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Arthur C. Clarke
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 Arthur C. Clarke is the poet of technology and cosmology in modern sf. He is also as much a
proponent of space travel as his peer, Robert A. Heinlein. But Clarke's influences are not Wells and Kipling, but first
and foremost Olaf Stapledon, whose concerns were with philosophical immensities in space and time, and
inhuman beauties. Gregory Benford has remarked, "There's more similarity between Arthur C. Clarke and Thoreau
than there is between Clarke and Heinlein." For Clarke, the beauties of vistas in space are the beauties of nature,
and the exploration of space is the quest for knowledge and close experience of nature, for things never before
seen and felt by an individual human. And the medium through which this exploration will be achieved is
technology. Technological artifacts may, in addition, be beautiful in and of themselves, interesting, mysterious,
promising. Clarke, unlike Heinlein or Asimov, is also the poet of the big machine. And in this he has always been
a leader in hard sf, and has maintained the bond between sf and the twin communities devoted to the
construction of enormous machines for scientific exploration-experimental physics and the space community -- for decades .
Clarke's stories tend to be about the emotional rewards of the quest for knowledge, of the wonder of huge
objects and cosmic vistas (in this regard, Hilbert Schenck's "Send Me a Kiss by Wire" is Clarkeian), as
opposed to the power knowledge can confer.
"Transit of Earth" is a dying-astronaut story -- a form used frequently in the New Wave period,
from Ballard's "Cage of Sand" to Malzberg's Beyond Apollo (1972) to oppose hard sf attitudes -- transformed into a
triumph of the hard sf attitude. It is in one sense a recasting of Godwin's "The Cold Equations" from the
point of view of the one dying -- who recognizes the necessity of his death and nevertheless continues the quest
for knowledge and consciously identifies with past heroic explorers who died. And he identifies in a
physical sense with his alien environment, looks forward to merging with it. Like Theodore Sturgeon's 1950 tale of
a dying astronaut, "The Man Who Lost the Sea," this is a story of emotional fulfillment in a coldly
beautiful place.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.