In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Humanity has long referred to the flattest areas of the Moon as “seas.” And for a time, it was theorized that those seas might be covered with a dust so fine it would have the qualities of liquid—dust deep enough that it might swallow vehicles that landed upon it. That led to author Arthur C. Clarke wondering if you could build a craft that would “float” upon the dust…and what might happen if one of those vessels sank. While it is rare to find someone who hasn’t heard of Clarke and his major works, there are many who aren’t overly familiar with A Fall of Moondust, a novel that helped popularize science fiction at a time when the genre was still limited to a fervent but relatively small base of fans.
As a young boy, I was fascinated by tales of the sea, and it was probably this fascination that planted the seed which eventually led me to a career in the Coast Guard and Coast Guard Reserve. While the setting of A Fall of Moondust is exotic, the narrative is very much the story of a rescue at sea. While the book was first published in 1961, by the time I read the book a few years later, the USS Thresher had been lost with all hands, and I remember that undersea rescue was a topic receiving a lot of attention in the wake of the disaster. I immediately noticed the parallels between submarine rescue and the actions described in Clarke’s book.
A Fall of Moondust was one of Clarke’s early successes, and was nominated for the Hugo Award. But it also had a huge impact outside the science fiction field, in a way that many today may not appreciate. In the early 1960s, science fiction was still a genre limited to a very small fan base. A Fall of Moondust was the first science fiction novel picked to be included in the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series. From 1950 to 1997, these collections appeared 4-6 times a year, with each volume containing 3-6 abridged versions of currently popular books. With a circulation estimated at about 10 million copies, this publication gave the science fiction field huge exposure in households across the United States.
Clarke popularized a realistic type of science fiction that, unlike its pulp predecessors, rooted itself in realistic science and careful extrapolation of technological capabilities. A Fall of Moondust, and another contemporary book of Clarke’s I enjoyed at the time, The Sands of Mars, fall clearly into this category. And Clarke, while not religious, could also be quite mystical in his fiction; many of his works looked toward the transcendence of humanity and powers beyond anything our current science can explain. The chilling tale of the huddled remnants of humanity in Against the Fall of Night, and the story of alien intervention into mankind’s future, Childhood’s End, fall into this category, as does the novel (and movie) 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke’s most famous work. The space journey in 2001 starts in a very realistic manner, but soon moves into the realm of mysticism. I, like many of Clarke’s fans, often found this very moving. While I have looked to theology and the Bible for clues about what life after death might hold, the first thing I think of every time the topic is raised is a line in the movie 2010, when a transcendent Dave Bowman speaks of “Something wonderful…”
About the Author
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is a British science fiction writer who spent his final years living in Sri Lanka. Already widely known both within and beyond the science fiction field, Clarke was famously chosen to sit beside the noted television news reporter Walter Cronkite and provide commentary during the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
In World War II, he worked as a radar officer for the Royal Air Force, specifically in developing radar-guided landing techniques. In an article in Wireless World magazine in October 1945, entitled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays—Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?”, Clarke famously advocated putting repeater satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the equator. While he was not the only proponent of the idea, he did quite a lot to popularize it, and the concept went on to revolutionize rapid communication around the Earth. He was also an early advocate of using satellites in weather forecasting. In his 1962 book, Profiles of the Future, Clarke famously stated what he called his three laws:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Because of their dominance of, and profound influence on, the field, Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were often referred to as science fiction’s Big Three authors. Clarke and Asimov were both known for being top science writers, as well as top science fiction writers. In an agreement amusingly referred to as the Clarke-Asimov Treaty, Clarke is reported to have agreed to refer to Asimov as the best science writer, as long as Asimov agreed to refer to Clarke as the best science fiction author. Later, Clarke and Heinlein reportedly had a major falling out regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative, with Heinlein being in support, while Clarke opposed it.
Clarke’s most famous work is 2001: A Space Odyssey, a project for which he wrote the movie script with Stanley Kubrick while concurrently working on the novel version of the tale. He published a sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two, and participated in development of the 1984 movie adaption of the book. There were eventually two additional books in the series.
Clarke was not particularly known for the quality of his prose, which was sturdy and workmanlike, although his books frequently transcended that prosaic foundation. Besides the Odyssey books, the works of Clarke that I’ve most enjoyed over the years include Against the Fall of Night, Childhood’s End, A Fall of Moondust, The Sands of Mars, Rendezvous with Rama, and The Fountains of Paradise. Many of the books produced late in his career were sequels prepared with co-authors, and after finding a few of them forgettable, I gave up on reading them entirely. This may not be a very fair approach, but there are so many books in the world to choose from, and so little time to read them.
