Customer Reviews

Beyond the Fall of Night

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Arthur C. Clarke was the man who popularised the term "the technology of an advanced culture will be indistinguishable from magic." The best science fantasy writers know this - George Lucas and Asimov make no attempt to explain lightsabres or positronic brains. And Clarke, of course, makes no attempt to explain the technology of an isolated Earth city 2 billion (or thereabouts) years into the future. Instead, the first half of this book gives us an entertaining and light voyage through a society stagnated by immortality and robot-assisted ease. When Alvin, the first child born in thousands of years, rebels against this society, we are taken along for the ride. He learns that his city of Diaspar is not the only community left on the planet, and he makes further discoveries that are fun to read about.

This part of the book is a reprint of Clarke's Against the Fall of Night, which was written early in his career and shows it. It is fast paced (perhaps to a fault), and we're surprised at the naivete of all the characters at one time or another. However, it's fun for a light read and recommended.

The second half, written by Benford, is supposed to be a sequel, but bears absolutely no resemblance to Clarke's work. There are a number problems. Firstly, only 2 characters from Clarke's work survive, and they are relegated to supporting roles. Secondly, Benford makes the mistake of focussing on technology that is built 2 billion years in the future. This technology is used to fight the superbeing known as the Mad Mind, an energy-based species without physical form, but it's inherently silly to pit airplanes against a mental force. Finally, the "good" mentalic creature, Vanamonde, is ignored, even though its purpose from the first story is to fight the Mad Mind.

Thus, as a sequel, Benford's work is a disaster. Unfortunately, read on its own merits, it is no better. The main character is chased around and exposed to situations she doesn't understand, and she grows angry and frustrated at her experiences. We, as readers, share her anger and frustration. In the end, all that happens to her is a tour through the solar system. It's a whirlwind tour, however, so we are simply bombarded with images and it becomes boring.

I can generally rate books based on how long it takes to read them. The first half took a few days. The second half took a few weeks. Even television was more interesting! Therefore, the only reason to buy this book is if you can't find Against the Fall of Night by itself. If that's the case, I implore you - stop at the end of part 1!

'Against the fall of night', and 'City and the Stars' were one of the best stories ACC wrote.

It is a pity that Mr Benson didn't read either of them.

'Beyond the fall of night' takes some of the characters of ACC's book and reduces them. In fact, he appears to change so much of the original story that it is virtually unrecognisable. I find it difficult to believe that this is an 'authorised' sequel, since it contradicts much of what is written in the first book. The packaging of the book (putting the original in with the sequel) means that the contradictions are glaring (how come the moon was restored to completeness when it was destroyed by the weapon at Shalmarine?). The magnificence of the original novel has been lost in a hodgepodge of characters, ferris wheels and a pineapple spaceship. What?

Not recommended for anyone who has read the original. I think it was a mistake for Mr Benson to write this novel, and a mistake for Mr Clarke to let him.

Both Against the Fall of Night and The City and the Stars are wonderful stories, beautifully written

Gregory Benford's "sequel" is incoherent mishmash. I kept jumping paragraphs hoping the story would get clearer. It didn't.

Forget this book entirely and get the original Arthur C Clarke story (Against the Fall of Night) combined with The Lion of Comarre.

I've never read a Gregory Benford story before and this turned me off so much I don't plan to read another.

Having read some of Gregory Benford's work, I was greatly disapointed by "Beyond the Fall Of Night." His attempt to spin an addition on Clarke's short novel was a blunder. It's astonishing that he didn't pick up on an essential point of Clarke's original story, and proceeded to write himself into the ground, like an aircraft with no Glide Path. More surprising was that Clarke allowed this to be published. I wondered if he even reviewed works like this.

How do you rate a book like this? First of all, it's not a novel, despite its 339 pages. It's two novellas, the first by Clarke (four stars, pp 3-155) and the second by Benford (one star, pp 159-339). Second, the styles and subject matter are quite dissimilar. Benford makes no pretense of continuing Clarke's story or paying homage to the master in any way; this is simply a novella inspired by Clarke's novella.

That's fine if you're a fan of Benford's writing, which can be maddeningly uneven. Sometimes he uses whole pages of terse, deliberately elliptical dialogue; other times he seems to simply forsake dialogue altogether for rich, speculative, but often precious prose. But if you like the style of Arthur C. Clarke, you will dislike Benford's half of the book. Someone wrote of Clarke that he "can forge poetry from an engineer's blueprint." As Roger Ebert might say in reverse, Benford can forge a blueprint from someone's poem.

Worse, Benford does not demonstrate a familiarity with the events in Clarke's novella. For instance, he speaks of visiting the moon, which fell to earth long before the events in Clarke's novella. Benford implies that it is difficult for the "ur-humans" to communicate with Vanamonde, then quotes history that the ur-humans learned FROM VANAMONDE in Clarke's novella. This is one of several times Benford contradicts not just Clarke, but himself.

Clarke writes in the foreword that shortly after Benford asked to write a sequel to Against the Fall of Night, Damien Broderick asked to write a sequel to The City and the Stars! Oh, if only Broderick's letter had arrived sooner!

Recommendation: Buy this book ONLY if you do not already own Against the Fall of Night.

-- Peter C.S. Adam

"Against the Fall of Night" is the great Arthur C. Clarke's novella dealing with the future of mankind one Billion (yes, billion) years from now. Most authors would botch a theme of such scope and ambition, but Clarke carries it off brilliantly. "Against the Fall of Night" is the earlier version of the novel "The City and the Stars." I prefer the latter, but this novel (which in this book is labeled as Part 1 of "Beyond the Fall of Night") is fun to read, interestingly different from "The City and the Stars" and to this day has its own following among Clarke's many fans, me among them.

