Here’s an old Arthur C Clarke novel I’ve been meaning to re-read for a while. After recently reading the second book in Ian McDonald’s Luna series, I thought I would pick up a sixty-plus year old version of a novel with similar themes. Here’s an older tale of corporate shenanigans, political wrangling and even conflict, albeit with an older, less cynical naivety.
There’s no forgetting that this is an old book, written in that clean, tight, often regarded (mistakenly) as simplistic prose of Clarke’s. The book itself is only about 200 pages. The chapters are short and yet the plot itself, simply told, I found greatly affecting.
The book begins 200 years in the future. There has been no war for two centuries. Mankind has expanded the frontier and have now developed beyond the globe, with permanent settlements on the Moon, Mars, a swampy Venus and cold Jupiter. These planets are collectively known as the Federation.
Earthlight begins by telling of the arrival on the Moon of seemingly-innocuous Bertram Sadler. Bert is an accountant, officially sent to the Moon to check budget spending by the astronomers in Plato Crater. This mundane occupation however belies another clandestine purpose – as the plot develops we discover that he is also working for Earth’s government intelligence agency, as a recently leaked scientific paper suggests that Earth’s stranglehold over the colonies may soon be over. Sadler’s real job is to find the source of the information leak, believed to be from one of the astronomers, and stop the spy before he/she becomes a problem to Earth.
This is set to a background of both scientific discovery and rising political tension. The astronomers are busy observing and recording a rare event, a supernova appearing in the Draco constellation. At the same time, for the most in many years, relationships between Earth and the Federation are quite strained. The breakaway planets resent their dependence on Earth for vital heavy metal resources, whilst the Earth squanders what it has, begrudging the Federation leaching away what it has.
The result is conflict….
This is, these days, one of Clarke’s more forgotten novels.* Published after the award-winning Childhood’s End (1953) and before The City and the Stars (1956) it is not as good as either but is perhaps worthy of greater recognition.
After the cosmic events of Childhood’s End, Earthlight is much more narrowly focused, perhaps even mundane. It is a war story and an espionage tale, both popular at the time of publication, but one which projects the ideas of conflict and technological superiority 200 years into the future. The marvel of the colonised domes of the Moon are something clearly close to Clarke’s own interests. We also see here the main ‘heroes’ of the novel being scientists, astronomers determined to do science even whilst world-changing events are happening around them. There even appears to be an element of colonial or imperialistic guilt as the oppressed pioneers attempt to break free from their home planet oppressors. Clarke appears to sympathise with the Foundation’s need to break free whilst at the same time pointing out that war as means of doing this is stupid and facile. It is perhaps this that makes the book less known than others in his bibliography. The space battles are not the zooming, wheeling space battles of the 1940’s pulp writers but ones based on science, or at least the science of the time. Clarke seems to relish in pointing out how different a real space battle would be, should they happen. There are ‘death rays’ of a sort, but they are not the searchlight-like beams typically emblazoned on 1930’s Amazing Stories covers. They are invisible and with no sound. Things are underplayed rather than blown up in Technicolor. It is quite refreshing to read.
Perhaps it is because all the actions taken do not kill thousands, and that often the activities are done through diplomacy and with a minimum cost in lives that gives this aspect of the tale a rather elegiac tone. All battles are reluctant and death is not celebrated but mourned. The main battle at the end of the book is actually surprisingly inconclusive and although all becomes well in the end, it is not the type of exciting event that readers normally expect. The SF of the 1950’s reflects the world in which it was written, a world tired of war but one which takes up arms reluctantly should the need arise.
In the same way the actions of Sadler are rather low-key, though important to the novel. We are not in the worlds of James Bond or Poul Anderson’s Agent Flandry here.
In the end, reason seems to win and the future is secured through cooperation and science. The finale of the novel allows Sadler to determine whether there was a spy and how he/she did it. It is a neat ending if a little underwhelming, which seems to encapsulate the novel.
Earthlight is a good solid read and one which reflects the interests and ideas of its author. Though it is short, it is more memorable than many seem to suggest and, although it is dwarfed by other Clarke successes, it seems to summarise a certain mood of its time, and one which is light years away from its pulp predecessors. Science Fiction is clearly growing up and Earthlight reflects that.
*Even in Clarke’s authorised biography by Neil McAleer, Sir Arthur C Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary, it barely gets a mention.
Earthlight by Arthur C Clarke
Published by Muller (UK) and Ballantine (1955)
222 pages
Review by Mark Yon
Thank you for the review! By chance I just finished this book a few days before your review appeared. I still like his “simplistic prose” and thoroughly enjoyed the story. Next up for me is his collection of stories in “Reach for Tomorrow”.
Thank you, Mark: clearly great minds think alike! Hopefully then, you found my review accurate and appropriate. We have been talking on the SFFWorld Forums too, and it seems to be one that many readers, even fans of Sir Arthur’s books, have missed. I have A Fall of Moondust on the pile to re-read and Fountains of Paradise….