Clarke’s shorter works included “The Sentinel,” a story whose central concept led to the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He also wrote the unforgettable, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” and the Hugo-winning “The Star.” His novella “A Meeting with Medusa” won the Nebula.
He hosted three science-based television series, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers and Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Universe, and was a participant in numerous other science shows and documentaries.
The awards Clarke received, and the awards that now bear his name, are too numerous to mention without exceeding my desired word count for this article. His most honored work was Rendezvous with Rama, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and British Science Fiction Awards. The Fountains of Paradise also won both Hugo and Nebula. Clarke was named a SFWA Grand Master in 1986, and he was knighted by the British Empire for his services to literature.
A Fall of Moondust
Captain Pat Harris is skipper of Selene, a vessel designed to float upon the surface of the deep deposits of moon dust that make up the Sea of Thirst (a fictional area within the real Sinus Roris, or “Bay of Dew”). She is an excursion vessel, run by the Lunar Tourist Commission, and sails with a crew of two: Harris and stewardess Sue Wilkins. Because travel to the moon is expensive, their tour group is an older crowd, made up largely of affluent people. While propellers drive her across the moon’s surface, Selene is essentially a grounded spacecraft, equipped with all the life support systems any such craft would carry. Pat is good at his job, and knows how to make the excursion as entertaining as possible.
Near the Mountains of Inaccessibility, however, an ancient gas bubble reaches the surface and Selene is enveloped and swallowed by the dust without any warning. When the vessel doesn’t check in, a search is initiated. The lunar colony calls upon the Lagrange II satellite, and astronomer Thomas Lawson takes on the task of locating the vessel (upon my first reading, I had yet to understand what Lagrangian points were, but this is an early use of the concept in fiction). Lawson finds no sign of Selene and goes to bed.
On Selene, Pat is working to figure out what happened, and what the implications are, when a passenger approaches him. He is Commodore Hansteen, noted explorer and leader of the first expedition to Pluto, who had been traveling under an alias in order to avoid attracting attention. While there is no formal transfer of command, the younger, grateful Pat is happy to defer to the older, more experienced man. At this point we meet the passengers, and if I have any criticism of the book, it is that they are a rather predictable lot (although Clarke, commendably for the time, does introduce us to physicist Duncan McKenzie, an Aboriginal Australian, making the cast of characters at least slightly more diverse than one might expect in 1961). They are understandably worried about their air supply, but soon realize that their main problem is heat, as the normal means of dispersing excess heat are now compromised by the dust.
The lunar colony sends out smaller dust-skis to trace Selene’s route in an attempt to locate her, but find nothing. An observatory reports a quake occurred in her vicinity, and they suspect that she has been buried by an avalanche, which would probably have destroyed her. Fortunately, circulation in the dust draws off some of the waste heat, and while conditions are unpleasant, the passengers are able to survive. Meanwhile, Lawson awakens and begins to look for traces of the wake Selene should have left, which would be visible on infrared cameras. He finds a hot spot caused by their waste heat, and realizes what has happened.
Buy the Book
The Consuming Fire
On Selene, the entertainment committee decides to have a reading of the old cowboy novel, Shane, and Clarke has some fun speculating on what future scholars would have to say about the (then popular) genre of the Western novel. Elsewhere, Chief Engineer Lawrence realizes that there may be a chance to save the passengers and crew, calls for Lawson to be brought to the moon, and begins planning a rescue. Lawson is an unlikeable fellow, but it is enjoyable to see him rise to the occasion and become a better man. Lawrence and Lawson set out to look at the hot spot, and eventually find the ship. A metal probe not only locates the ship, but allows them to communicate by radio.
We get a sub-plot regarding press efforts to uncover what is happening, as well as various sub-plots regarding the tensions between passengers—including the reveal that one of them is a believer in UFOs (Clarke uses the opportunity to poke some fun at them). But what kept my attention riveted, both as a youth and upon rereading, was the engineering effort of building rafts and structures to anchor over Selene and provide them with a new supply of air. The failure of their CO2 scrubbing system adds significant tension to that effort, providing an urgency to the rescue effort that no one had foreseen. Additionally, attempts to build a tunnel to Selene using caissons are complicated by further settling of the vessel. The final complication involves a fire in the engineering compartment, which threatens to explode and kill everyone aboard.
That the crew and passengers survive the ordeal will be no surprise, but for those who might want to read the book, I will be silent on any further details. I would definitely recommend A Fall of Moondust as a solid adventure book, with the narrative driven by technological and scientific challenges. It is an example of the realistic approach that made science fiction stories respectable and more relatable to wider audiences. The book is an early example of space rescue tales, paving the way both for works based in non-fiction like Apollo 13 and science fictional stories such as Andy Weir’s novel (and eventual movie) The Martian.
