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Reach for Tomorrow
by Arthur C Clarke
(Gollancz, £6.99, 166 pages, paperback, first published 1962, this
edition published 12 June 2003.)
The Other Side of the Sky
by Arthur C Clarke
(Gollancz, £6.99, 245 pages, paperback, first published 1958, this
edition published 12 June 2003.)
Here, reprinted once more, are two volumes of Arthur C Clarke's early
short fiction. If you haven't read these stories before, now's your
chance to buy them in attractive new covers; if your 1980s editions
are well-thumbed to the point of disintegration, now's your opportunity
to upgrade. For this is the stuff that firmly put the science into science
fiction, and established the name of one of the genre's principal exponents.
I must admit to finding Clarke's novels a bit hit-and-miss, but his
short stories rarely fail to please, and even after half a century their
lustre hasn't dulled.
Reach for Tomorrow, although the later collection, includes
Clarke's first sale -- and, according to the author's original preface,
his most popular piece at the time of publication--"Rescue Party". There's
curiosity value for the modern reader in this piece, but it's surpassed
by other stories in the collection. There's the whimsy of "A Walk in
the Dark", "The Awakening" and "Time's Arrow", and the humour of "Trouble
With the Natives" and "The Possessed". There's the powerful Wyndhamesque
atmosphere of "The Forgotten Enemy". "The Parasite" didn't entirely
grab me, and "The Curse" is clearly one of those short pieces that seems
like a great idea when the author spots some remarkable thing while
on holiday; by contrast, the outstanding high points of the collection
are those stories the author describes as "pure science fiction": "Technical
Error", "The Fires Within" and "Jupiter Five". Contrary to what we might
expect of hard SF nowadays, these tales are told in easily accessible
terms, eminently readable and thoroughly enjoyable for the non-scientist
reader, and contrary to what we might expect of fifty-year-old science
yarns, they haven't aged a day.
This timelessness is more remarkable still in The Other Side of
the Sky, which includes the six story serial "Venture to the Moon",
and the sequel from which this volume takes its name. Originally popular
science pieces written for the Evening Standard, these related-but-independent
stories envisaged what, at the time, must have seemed the inevitable
culmination of the Space Race. The focus of "Venture to the Moon" should
be self-evident, while "The Other Side of the Sky" revolves around one
of a trio of manned communication satellites. The idea that communication
satellites would need permanently to be manned, and the idea that the
world might restrict itself to only three, seems amusingly dated now;
yet the engaging human focus, Clarke's precise, unfussy writing style,
and the sheer scientific accuracy of the pieces lends them a believability
that defies age. It's also surprising how much better planned Clarke's
"Venture to the Moon" was than NASA's real-world ventures ...
This collection also includes the original short version of "The Songs
of Distant Earth" and eleven other stories. Of the rest, I'd say the
highlights are "All the Time in the World" and "Out of the Sun", although
the standard in this volume overall is high.
What more do I need to say? The quality of these stories endorses Clarke's
reputation as a master of SF, and that they can still hold their own
in the twenty-first century is, I think, the best advertisement they
could have.
Review by John Toon.
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