The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke
Considered by some to be Arthur C Clarke's finest achievement. The City and the Stars is an intriguing read.
Set primarily on the Earth of a billion years in the future, it finds humanity apparently confined to the domed city of Diaspor, where birth and death have been consigned to history, and the central computer looks after their every need and desire.
But Alvin is "a unique" and is not satisfied with life locked in the city that is apparently surrounded by a world of nothing more that desert, and so he sets out to see if he can 'escape'.
The story itself is good, but it's not what makes this book a classic. What Clark achieves within the confines of an essentially conventional sci-fi plot is a series of questions about the nature of life itself.
Is immortality a good thing? Is danger a bad thing? He suggests that, if you take all the threat and randomness and unpredictability and difficulty out of life, you render it stagnant and corrupt.
And Clarke also uses these ideas to promote the ideas of science and space exploration – that even the risk of science opening Pandora's Box should not dissuade us from pursuing knowledge.
The language is not the greatest, but what Clarke does achieve is a sense of the awe and curiosity that drives us. Or should.
Considered by some to be Arthur C Clarke's finest achievement. The City and the Stars is an intriguing read.
Set primarily on the Earth of a billion years in the future, it finds humanity apparently confined to the domed city of Diaspor, where birth and death have been consigned to history, and the central computer looks after their every need and desire.
But Alvin is "a unique" and is not satisfied with life locked in the city that is apparently surrounded by a world of nothing more that desert, and so he sets out to see if he can 'escape'.
The story itself is good, but it's not what makes this book a classic. What Clark achieves within the confines of an essentially conventional sci-fi plot is a series of questions about the nature of life itself.
Is immortality a good thing? Is danger a bad thing? He suggests that, if you take all the threat and randomness and unpredictability and difficulty out of life, you render it stagnant and corrupt.
And Clarke also uses these ideas to promote the ideas of science and space exploration – that even the risk of science opening Pandora's Box should not dissuade us from pursuing knowledge.
The language is not the greatest, but what Clarke does achieve is a sense of the awe and curiosity that drives us. Or should.
