Farewell - and fare well.

"I want to be remembered most as a writer -- one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well."

- Arthur C. Clarke

In many ways, today marks the end of an era. Sir Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

For his 90th birthday on December 16th, 2007, Clarke released a nine minute video* on YouTube, in which he appeared cheerful and energetic, if a trifle laboured in speech. I think that his closing comments from that video make a fitting epitaph for one of the great figures of science fiction.

I find that another English writer -- who, coincidentally, also spent most of his life in the East -- has expressed it very well. So let me end with these words of Rudyard Kipling:

If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.

- Sid

* By the way, I have to be fair and say that to anyone who is not a hard core SF geek - yes, I mean you, Laurie - you may wish to skip the video.

"Twas the night before Christmas."

In spite of its religious origins, Christmas has ended up as the ultimate fantasy holiday, an odd blend of wish fulfillment, time travel and good will. Santa Claus somehow fills innumerable stockings overnight - but how? Tachyon reindeer? Teleportation technology? Cloning? Sorry, no, none of those options are ever mentioned, which indicates that the tradition of Saint Nick defies scientific explanation. NORAD's annual announcements about Santa's progress around the globe just seem wrong, somehow - one would expect that Kris Kringle's exploits are taking place on a plane removed from that of radar and tracking satellites.

The holiday season occupies an interesting role in the SF/fantasy canon, with several prominent examples to demonstrate the extremes. An often overlooked (or miscategorized) example is Dicken's A Christmas Carol, a ghost story mixed with time travel that sets the standard for the concept, as witnessed by the countless adaptations and reworkings of the character of Scrooge and his Christmas Eve experience. Doctor Who pays tribute to Dickens' contribution in the episode "The Unquiet Dead", which coincidentally takes place on Christmas Eve, 1869. And, given C. S. Lewis' almost militant Christianity, it's always surprised me a little that Father Christmas makes an appearance in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, although to be fair the history of the original Saint Nicholas is a deeply Christian one.

The oddest entry in the canon would have to be Harlan Ellison's short story, "Santa Claus versus S.P.I.D.E.R", which portrays Santa Claus as a James Bond-influenced superspy whose red suit makes him into a walking armoury. The second oddest may be Clive Barker's "The Yattering and Jack", wherein a demon reanimates the Christmas turkey as it sizzles in the oven. (Anyone planning to cook a turkey tomorrow, imagine if the damn thing battered its way out of the oven and attacked you.) H. P. Lovecraft's "The Festival", a quietly horrifying description of "traditional" holiday celebrations, runs a close third.

Terry Pratchett gives us one of the best long-form tributes to the season in Hogfather, which deals with the Discworld version of Santa Claus. It's easy to take Pratchett's pork-dispensing character as a simple parody, but, as with all of Pratchett's creations, the underlying elements that he references provide a fascinating perspective on the evolution of mythic figures.

However, when I started this posting, one work came immediately to mind as the most memorable seasonal piece: Arthur C. Clarke's short story, "The Star", an uncharacteristically somber piece for Clarke. A Jesuit scientist, part of an expedition to the Phoenix Nebula, discovers that the supernova which produced the nebula destroyed a civilization not unlike our own. His other discovery shakes his faith:

There can be no reasonal doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

- Sid

Three thousand tubes of what?

I'm currently reading Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Space, written in 1947 and set in 1978, which describes a first mission to the Moon. Clarke points out in his introduction to the 1977 reprinting of the novel that, "On July 20, 1969, all the countless science-fiction stories of the first landing on the Moon become frozen in time, like flies in amber. We can look back on them now with a new perspective...for we know how it was really done and can judge the accuracy of the prediction."

Clarke's description of the mission varies considerably from the final result, but not so much that the novel has the anachronistic feel of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. (Actually, I find that Wells holds up much better than Verne over time, but that's another topic.) However, the part that really jumped out at me, sixty years in Clarke's future, was the following conversation after a tour of the ship's cockpit:

"It's a bit overwhelming, but not so very much worse than a transcontinental jet's cockpit."

"It is if you know what goes on behind all those panels," said Matthews grimly. "Arnold Clinton - that's the electronics king - once told me that there are three thousand tubes in the computing and control circuits alone. And there must be a good many hundreds on the communications side."

