Customer Reviews

Against the Fall of Night

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the precursor to the Clarke novel "City and the Stars". I originally read this while still in elementary school and it was the first sci-fi I had ever read. No other has ever topped it.

Clarke forms a world in the very distant future whose inhabitants live for hundreds of years on a ravaged planet earth in the oasis of the city. The city is an incredibly advanced utopia but an island of machines and somewhat bored inhabitants.

The main protaganist is the youngest member of the community who ventures out into a voyage of discovery and onto another community which has also survived the ravages of time. The reuniting of the two tribes of mankind each a distinct culture at opposite ends of the spectrum is problem and goal of "Against the Fall of Night".

This is science fiction storytelling at its best. A great story and a must have for all fans of the genre.

Arthur C. Clarke's masterpiece The City and The Stars (which I'm glad to note is back in print, which is loooooong overdue), is, in fact, an extended version of this early Clarke masterpiece. The City and The Stars is widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written, and with good reason. And, although I would agree with Clarke in saying that the later novel is the better of the two, this is a certifiable masterpiece in itself. Most all science fiction is, inevitably, set in the future, but this book is set in the far, far, far future. The world Clarke posits is a logical one, and is great as both a story and a warning. Far from being a dystopia, the city of Diaspar in the book is the genuinely archetypal Utopia. It is into this stagnant, decadent setting that Clarke creates one of his grandest visions. This book is sweeping in its vision and its prose. Clarke has always had a deft poetic touch, and this story contains some of his most beautiful outpourings of words. An absolutely essential read for any science fiction fan, as is the novel that it bequeathed.

As I understand it, Clarke started plotting this novel out early in WW2 before he volunteered for the RAF. This would then technically make it his earliest novel- even though it didn't get published until 1953 by the legendary Gnome Press (first of the dedicated science fiction publishing houses.)

Clarke would later feel compelled to extensively rewrite this novel and release it under a different title (The City and the Stars.) Personally I prefer this version. The Technology is set over a ten billion years into the future so a mere 50 years or so since it was first published doesn't really "date" it.

This book doesn't share the high degree of hard science fiction detail that you find in most of his books. The technology is so advanced (machines never break down and read your mind to know what you want of them)that it seems more like magic. In fact, there is a statement that there are no more engineers in the world of the future since once the master robots started building themselves- and everything else- they were no longer needed and engineers faded away. I can identify with that, why work a thankless, unappreciated, arduous pursuit like engineering if the machines can do it better?

The cosmic sweep of this novel over vast intervals of time and the entire universe reads more like an Olaf Stapledon novel (a British science fiction author that died in 1950 and whose works Clarke was no doubt familiar with.)

If you like old-fashion space operas about the lost glories of the galactic Empire this book still weaves that classic atmosphere.

Later rewritten and published as THE CITY AND THE STARS, the original version is charming and intriguing. Somewhat quaint, perhaps, by today's standards, this science fiction-mystery makes a virtue of initiative and includes many traditional 1950s themes such as telepathy, robots and star travel. Generally areligious (although obviously materialistic, it contains only one passing snide remark towards religion) and without sexual themes or foul language (which mars so much of modern science fiction), this book is appropriate for youth as well as adults.

Begun in 1937, Clarke finally finished it in 1946, his very first novel. I love sci-fi, and this didn't disappoint. Rousing good story from start to finish. Short, only 159 pages. At least, my copy. But hard to put down. I loved the way Clarke, who wrote this so many years ago, would use things of his time, and then extrapolate them to the future, as in the London Tube System - I think. For a book written over 50 years ago, it is still purely science fiction. It's only flaw is that Earth could not possible support life for the length of time he assumes - hundreds of millions of centuries. I also appreciate the way he subtly debunks religion as myths stemming from misinterpreted facts. Descriptions are easy to picture.

I read this book first when I was probably 15, 45 years ago, and it became a book with a story that has haunted me my whole life. It has always seemed a masterpiece of science fiction and, with City and the Stars - a richer novel than Against the Fall of Night, but the title less so! - one of Clarke's finest works. I found it's depiction of a human culture set billions of years in the future so alien to our own to be engrossing because of the characterizations and the mysteries as absorbing as they are strange. There are no real villians in the piece, and their world was one in which I wanted to live. I also identified strongly with the protaganist, who seeks to discover the secrets of his culture's lost past. The City of the novel, Diaspar, is as also a character in the story. I would recommend this novel very highly, especially to young readers. However, I must say that City and the Stars, a later re-conception of Against the Fall of Night, is a much richer expansion of Against the Fall of Night, and it is the the former that has stayed with me for so many years.