Final Thoughts
A Fall of Moondust was a pioneering book that made the exotic seem almost inevitable, leaving readers with the impression that it was likely just a matter of time before tourists would be buying tickets to the moon. Fortunately for lunar explorers, while moon dust turned out to be a real thing, and a pesky substance to deal with, it was not found in sufficient quantities to swallow up any of our expeditions or vessels. Clarke was able to produce a science fiction adventure that was gripping and full of technological speculation, while at the same time straightforward enough to appeal to the many subscribers to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, many of whom may have been encountering science fiction for the first time with this tale.
And now it’s your turn to talk: I’m interested in your thoughts on A Fall of Moondust, or Clarke’s other works, as well as your thoughts on his place in the pantheon of science fiction’s greatest authors.
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
Oh I adore ‘A Fall Of Moondust’ and sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who’s ever read it, obviously not. Not being much into engineering it was the suspense and characters like Lawson and the Commodore who kept me interested. But all that technical detail certainly adds to versimiltude of the setting.
The final line of Fountains of Paradise is so wonderful. Pushes the entire novel over the top. He really did deep time beautifully.
Rama was one that I read all the way through, once. I could see why it was regarded as a classic, but I just didn’t like it.
The Ghost From The Grand Banks was the last novel of his that I liked.
Clarke was the most recognisable and ubiquitous British science fiction author of his era (being one of the handful of optimists in the British genre didn’t hurt, even if his futurism was far off the mark) and one of the most important to me when I started reading science fiction, so I can’t objectively comment on his place in the pantheon. He might not have produced ornamented prose but his clear and concise stories held appeal to both the scientific or technically minded non-fiction reader and to the fiction reader with some interest in science but low tolerance for technobabble.
I collected all his novels, even the farmed-out sequels. (I may not remember anything about said sequels now or consider anything after The Fountains of Paradise essential but I didn’t go that far for Roger Zelazny.) A Fall of Moondust wasn’t the most important of them to me (science having moved on by the time I read it) but it is a fine example of his work and still holds a retro charm.
I suspect the dust sea is courtesy of the colourful Thomas Gold.
I thought I had this book on my shelf, but apparently I don’t. I have the impression that I’ve read it, but I may be confusing it with The Sands of Mars. Since both titles involve fine gritty substances on worlds starting with M, they’re easy to mix up.
Anyway, it sounds like it would’ve been a natural to base a low-budget SF movie on. The vehicle-rescue genre is an old standard, and since it’s largely set aboard the trapped ship, it wouldn’t have needed a lot of sets or locations. The miniature effects for the sand boats and rescue vehicles would’ve been pretty basic, reminiscent of what The Outer Limits did in “The Invisible Enemy” in 1964. It’s too bad that didn’t happen sometimes in the mid-’60s, before the Moon landings rendered the premise obsolete.
While I don’t love all his books, and rather dislike some of them, I’ve always got time for Arthur C Clarke. His children’s book, Islands in the Sky and the collection that children’s publisher Puffin did of his short stories – Of Time and the Stars – were pretty much my gateway drug into written SF. Rendezvous with Rama is a firm favourite. For sure it’s characters are flat and obvious and the dialogue is occasionally simplistic, but I’ll forgive it all that for its tension and sense of wonder. It also has one of the best last lines of SF ever. He was also, I suspect, an early explorer of political tensions in a colonised solar system. This comes up in The Sands of Mars, Earthlight, Rendezvous With Rama and Imperial Earth. A Fall of Moondust is not a favourite, I’m afraid. The only thing I remember from it is the convection leeching off the excess heat and the endless poker game some of the passengers set up. I got as far as Songs From Distant Earth (and enjoyed it greatly) before crashing. And being a submarine fan, The Deep Range is good fun. My thanks to Mr Clarke.
A Fall of Moondust is seminal for me. It drove home better than any other work I’d read by then how unfeelingly dangerous the universe is to humans once away from Earth’s surface. We’d gotten so comfortable with the Moon that we had a *dedicated sight-seeing vehicle.* And then the Moon surprised us. But it also showed how we band together in times of crisis, rising to meet the unexpected.
Clarke is always my go to author when I need a story to entertain me. I could go on for days talking about Clarke’s short fiction but for me his short story Reunion is my favorite. As a black science fiction fan in the mid 70’s I didn’t find many examples of myself in the books that my school or local library had. Another great collection of Clarke’s short fiction is Tales from the White Hart some of the stories are dated but his humor will make you laugh and smile.
