Breathing a sigh of relief, I sent Mk II off to my agent, who promptly sold it to Omni Magazine. (Vol. III, No. 12). As soon as it appeared, wouldn’t you know, a leading movie producer wanted to buy it—but only if I wrote the screenplay. This is a complicated, highly skilled yet essentially noncreative job I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, so the deal was off. (I am prepared to spend two or even three days—depending on the weather—going through other people’s screenplays of my own novels. But that would be the maximum extent of my involvement.)
So here is the final version of “The Songs of Distant Earth”—which, incidentally, contains elements from another story, “The Shining Ones” (published in the collection The Wind From the Sun). I still think it would make a damn good movie, even though it doesn’t contain a single space-warp or black hole.
Perhaps more important is the fact that “S.D.E.” acted as a stepping stone to something much bigger. It got me interested in writing again, and also focussed my attention on the fact that there was another unaccepted challenge still lying around. For years I’d said it would be impossible to write a sequel to 2001. But just suppose . . .
So in March 1980 I started to write an outline for “Space Odyssey Two.” It wouldn’t be too much work—just a few typed pages.
Nine, actually. But one thing led to another . . .
THE LOCALE IS OCEANA (“SHAANA”), an Earth-type planet 50 light-years, and 500 years of voyage time, from the solar system, colonized 2,000 years earlier in the first wave of interstellar exploration. There is very little land; continents still lie 100 million years in the future, and there is still much tectonic activity. The largest island is about the size of Hawaii, and very similar to Hawaii in climate and culture.
Over the centuries the islanders—attractive, slightly feckless—have developed a stable, conservative society, largely based on intermediate technology. They still have access to all man’s accumulated knowledge, but they have added little to it. Their boats, aircraft, and cars are built to last a lifetime, and they never throw anything away they can use again. Since there is no other habitable planet in the system, they have no spaceships, but they can still launch the (rather primitive) satellites essential for their scattered islands’ communications and meteorological services.
Though they have had no physical contact with outsiders for centuries, they still inject their records and news, such as it is, into the local stellar network. The current update is long overdue, partly because of a mounting power crisis.
The Shaanans get most of their electrical power from OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion), which employs the temperature difference between the warm surface water and the very cold water several kilometers down. (The first Earth-based OTEC factory began operating in Hawaii in 1979.) For some unknown reason, several of the factories have failed, apparently owing to damage at the deep end. Typically the Shaanans don’t have the submersibles needed to investigate at such depths; they are still arguing about what to do next.
Our protagonists on Shaana are a young couple, Loren (a marine engineer; marine engineering on Shaana is one of the most important professions) and Marissa. Their placid lives are disrupted by the arrival of the first ship from Earth in many centuries—and the last one that will ever be.
Five hundred years earlier the sun went nova. There was just sufficient warning to seek out the population and evacuate the survivors in hyper-ships, each carrying one million sleepers, along with records of all mankind’s treasures and knowledge, as well as gene banks of the main plants and animals.
Argo barely escaped in time. She left before preparations for the centuries-long journey were quite complete. She carries spectacular views of the destruction of the solar system, recorded by cameras on Earth and some other planets: Jupiter boiling, Saturn’s rings collapsing, the sun finally devouring its children, but, most poignant of all, unbearably moving scenes of the last moments of beloved earthscapes and artifacts (e.g., the Taj Mahal, St. Peter’s, the Pyramids, etc., melting down).
Because there is appreciable erosion from interstellar dust at one tenth the speed of light, Argo travels behind a huge ablation shield, formed of ice. This is now too thin for the voyage to continue; hence the stop at Oceana to build a new shield. About 100 of the ship’s engineers have been revived for this task, among them Falcon.
During the decades of deceleration Argo has been studying the Shaanans’ radio transmissions and has a very good idea of the local culture. But so far there has been no attempt at contact, because of the long-established policy of noninterference. There is much debate aboard Argo about this, especially now that it is in orbit and the beauty of the planet below is clearly visible. Falcon spends hours scanning the islands through the ship’s telescopes, vividly reminded of the world he has lost forever.
Contact is finally made, with the inevitable enthusiasms and frictions. The voyagers have power, knowledge, determination, but they are slowly seduced by the beauty of Oceana—such a contrast to Argo’s sterile corridors—and become appalled by the lonely centuries of travel that still lie ahead. The Shaanans are happy and perfectly adjusted (though getting worried about the power situation). Yet they become envious of Argo’s wonders and a little guilty about their past indolence.
Also, despite taking elaborate precautions, each group infects the other with nasty head colds.
It is agreed that Argo can siphon (by means of a space elevator at the equator) several million tons of water to build a new shield. It is frozen in the shadow of a giant sunshade; then it is assembled by robots in a slow-motion ice ballet, lit by the cold light of Oceana’s three moons.
Meanwhile Falcon meets Loren and Marissa and falls in love with them both. Despite their cultural differences the two societies are equally civilized and sexual jealousy is (almost) extinct. But, ironically, another problem arises: Falcon is deeply attracted to Oceana, while Loren and Marissa feel the lure of the great, unknown universe beyond.
During the weeks of shield building, there is a catastrophic power failure in another OTEC grid. The Shaanans appeal to Argo. After some debate (they don’t want to make the islanders even less self-reliant) the voyagers re-create a deep-diving submersible from the ship’s information banks. Falcon plugs in temporarily to the recorded skills and personality of a long-dead deep-sea explorer and he dives with Loren. They discover that the installation had been damaged deliberately.
Diving deeper, they encounter the Shining Ones, giant squidlike creatures, which communicate in the total darkness of the abyss by beautiful displays of multicolored luminescence. They can even produce pictures the way giant TV screens do.
