‘Prelude to Mars’ by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted by Cynical Sarah on February 27, 2010

I initially picked this book up for my brother last summer at a garage sale intending to give it to him when I saw him at Christmas. The months between those two points erased it from my memory, however, and I picked it off the book shelf in January for something to do in my free time.

I’ve picked up quite a few purchases at garage sales, but this is by far my best 25 cent purchase.

Prelude to Mars is a collection of two complete novels and sixteen short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke. I thought my brother would like the book (even though he’s not much of a recreational reader) because Clarke has degrees in physics and mathematics, and not only did he write these science fiction stories, he did legit work in the real science realm. Plus his stories do at least have some of their science fictional elements based on real-science possibilities.

But I digress; I still think he’ll like the book, but it turns out I really enjoyed reading it, despite sci-fi not being my genre of choice.

The first part of the book is Clarke’s novel Prelude to Space which is his vision of how man would eventually make it to the moon. Clarke wrote the story in the late ’40s and envisioned it being a few decades before man would set foot on the moon. The time came much earlier, and Clarke even has a chance to address this in a forward before the story begins.

What makes this novel so interesting is knowing how the events actually played out and comparing them to how Clarke had imagined them happening. In his world, it is an international cooperation to get man into space and on the moon. There is no race, no competition, and it isn’t a political effort or agenda arranged by any one country in particular. Instead it is more a meeting of the top minds who create a space company and bring the world together to support it.

Clarke also uses atomic energy to power his space shuttles, something we haven’t come near to even trying yet. Plus the idea in his story the people aren’t looking at getting to the moon as a final objective, but merely a stepping stone to being able to explore the rest of the known universe and beyond.

Though we achieved making it to the moon faster than Clarke thought we would, I think in many ways we’re still way behind what he dreamed of the future of man in space.

That definitely holds true for the science and technology he talks about through all his stories. Sure there are some sci-fi elements when he talks about different planets that have to come solely from imagination, but there are scientific innovations and theories in them as well that are grounded in real possibility.

Through the “On the Light Side,” the first part of the short story collection, Clarke showcases all sorts of interesting science and theories through comical stories. The “On the Serious Side” tends more toward the imaginative sci-fi as he invents creatures on different worlds and gives his stories a darker tone.

One “Serious” story was The Possessed, a tale of an alien species coming to Earth in its very early development and what occurred from that. This one story makes the book worth picking up and reading. The detail, the suspense, the twist – all somehow perfectly done in just six pages.

The last part of the book is the novel Sands of Mars, which takes readers along a journalist’s journey to the Mars colony. I liked that it wasn’t so focused on the sci-fi angle but more on this one man’s experience in the journey to and his time at the colony on Mars. There is still plenty of science stuff going on around him of course, but it’s a part of his story and experience and not the focus of the novel.

In the end it’s really this one man’s view of humans conquering another frontier. Like a modern western tale, only seen through the eye’s of a more mundane side character on the same trail already blazed by John Wayne.

These stories make me wonder what has happened over the last 60 or so years that space exploration seems to have fallen by the wayside. Clarke has such a clear vision of what man has to do to move across the galaxy, and yet we stepped foot on the moon in 1969 and not bothered to take it any further, or even return.

Clarke’s vision is an attainable one, without the use of magical warp drives and speed of light travel. Perhaps he was just too optimistic about man being able to work together this early to actually make it happen.

But that’s also a part of what made these stories so good. Clarke uses atomic power and other scientific realities, and shows us what humans could achieve if we can put aside differences and erase borders and work together. It will take the best minds from around the world to achieve a longstanding and successful space program.

I recommend this book. It’s entertaining, well written, and you don’t have to like sci-fi to enjoy it, and you don’t have to be a top scientific mind to get it.

Arthur C. Clarke Books

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