As I recall, Duncan McKenzie’s race only came up near the end, when they were evacuating the vessel on shifts, he and one other were the last ones waiting to be rescued, and the other character asked him how he came by his name while the two of them were trying to pass the time. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I do recall this being the first time in the text that referred to him being an indigenous Australian. Or am I confabulating here?
@6 Clarke was the gateway author for me as well. I read everything of his in the local library as soon as they’d let me take out books from the adult fiction section – I’d already whetted my teeth on what was available in the juvenile section.
I read it at summer camp (long story) and immediately after I finished it I read through it again. I wanted there to be a movie so bad. The Martian did a lot to scratch that itch, but I still want somebody (good) to make a movie!
I first read this novel way back in junior high school (197-ahem), but when I reread it for the first time a few years ago I realized that I really had remembered nothing about it. I do like the “science our way out of this” dimension and the story on the whole is very well-plotted. Overall, I enjoyed it. That said–
(1) the cast of characters reminded me of many other examples of 1950s SF when it came to, umm, characterization. I couldn’t decide if Clarke was cribbing from Asimov or Heinlein, or if they were cribbing from him. Or some combination or variation thereof.
(2) let’s just say the relationship sub-subplot between the captain and the stewardess has not dated well. In light of Clarke’s “just a bit cheerful” sexuality, though, that relationship as presented (especially the, err, climax) is somewhat interesting today to the historically minded more for the questions it raises about what closeted writers in the past felt they had to write to present themselves as otherwise. Granted, it’s hardly a major story point. However, the relationship really feels out of place, especially in light of how it developed. It took me out of the story and really, well, irked me.
@11/ohpopshop: I think it’s more likely that all three authors were “cribbing from” the same earlier influences, and the general style of SF in their era, which was not unique to the three of them.
It was pretty standard in ’50s SF for the lone female crewmember to be a love interest for the male lead — indeed, that was usually the only reason for including a female crewmember at all, to insert a bit of sexiness and romance into a story. So there’s nothing in the romantic subplot here that isn’t routine for the era, as far as I can tell from plot summaries online. The assumption at the time was that a single career woman was typically pursuing a career in hopes of meeting the right man so she could quit her job and marry him. So it wouldn’t have been perceived as sexual harassment, just as a love story that happened to occur in the workplace. Indeed, the book shows Pat being reluctant to think of Sue in a romantic way until circumstances force them to confront their repressed attraction, so it’s actually pretty respectful by ’50s standards.
‘A Fall of Moondust’ is why I read Shane and was launched on a brief Western phase. Thanks, Sir Arthur.
It seemed to me Pat and Sue’s long repressed sexual tension was only released because they had every reason to fear they were going to die still repressed. Imminent death not only concentrates the mind, it makes you horny.
@10
According to Sir Arthur (it’s in one of the forewords/afterwords pieces he wrote for his later novels, I forget which one) there were plans to film the book and that he was working on the script. He was rather pleased with the way he had come up with having scientifically plausible ‘dust oceans’.
@@.-@ Thanks for mentioning Thomas Gold, which encouraged me to google his name. He was indeed an interesting character.
@9 You are correct, Duncan’s race only comes up near the end, when he and Pat have sedated the rest of the passengers to reduce their respiration, and thus the buildup of CO2.
@13 You are correct, Pat and Sue behave in a professional manner toward each other right up until they think they are going to die.
I’m glad to see so many others remember this book fondly.
Hi
I have been an immense Clarke fan for decades, my favourite works being Rendezvous with Rama and A Meeting with Medusa. Last winter I reread Earthlight, The Sands of Mars and a Fall of Moondust and liked all three a great deal. Since then I have been trying to make sure I continue to explore his short stories. I have read all of the big three writers and I now find Clarke’s future seemed in some ways the most plausible and certainly the most peaceful. He was no great stylist, as you pointed out but I also enjoyed the streak of mysticism in many of his stories. Clarke did look out into the universe and see something wonderful and then came back to tell us about it.
Regards
Guy
I remember that book. I even have it with that cover.
But then I’m an old fart.
One of the things I like about A Fall Of Moondust is that there is no mysticism in it – I find Clarke’s mysticism just irritating at best.
I like this novel. It’s mostly about people doing their jobs as well as they can – whether that’s a journalist trying to get the best angle for a story or the cabin crewmember carefully rationing out the emergency food available and keeping everyone cheerful. They’re ordinary working people doing their ordinary work – on the Moon.
