Arthur C. ClarkeA Fall of MoondustGollancz, Paperback, 1995.12mo. 224 pp. Victor Gollancz Science Fiction (VGSF). Preface to the 1987 edition by Arhur Clarke, August 1986 [pp. 5-7].First published, 1961.First published by VGSF, 1995.Second impression, July 1995.===========================================A Fall of Moondust is in many ways a very unusual novel for Arthur Clarke. Even on the most mundane level, it was written without contract or publisher, and in the relatively short time between August and September, 1960. Apart from some of his earliest novels, I don't think Arthur ever wrote another one so quickly. It must have been ready in his head and this may possibly explain the unusually tight structure as well. It flows as smoothly as moondust indeed.Unlike many other of Arthur's novels - from Childhood's End (1953) to The Songs of Distant Earth (1986) - this one is rather like a very extended short story. The chapters are still short, but there are no rambling subplots or countless digressions. Nor are there any godlike alien civilizations or technological wonders. Instead, the plot here centers around a single accident, a group of tourists being buried alive in a lunar sea of dust, and virtually the whole action takes place within few days. Although Arthur is a master story-teller with a fine sense of dramatic continuity and climax, I think this is the only one of his novels which may be called thriller. Except for the first and the last chapters, the whole of the rest has, if you excuse the ugly alliteration, a sustained suspense which I generally associate more with Michael Crichton or Arthur Hailey. There are a few points of relaxation but they are adroitly used for generating additional tension. It's a pretty breathtaking experience. For once the famous cliche "I couldn't put it down" is almost literally true. I am generally a slow reader and there are very few novels that I have read in two sittings. This is one of them.During 1987, in the end of which Arthur turned 60, he wrote a number of new prefaces to his works. Among the most important is the one to A Fall of Moondust. It's a rich source of information about the background of the novel. Arthur is quick to confess that in 1960, years before even the first man-made robotic probes reached the Moon, lunar seas of dust were regarded as a very real danger and had some eminent supporters in the scientific community. Needless to say, the fact that they most probably don't exist has nothing to do with the value of the novel. Of course one can always find morons who are eager to proclaim it as "outdated", as it it mattered, but we are not concerned with such pathological conditions here. Further fine points in this preface include Arthur's giving credit to James Blish for first launching the idea, and having a little fun at the expense of himself by telling us that Reader's Digest bought the novel for their condensed books but he never read their version - "not because I fear that the Pleasantville editors might have butchered my deathless prose, but because I'm scared they may have improved it." Well, Arthur had nothing to worry. I haven't read RD's version either, but I can certainly say there is very little room for improvement in the original. Last but not least, we are told that no fewer than three movie producers were interested in bringing the novel to the screen. It never happened at the time and, so far as I know, it still hasn't. What I wonder is why. With a fine cast, imaginative director and glorious production designer, A Fall of Moondust can become a visual and psychological tour de force of rare power in the box office. The screenwriter will have the easiest task: he simply has to cut a few details and that's all; he may retain most of the superbly effective dialogue verbatim.http://www.librarything.com/work/2049...
Arthur C. Clarke is one of those authors of whom I'm never quite sure how fond I am. I hear his name and think “Gee willikers, I love Arthur C. Clarke!” And then I think back over the books I've read by him and I'm not so sure. Before today I'd read a total of thirteen books written or co-written by him, and had given him a rather underwhelming average score of 2.4 out of 5. If one ignores the ones he co-authored (and their style in each case suggests that his co-author did most of the writing) then he leaps up to a marginally less mediocre 2.8 out of 5. Those perhaps aren't the kind of statistics that should make me pick up yet more of his work, but A Fall of Moondust was only two pounds, and it sounded quite good on the back, and there's a quote on the front cover from John Wyndham saying it's Clarke's best work, and Wyndham is an author that I really do like (he averages a much better 3.7 out of 5 from me here on Goodreads).A Fall of Moondust is basically an episode of Thunderbirds set on the moon. And also set in a Universe where International Rescue doesn't exist, otherwise Thunderbird 3 would've sorted everything out in a few pages. