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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3 and 1/2 Stars,
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This review is from: The Challenge of the Sea. (Library Binding)
The Challenge of The Sea is a long-forgotten and, indeed, criminally-overlooked book in Arthur C. Clarke's vast repetoire. Of course, this may surprise many, as the first thing that one generally thinks of when hearing the name "Arthur C. Clarke" are visions of space and black monoliths. Those familar with Clarke's life, though, know that he harbors, if you will pardon the pun, a long-time fascination for the seas of earth as well as his well-known love for the depths and mystery of space. An enthusiastic skin diver, Clarke went on several diving expeditions and even helped excavate a genuine sunken treasure ship (see his "The Treasure of The Great Reef.") Though such writings declined after the coming of the 1970's, the early part of Clarke's career featured numerous articles as well as a handful of books, both fact and fiction, focusing on the sea. The Challenge of The Sea belongs to the non-fiction category, and is perhaps the best of the bunch. As always with Clarke's books of this type, it is an encyclopedic, comprehensive look at the entire subject: its history, accomplishments, inherent challenges, as well as prospects and projections for the future -- think along the lines of some of his more well-known space books of the same sort, i.e., The Promise of Space and The Challenge of the Spaceship. With Clarke, you know that you're never in store for a dry, boring read of the subject at hand, no matter what the subject may be: this book is in his usual well-written, highly poetic, more-than-occasionally funny, immensely readable and ever-interesting style. I found several of these articles to be particularly interesting, as the sea is a subject with which I am not overly familar with. The beauty of the book, though, is that Clarke shows what a fundamentally interesting (and almost wholly unknown) place the sea inherently is. By the time you are finished with this book, you, too, will find it an interesting and fascinating place, regardless of your prior views on the subject -- if you happened to have any at all. One problem with much of Clarke's non-fiction work is that it often suffers from a general sameness, and the same articles appear numerous times in various different books. As a long-time Clarke reader who has read upwards of 50 of the author's books, I was refreshingly surprised to not come across a single article in this delightful little book that I had previously read. Another good thing about it is that, unlike some of Clarke's more popular non-fiction works on space, the passage of time has dated it very little. Despite the fact that it was published in 1960, it is practically as applicable and fresh now as it was then. Consequently, this book is a worthy read for even the Clarke fan who has read almost everything the author has to offer. It is also one of his better and most oft-overlooked works of the kind, and deserves to be read by fanatics and more casual fans alike.
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