Without giving too much away, the story is set in the far distant future. Humanity has gone out among the stars to a strange destiny, but ages ago at least a branch of humanity returned to Earth, turned its back upon the Cosmos, and established two very different civilizations: the great City of Diaspar, and the telepathic community of Lys. This is the story of Alvin, one of the first children to be born in Diaspar for millenia. Alvin alone does not fear leaving Diaspar (its other citizens are conditioned to fear leaving the city) and indeed he possesses a strange compulsion to do so. This is a great story, containing magnificent speculations about the future destiny of mankind from the fascinating perspective of the far distant future looking back upon an almost forgotten human and galactic history.

Part 2 of this novel is written by Gregory Benford, and it is supposed to deal with what happens after the events in "Against the Fall of Night." Benford has completely botched this effort, and this sequel, if that is what it was, is simply awful--a complete failure. Most of the time the reader can barely figure out what is going on in the story. The story is largely pointless, aimless, and in no way constitutes a sequel to Clark's great work. Almost any of the better science fiction authors of today could have done better, and I cannot imagine how this fiasco found its way into print.

Buy this book if you want a good copy of Clarke's novella. Don't bother with Benford's story; it is a complete waste of time.

I have read several of Arthur C. Clarke's books before, but never any Benford (which after reading this book, I don't plan to.) The actual idea for the first novella is absolutely fascinating...a super high-tech race of humans billions of years into the future. Unfortunately, this type of storyline would require at least some emotional quality like that found in Clarke's Rama series. Clarke just didn't pull it off. The character of Alvin is either extremely shallow, or Clarke just never put any thought into his personaity. Either way, the lack of depth just completely ruins a good book. Also, he laves many questions unanswered. It may be hard to sumarrize a billion or so years of history, but if he didn't want to try, he shouldn't have even written the book. For Benford's half of the book, everything that Clarke missed on is mutiplied ten-fold, making the second half completely unbearable, since it lacks even an interesting plot. The grotesqueness of the characters, their lack of personality and intelligence, and the lack of a plot make this second novella both extremely boring and hellish to read. Benford's dialogs skip from one subject to another, the action is choppy and without explanation (example: when the flyers are ravaging the "tribe" he doesn't even explain who the "tribe" is, where they lived, or what they looked like, which eliminates all chance of a reader picturing the events in their head as they would with any other story). Overall, the only thing that saves this book from a 1 rating is the slightly interesting ideas expressed in the first novella.

I read the first half of this book, a very old story by Arthur C. Clarke called "Against the Fall of Night" and was immediately entranced. It's brilliant, well written, and completely engrossing. I am always fascinated by "large scope" science fiction (Dune, Across Realtime) that successfully tells a story that spans absolutely mind-boggling amounts of time and space. Against The Fall of Night spans billions of years featuring an immortal race that evolved from human beings. I was very satisfied with the ending of the first half of the book. Of course, I was very curious about the second half - a new sequel written by Gregory Benford.

It started out ok, for the first ten pages or so. And then it went downhill from there. The two main characters, Cley (the last "human" alive in the universe) and Seeker (a racoon-like beast who tries to hide his "god-like" powers) are interesting, but not enough to carry the story. It turns into one LONG chase scene, with Cley eventually saving the universe by ... going into a trance? The whole thing was poorly conceived, poorly written, and very frustrating to read.

The three star rating is five stars for the first half of the book, and one star for the second.

Clarke is deservedly considered one of the giants of science fiction. In recent years, for some reason, he has been producing many collaborations, and in every one of them, Clarke's genius trips over the banality of his collaborators. Why anyone thought one of my favorite books, The City and the Stars, needed to be reworked, I'll never understand. How bad is the pollution of Clarke's original? At one point in BTFoN the characters travel to earth's moon. But in TCATS, we learned that the moon was destroyed millions of years ago! It was a major plot point when the protagonist discovered the reason that the moon was destroyed. Did Benford even read the original? Does Clarke not remember it? Was the editor asleep? This is quite simply a bad book.

I actually read "The City and The Stars" (Clarke's own re-write of "Against The Fall Of Night") before I read ATFON. I still agree with Mr. Clarke's estimation of the two works; "City" is the superior work.

When I first read "Beyond The Fall Of Night," I was extremely disappointed. While Gregory Benford is an excellent author, I came away with the feeling he had somehow missed the point of Clarke's earlier work. I especially was puzzled by Alvin's death and the assumption that the technologically-boosted telepathy of the inhabitants of Lys was also the instrument of their death. What had been a novel of new hope and a renaissance of humanity became a dark and dreary tome more typical of the cyberpunk movement. Only determination kept me going to the end of the book.

Recently, I re-read this book and believe I was too harsh in my judgement of Mr. Benford's work. If we accept it as a tale of transition, It works well. Transitions are messy times and "Beyond The Fall Of Night" meets that criterion. The citizens of both Diaspar and Lys are shown in a more critical light unfiltered by Mr. Clarke's gentility. Also portrayed are more realistic assumptions about the changes wrought over a billion years.

Perhaps the major flaw in this book is the two stories are presented in a common cover. There is so much difference in the two styles, Mr. Benford suffers simply because he is not Mr. Clarke. The trick is to skip past the original work and go straight to the sequel. The beautiful prose with which Mr. Clarke ends "Against The Fall Of Night" does not transition well to the gritty opening of "Beyond The Fall Of Night." While I still prefer the visions presented in "The City And The Stars," Mr. Benford's novel is powerful in its own way.

Perhaps a better way would have been for Mr. Benford to write a synopsis of the earlier work in his own style.

I must say, while my opinion has improved of this book, I certainly hope Mr. ! Clarke turns down anyone wishing to write a sequel to "The City And The Stars." As he promised in the preface to his later work, I am content to let his be the last words on the City of Diaspar.