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A tour bus/boat travelling across a sea of quicksand-like dust on the moon's surface falls victim to a sudden seismic shift, and is pulled a short distance beneath the surface. Like Clarke's other works, all this happens very early on in the novel. He doesn't waste time with a bunch of mindless character development or tedious backstory – all that is dealt with while the real plot unfolds. This real plot is twofold – the efforts of the engineers on the surface to find and then save the sunken craft, and the efforts of the twenty-two people stuck underground to maintain their calm.There's enough levity and drama in both storylines to maintain the novel for its fairly brief length. Particularly quaint in the underground side of things was Clarke's gentle fun with literature. The assembled tourists only have two books amongst them to allay boredom: a copy of that literary classic Shane, and a historical erotic-romance written by a teenager on Mars featuring the couplings of Isaac Newton and Eleanor Gwyn. The brief snippet we hear from this latter work sounds like a pitch-perfect parody of today's book market, flooded with [insert genre here]-erotica riding on the Fifty Shades bandwagon. And then you remember that Clarke published this in 1961 and you have to wonder if this new trend is so new after all.The drama stakes are kept high through the fairly formulaic approach of letting the characters sort out a problem, having them relax, tossing in some foreshadowing, and then letting some fresh complication throw matters into disarray. Every long running science fiction show has episodes like this (oh no, the crew is trapped, we only have an arbitrary time period to save them!) and they all follow the same script (oh no, now we have even less time to save them!). Clarke even has one of the characters allude to this after one particular disaster, aghast that he “should ever get involved in the Number One cliché of the TV Space Operas.” Again, this was written in 1961 so either science fiction on TV was clichéd even then or this is Clarke's trademark prescience at work. Either way, little flourishes like this help counterbalance the story's occasional aged nature.The story is far from perfect, and it's never entirely clear if it's setting up clichés for everyone else to follow, or satirising those that already existed. Either way, it's a ripping yarn and might well fulfil John Wyndham's promise even now of being “The best book Arthur C. Clarke has written.”
What do You think about A Fall Of Moondust (2002)?
First published in 1961 this classic of sci fi tells the story of a tourist ship bringing people from Earth to see the moon and then during the earthquake sinks in the sea of dust. The story tells about the rescue team working on getting them out and the people on the ship trying to survive.A very typical Man vs. Nature story of which we have a lot taking place on Earth, but it is taken into the space and made even more exciting. It is great how the author doesn't go over the top, but presents real science and makes the happenings seem more realistic. Of course we should not forget that the book was written over 50 years ago and even before any human has been on the Moon or even in space. While the dust on Moon surface which plays a major part in this book was already proven as wrong, it was a popular hypothesis back in the days.Besides it is still interesting to read the expectations about the future in the old 60's. When it comes to computers and technology passengers had, they seem to be very far off. But at the same time they already managed to colonize the moon. It is also interesting how the alien still haven't been discovered in this book and people believing in them are looked at pretty much the way they are now. The book is also outdated not only in technological/scientific expectations but also in the social way. It is a good reflection of the time's sexism ans the style of the writing as well as characters seem to be very 60's to me. But none of this makes it a bad book. I really really liked it. It provides the great excitement of a story taking place in space (and I also believe that the old writing style contributes to this excitement) as well as it brings a sort of charming nostalgia about human past and the fun of comparing today to yesterday's future.
—Ira Therebel
I don't often read science fiction, I'm more into the fantasy genre, but I liked this book. It was a good read. The passengers and crew of the tourist cruise ship, 'Selene,' are buried underneath moondust on the moon with limited resources. The story was supposed to be 'futuristic,' set in the 21st century, which is now, so it seemed a bit out-dated. That aside, the story was interesting, suspenseful, and short enough for me to be able to stick with it so I would recommend it to others. My only complaint: I would like to have known more about why people were living on the moon. Why did the earth stopped spinning?
—Amy
Before The Martian by Andy Weir, there was A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke. I hadn't come across this until Scott mentioned it a while back on A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast. It seemed serendipitous when I received it as a birthday gift from my mother who recently has been rereading her way through the Clarke canon. And I see that Kindle lets Prime subscribers borrow his books free ... it looks like everything he wrote.The Sea of Thirst is filled with moondust that is so fine it flows like water in the low gravity of the moon. A specially outfitted spacecraft scoots tourists around the sea for sightseeing. Until there is an unexpected moonquake and the ship disappears, inexplicably as it seems to Lunar Control. What follows is a two-pronged story which jumps from those inside the vessel marooned under the dust and those outside trying to find and rescue any survivors.I enjoyed the location/rescue efforts as well as "crowd control" underway to try to avoid stress from prolonged isolation from the outside world. It is interesting because it is such a work of its time, especially in the way that characters are written. I don't recall Clarke being particularly strong in character development, but that could just be a faulty memory. It's been a while since I read anything except Tales From the White Hart which is a horse of a completely different color.Ultimately it is dated but still worth reading.
—Julie Davis
