in the irony of something so resolutely of the fifties seeming so pleased with its endearingly wonky predictions.
No comments:
Post a Comment