Falcon and Loren are also astonished to see that the squids are using tools fashioned from whalebone. They are on the verge of developing technology, and the OTEC conductors are their source of metal.
Falcon and Loren escape with difficulty. The Shaanans want to destroy the squids, but this horrifies the voyagers, who have already seen too much death.
With the help of special equipment and the ship’s computers, they reach a limited understanding with the squids, which are bought off with a gift of metal. But one day the Shaanans may be faced with a more serious threat from these beautiful and magnificent beasts: the future of the planet will belong to the more energetic race. In this coming conflict Argo cannot, and should not, interfere. The threat from the deep may be exactly what is needed to revitalize the Shaanans.
Argo’s shield is complete; the ship is ready to depart.
To help the Shaanans understand, Falcon takes Marissa (now bearing his child) and Loren up to orbit.
They enter the hibernaculum. At its portal stands one of the greatest works of art ever produced by mankind, the golden mask of the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, one of the last treasures saved from Earth. Now it guards the sleeping as once it guarded the dead.
They pass thousands of men and women in their crystal cells until they find Falcon’s wife, who is in the last stages of pregnancy. Falcon expl
ains that they had intended the child to be born on Earth but time ran out. Soon he will join them both in their long sleep and will awaken in time to greet them when Argo reaches its goal 500 years later.
On the beach where they first met, beneath the light of the three moons, Marissa and Loren await the moment of departure. Thousands of kilometers overhead the plasma drive ignites brighter than 100 suns, as Argo draws away from Oceana and heads out to the stars.
Loren comforts Marissa and reminds her of the child they will cherish all their lives. Yet always there will be the phantom image of another child conceived 500 years before, to be born 500 years hence.
A child whose father will remember them when he awakens, centuries after they have turned to dust.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE was born at Minehead, Somerset, England, in 1917. He is a graduate of King’s College, London, where he earned First class Honors in Physics and Mathematics. During World War II, he served as an officer in the Royal Air Force in charge of the first radar “talk down” equipment (“G.C.A.”) during its test period. His novel, Glide Path, is based on this experience.
In 1962 he was honored by the Franklin Institute for having originated the concept of communications satellites in a technical paper published in 1945. That same year, he received the Kalinga Prize for science writing from the Director-General of UNESCO.
In 1969, he shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ground-breaking science fiction film. He has also covered the missions of Apollo 11, 12 and 15 with Walter Cronkite and N.A.S.A.’s Wally Schirra. In 1968 Mr. Clarke was selected to write the epilogue to the astronauts’ own account of the Apollo mission, First on the Moon.
For thirty years, Mr. Clarke’s hobby has been undersea exploration along the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and off the coast of Sri Lanka, where he has resided since 1956. This interest has been the subject of nine of his works, including Indian Ocean Treasure, a first-hand account of the discovery of a man-of-war which sank in 1702 off the coast of Sri Lanka with at least a ton of silver aboard.
His popular science articles have appeared in such publications as Time, The Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, The London Observer and many others.
As one of the preeminent science fiction authors of the twentieth century, he has been awarded all of the field’s highest awards; his novel, Rendezvous with Rama, won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Awards of 1974.
Among Mr. Clarke’s other well-known works are 2001: A Space Odyssey and its best-selling sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two; The Fountains of Paradise; Childhood’s End; and a television series, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World.
Mr. Clarke has over 20 million copies of nearly fifty books in print, including numerous anthologies of his short fiction.
In 1982, he received the Marconi International Fellowship and was nominated for the position of Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa by the President of Sri Lanka. From his home on that island, he continues to write, consult and travel internationally for scientific lectures and conferences.
LEBBEUS WOODS was born in East Lansing, Michigan, on May 31, 1940. Receiving his technical training at the Purdue University School of Engineering and the University of Illinois School of Architecture, he worked in the late 1960s for the distinguished architectural firm of Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates on the design, development and construction of the Ford Foundation Headquarters Building in New York City. As Director of Design for his own firm, he won a Progressive Architecture citation for applied research in design in 1974. Returning to New York City in 1978, he has continued the development of his ideas in drawings and writings that have been widely published and exhibited.
Architecture-Sculpture-Painting (1979) depicts an architecture integrated with sculpture and painting as a paradigm for an integrated, holistic society. Einstein Tomb (1980) is a proposal for a monument to be constructed in orbit and sent into deep space commemorating the kinship of Einstein’s thought with ancient philosophies of dialectical continuity and unity. Aeon: The Architecture of Time (1982) is a vision of four cities that form a cycle of the evolution of civilization in harmony with cycles of natural evolution on Earth and beyond.
As an illustrator, he has worked with leading architects throughout the United States. In addition he has undertaken the illustration of Wagner’s Ring of the Niebelung, for which he has completed The Rheingold. His first drawings for a book of science fiction are these for Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sentinel.
BYRON PREISS VISUAL PUBLICATIONS, INC. is the award-winning producer of numerous illustrated volumes of science fiction and fantasy literature, including editions by Ray Bradbury, Samuel R. Delany, Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny. Their monograph on the work of Leo and Diane Dillon, the two-time Caldecott Award-winning artists, was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1981. They recently produced the book, The Words of Gandhi, in collaboration with Richard Attenborough, director of the Oscar award-winning film. This Masterworks Edition is the first in a series of volumes to be produced by them for Berkley Books.
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Copyright @ 1983, 2001 Byron Preiss Visual Publications
All stories copyright @ 1983, Arthur C. Clarke
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Arthur C. Clarke, The Sentinel
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