Three thousand vacuum tubes? I almost laughed out loud - relying on a system like that to go to the Moon would be like having someone say that a battleship would only be able to sail if none of the light bulbs on board burned out. Now, admittedly, when Clarke was writing the book, state-of-the-art computing was represented by ENIAC, which had close to 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 27 tons. The next time that you have a problem with your computer, remember the gentleman in the image at the left of this paragraph, who is troubleshooting a problem in ENIAC by looking for a dead tube - see, Vista's not that bad after all, is it.

Coincidentally, the needs of the Apollo program for a more reliable system for use in the Apollo Guidance Computer led to concentrated research into the development of the integrated circuitry that replaced the vacuum tube and which is now used in virtually every piece of electronics in existence. Sadly, the AGC crashed five times - only in the computer sense, fortunately - during the landing approach to the Moon by the Eagle module.

- Sid

"A normal, routine flight".

It is difficult to think of a science fiction author who has had more of an impact on the real world than Sir Arthur C. Clarke. His early work with radar during WWII, his proposal of the geosynchronous communications satellite, his television appearances as a commentator, the movie adaptations of his work, and of course his countless stories, essays, novels and books, all combine to make him a cultural icon. 

 A large portion of Clarke's work occupies a sort of near-future niche: the Space Odyssey books, A Fall of Moondust, The Fountains of Paradise, The Hammer Of God, the Rama novels, and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Earth. Clarke has never attempted to create a unified history of the future, as have authors like Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, or a host of other. However, the future as Clarke portrays it in those books demonstrates a logical, consistent, considered evaluation of how life in space might actually be lived.  

2001 is a perfect example of this: Heywood Floyd's trip to the Moon is, as it says in the narrative, "a normal, routine flight". That being said, let's look at Mr. Floyd's trip. 

He boards a booster-assisted spaceplane that takes him to Space Station One, where he transfers to a zero-g shuttle that takes him to the Moon. The boosters for the spaceplane are independent craft that fly back to Florida to be refueled and used again. 

Interestingly enough, in the course of the trip Floyd logs on with his Newspad and downloads a selection of current papers to read, clicking on thumbnail-sized images to select the pages he wants. Because Clarke is English, it is of course unlikely that Heywood would be looking at porn, but other than that it's pretty close to what most people do now with their laptops when they travel - not a bad guess for 1968. But I digress...

The craft used in 2001 are designed to occupy specific niches, and as such are completely different in their designs. The spaceplane is essentially the current Space Shuttle, but with better seating, stewardesses, and apparently less of a re-entry problem. The suggestion is that it's like an orbital 747, designed to operate for the most part within the atmosphere, but capable of limited vacuum operation. 

The zero-g shuttle is completely different. Other than the fact that it's laterally symmetrical (presumably for convenience of accelerating along its centre of gravity) it has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, because it will never feel the touch of air - it's purely a vacuum craft. And, like the spaceplane, it's a multi-use craft designed to perform the Earth-Moon circuit over and over again. 

The space station itself is a much more developed entity than the current ISS, although, like the ISS, it's a work in progress, as demonstrated by the bare skeleton that's visible. The station is rotating in order to use centrifugal force to create the illusion of gravity, cited in the novel as equal to the Moon's (1/6 of Earth's). As a sidebar, Clarke describes the lounge area of the station as having "a restaurant, post office...barber shop, drug store, movie theater, and a souvenir shop", making it sound pretty much like an airport concourse, as opposed to the movie version:

Any further comment would be superfluous. 

 In my previous posting, I cited some of the advantages of space stations, and I find it odd that the American space program has never made a serious effort to establish and maintain a permanent facility in orbit. I'm aware of the various difficulties involved in getting things up there, but on that basis shouldn't they be trying to make sure that everything that goes into near-Earth space stays there? 

 My younger readers - if there are any (readers, that is) - will not remember the Chicken Little experience of waiting to see where Skylab was going to impact when it lost orbital stability. Shouldn't it still be up there as part of the current Space Station, like building a home around the original log cabin? 

If I were in a position of authority at NASA, I'd be tempted to ignore the issues involved in manned missions to the Moon or Mars for some time, and just concentrate on developing an infrastructure based around three space stations: Earth, Moon, and Mars. I'd then establish a repeatable, reusable and reliable system of travel between the stations - in other words, a normal, routine flight.

- Sid