Thoroughly enjoyable, my first read from ACC. Not the longest book, but he does present a good storyline within the pages.

This book is set in the far future, when humanity is hiding from reality and has set up a constantly renewing but artificial society. One man searches for "a way out" of the "city" that protects all that they know of humankind. His search is fascinating and what he finds out is haunting and exciting and a warning.

Perhaps the history of this novel bears some discussion. Clarke began work on this novel as early as 1937 and completed it round about 1946. The first published version was a one-shot novella in _Startling_ in 1948. The book version was published in 1953. But Clarke was dissatisfied with the novel. So he did a complete rewrite called _The City and the Stars_ that was published in 1956. The second version is more poetic and elegant, but the first still contains a certain raw mythical power.

Though the novel takes place millions of years after our own myths have been long forgotten, there is still the occasional mythical allusion. Here is Alvin, who has used robots to help him to escape from a telepathic compulsion to remain in the city of Lys:

Once more he was at peace, as ages ago an earlier wanderer had been when, lashed to the mast of his ship, he had heard the song of the Sirens die away across the wine-dark sea. (86)

Later, when Alvin and his friend Theon are traveling at faster than light speeds across the Galaxy, there is a sense that they are recreating a mythic journey:

The great sagas of exploration had completely changed Man's outlook toward the Universe, and even now, millions of centuries later, the ancient traditions had not wholly died. There had once been a ship, legend whispered, that had circumnavigated the Cosmos between the rising and the setting of the sun. (130)

It is not difficult to view Alvin, the protagonist of the novel, as a Promethean hero. He is intelligent. He is brave. He is radical. He breaks boundaries and pushes outward. He is constantly goading the conservative leaders of two flawed utopias on a course towards a difficult rebirth.

But Alvin is not altogether an admirable figure. He is described as filled with "intellectual arrogance" (85), supremely confident that he is the smartest one in the Council Chamber. He is capable of ruthless behavior towards others who stand in his way. For example, he pressures the Crater Dweller into "loaning" him one of his robots:

Theon had not minced his words. He had called his friend a bully and had told Alvin that he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. But Alvin had only laughed and continued to play with his new toy. (81)

Later, Alvin's tutor Jeserac has this telling comment to make when he realizes that Alvin will be leaving Diaspar once again:

"I shall be sorry to lose him, though he never cared very much for me... For that matter, he never cared a great deal for anyone save Alvin of Loronei." (104)

On a planet near the center of the Galaxy, Alvin and Theon encounter an alien of mental force, who quickly sizes up the two young men: "One of these minds, Vanamonde saw at once, was more sympathetic and accessible than the other" (141). Somewhat to Alvin's chagrin, he learns that the superior mind belongs to Theon, not himself.

But if Theon is more intelligent and more mature than Alvin, he doesn't have Alvin's force of personality. And to launch a Renaissance after literally millions of years of stagnation, you need someone who is forceful. Someone who demands change. Someone who is Not Always Nice. W.T. Jones (1952) notes that while reformers like Erasmus were critical of the Church, they could never bring themselves to break away from it. It took a radical like Martin Luther to make the Reformation begin. Theon could never make the change begin by himself. It takes an extremist like Alvin, determined to have his own way, to start mankind on the upward road to the stars once again.

_Reference_: Jones, W.T. _A History of Western Philosophy: Hobbes to Hume_. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1954, 50-66.

As a kid, Science Fiction was my genre and Arthur C Clarke was my favorite author. This book represents his creative imagination and beautiful, even poetic story telling at its best. I have not seen this book in over 30 years, yet I vividly remember many many unique features of a future world created by this novel. This book wonderfully describes my favorite starship of all science fiction books, that was "discovered" by the hero. It could travel so fast through the atmosphere that it would leave a tunnel of vacuum, creating the most awe-inspiring sound made by man as the miles of air collapsed back on itself behind the starship.

I believe that Arthur C Clarke's earlier works were ALL fantastic, while his later writings for me were disappointing, they seemed to be written by an entirely differnet person who lacked the imagination and writing skill of the earlier Clarke.