The mandatory-heterosexual relationship between captain and crewmember is too commonplace to bother me. Sue Wilkin is clearly there to prove Pat Harris’s heterosexuality, but she’s also presented as good at her job and responsible – she is third-last out of the dust boat at the end, quite properly prioritising all of the passengers ahead of the crew. (Their marriage at the end of the book is the most unrealistic thing in the entire novel, but hey ho.)
What I do mind is the treatment of the journalist, one of only three women in the entire novel, I think; Sue Wilkin, Mrs Schuster, the former dancer, – and the journalist, whose name I can’t even remember off the top of my head.
Clarke notes that she has a notebook and pen – oldfashioned writing implements that can’t fail – and that after she’s surrendered 52 pages of her notebook to create a deck of cards, she sets out to record the situation with a view to reporting on it later. That’s all good – it’s what a good journalist would *do* in a situation like that.
What makes her a rather horridly misogynistic stereotype is the from-nowhere presentation of her as a hag who thinks Pat Harris and Sue Wilkin are enjoying themselves together too much to want to be rescued, and makes trouble to such an effect that the Commodore has to bellow at her to shut up. That’s pointless and stupid, and it undercuts her as one of the characters who is doing her job as best she can in the situation she’s in: she is a journalist, she’d be doing on-the-sport reporting.
I had (and still own!) a great book when I was growing up and it contained this, The City and the Stars, The Deep Range and Rendezvous with Rama. I must have read that thing (and another full of HG Wells stories) so many times over the years. The only one I could never really get into was The Deep Range.
@18, Note that Miss Whosit, I can’t remember her name either, is Dead Right about Pat and Sue’s attraction even if she puts the worst construction on it. She also expresses suspicion of the Commodore later and is wrong. She only becomes disagreeable as the tension mounts, I assumed it was her way dealing with fear, focusing on side issues.
Miss Morley, the lady whose name is hard to recall, was a stock character of the time, the “nosy and judgmental spinster.” The less said about that stereotype, the better. Clarke did give her a curtain call at the end of the novel, making her much more sympathetic. Perhaps it was the situation that caused her earlier behavior; danger brings out the best in some people, and the worst in others.
At least Clarke justified the trope somewhat by making her a professional journalist.
16) good point. Clarke always struck me as both the most positive and human of the Big 3.
I ‘inherited’ this book from my father a few years back (he was having a clear out and I just can’t bare to see a book, any book, leave our collections). I know I read it as a teenager, I know I’ve read it since, but aside from the vaguest of details, I can’t remember anything about it! Having quizzed my father on it, he can’t either. To be fair, I have a terrible memory and my father’s is worse… looks like it’s going back into the to-read pile!
Sands of Mars (the 1954 Pocket Books edition) is the first adult SF that I read, so when A Fall of Moondust came out I pounced on that. Both books are wonderful.
Like you, I read A Fall of Moondust as a young lad and fell in love with it. However, my most favorite Arthur Clarke novel never seems to get much press. It is the novel The City and The Stars. This is a re-write and expansion of his earlier work, Against The Fall of Night.
I must have re-read this novel at least 50 times since I was first introduced to it in Junior Highscool – over 50 years ago. I enjoy this story each time I read it. It takes me to a time that is a billion years in the future, to a magical City populated by a unique society. In my own very personal opinion, this was one of Arthur C. Clarke’s very best stories. And I think it would make an awesome movie, if done correctly.
I don’t think I ever read A Fall of Moondust. (For a moment I thought I had, but then realized I had it mixed up with Clarke’s Earthlight.) However, the mention that one character in AFOM is named “Duncan McKenzie” leapt out at me, because I did read Imperial Earth (way, way, waaaaaay back in high school) and there was a character in that book named Duncan Makenzie. (Note different spelling.)
I would love to know the connection between these two similarly named characters. Was the character McKenzie an ancestor of the character Makenzie? Did Clarke have a friend named (say) Duncan MacKenzie that he wanted to honor in a very slightly disguised form? Or did Clarke just think this was a really cool name?
@27/Stevo Darkly: Any of those could be true, or maybe Clarke just forgot he’d used the name before. I sometimes forget I’ve already used a proper name in one of my earlier books/stories, and I have them all on computer so I can easily search them. It would’ve been harder in Clarke’s day to keep track of all the character names in his past works.
Alan – just wanted to thank you for this article. Back when this was posted, I was so intrigued by your write up that I made sure to add A Fall of Moondust to my wishlist. A few months later, found it in a used book store and picked it up. Read it this past weekend (mostly while on various planes!) and I heartily enjoyed it. Simply gorgeous classic sci-fi.
@29 Sonofthunder. Thanks for the feedback, glad you enjoyed the book!