Clarke’s blind spot
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19. 2008 and is filed under Science Fiction,Posts by Chris Walley.
We tend to try to find significance in all deaths but I think in that of Arthur C. Clarke yesterday there is one. Aged 90, he was very much the last of those British SF writers who were imbued with the confident secular ethos that goes back at least to the early work of H. G. Wells. In the 60s and the 70s he towered over SF in Britain and probably beyond. From 80s onwards he faded out of view; it was partly waning powers and partly I suspect the fact that the world changed. I have no doubt that more than a few people thought he had died some time ago. He had, in many ways, become a dinosaur in the age of mammals; a relic of a long gone era.
Well, I liked him as a youngster and I am grateful for his works. If you haven’t read some of his stories, I commend them to you. They are almost always well-crafted and, at very least, tolerably well written. At his best his prose had wings and he was particularly adept at writing that final portentous sentence to a chapter which has you desperately turning the page to the next one. You will however learn little of characterization from his works. In addition, such was his dislike of women that any alien reading his books (a happy thought) might assume that humans were of a single sex. There is also, in many of his writings, a curiously belligerent attitude towards Christianity. He had much more sympathy with Eastern religions: he spent much of the latter part of his life in Sri Lanka.
Two things characterize his work for me. The first is the way that at least in his large-scale works he was always positive and upbeat about the future. He really did seem to believe that the human race was getting better and in space exploration was going to find something more exciting than war. I would be interested to know whether in his latter years he ever looked at the world and felt cheated. Frankly, if this is a fault I almost admire him for it. That sort of positive view of the future seems to me somewhat preferable to the gloomy mood that now prevails. Since Clarke’s heyday science fiction has become dystopian, dark and cynical: facts that might go some way to explaining why the sales of straight SF are greatly outnumbered by those of fantasy volumes. Anyway it would be a miserable soul who did not feel kindly towards Clarke's optimism. Yes he was naïve; but it was an innocent naivety. A linked phenomenon is that he wrote rarely of villains. I may stand corrected but in almost all his books the protagonists are thoroughly decent people. In fact, although he does a good line in mysterious aliens you do get the impression that, once the language barrier, was overcome they would probably sit down with you over a nice cup of tea. To make a Holy Week link, there is far more of the range and diversity of human sin in the few chapters of the passion story (think Caiaphas, Judas, Peter, Pilate, the crowd, the unrepentant thief, the callous soldiers) than there is in the hundred plus books that Clarke wrote.
The second feature, and it is a major one, is Clarke’s careful science. If he wrote that a world orbited at such a speed and such an altitude you may be sure that this was feasible and that the math worked. He was no fantasist and strove for scientific realism.
In short then, this Christian writer and reader finds a paradox in Clarke’s books. He strove for technical realism yet his failure to deal with evil in all its many and pervasive forms is unrealistic. And, in the long run, what we really care about is, to paraphrase Saint Augustine, ‘not how the heavens go but how to go to heaven’. The irony is that here, many fantasy novels with utterly unrealistic scientific and technical detail are actually closer to the reality where it counts than Clarke’s work.
Well, I liked him as a youngster and I am grateful for his works. If you haven’t read some of his stories, I commend them to you. They are almost always well-crafted and, at very least, tolerably well written. At his best his prose had wings and he was particularly adept at writing that final portentous sentence to a chapter which has you desperately turning the page to the next one. You will however learn little of characterization from his works. In addition, such was his dislike of women that any alien reading his books (a happy thought) might assume that humans were of a single sex. There is also, in many of his writings, a curiously belligerent attitude towards Christianity. He had much more sympathy with Eastern religions: he spent much of the latter part of his life in Sri Lanka.
Two things characterize his work for me. The first is the way that at least in his large-scale works he was always positive and upbeat about the future. He really did seem to believe that the human race was getting better and in space exploration was going to find something more exciting than war. I would be interested to know whether in his latter years he ever looked at the world and felt cheated. Frankly, if this is a fault I almost admire him for it. That sort of positive view of the future seems to me somewhat preferable to the gloomy mood that now prevails. Since Clarke’s heyday science fiction has become dystopian, dark and cynical: facts that might go some way to explaining why the sales of straight SF are greatly outnumbered by those of fantasy volumes. Anyway it would be a miserable soul who did not feel kindly towards Clarke's optimism. Yes he was naïve; but it was an innocent naivety. A linked phenomenon is that he wrote rarely of villains. I may stand corrected but in almost all his books the protagonists are thoroughly decent people. In fact, although he does a good line in mysterious aliens you do get the impression that, once the language barrier, was overcome they would probably sit down with you over a nice cup of tea. To make a Holy Week link, there is far more of the range and diversity of human sin in the few chapters of the passion story (think Caiaphas, Judas, Peter, Pilate, the crowd, the unrepentant thief, the callous soldiers) than there is in the hundred plus books that Clarke wrote.
The second feature, and it is a major one, is Clarke’s careful science. If he wrote that a world orbited at such a speed and such an altitude you may be sure that this was feasible and that the math worked. He was no fantasist and strove for scientific realism.
In short then, this Christian writer and reader finds a paradox in Clarke’s books. He strove for technical realism yet his failure to deal with evil in all its many and pervasive forms is unrealistic. And, in the long run, what we really care about is, to paraphrase Saint Augustine, ‘not how the heavens go but how to go to heaven’. The irony is that here, many fantasy novels with utterly unrealistic scientific and technical detail are actually closer to the reality where it counts than Clarke’s work.
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Thursday, March 20. 2008
Rebecca LuElla Miller wrote:
I have to agree that fantasy can clearly mirror spiritual reality, but as we've seen in Philip Pullman's works, it can also distort reality.
I would suggest the reason Clarke's works don't reflect evil was because of the common secular worldview of his day: Man is good. Oddly enough, secularists today still say the same thing, with the add-on that it's society or organized religion or government or corporate that's bad. In other words, one man alone is good, but don't let them congregate.
Sadly, some Christians are buying into this general theme and are writing about loving God and even fellow Christians while dissing the church.
Good thoughts, Chris. Thanks for this prompt.
Becky
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Thursday, March 20. 2008
Xdpaul wrote:
Well put! I have to say, I really enjoy reading Clarke from time to time for his thoughtful explorations of the possible, but you are totally dead on: his flawed worldview makes for less-than-robust story. I love the idea of an idealized group of "normal" scientific-minded folk facing the unknown, but, without true villains to rub up against, or interpersonal conflict, the ideal has no zip!
I thought that Ridley Scott in Alien brought the Clarke "ideal" team into the "real" world. Not only did the humans face a strange, and villainous, unknown, but they also turned on one another for mundane reasons in spectacular style.
To oversimplify it, Alien is 2001 with an an acknowledgment of evil and human failing.
On the other hand, for all his flaws in comprehensive approach, Clarke's obsessive eye for detail and engaging thought experiments are definitely worth a look. The blind spot, however, is galactic in scope.
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Thursday, March 20. 2008
Chris Walley wrote:
As an addendum there is an interesting article broadly on this matter in the New York Times. "For Clarke, Issues of Faith, but Tackled Scientifically"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/books/20clar.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin
Chris
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Sunday, March 23. 2008
Bruce Hennigan wrote:
I found it fascinating to watch a satellite interview of Arthur C. Clarke on December 31, 1999. He was featured on an evening show in the United States and he had connected by satellite (he is credited with the idea of satellites) from Sri Lanka. Dianne Sawyer and her co-host asked him a simple question. “Mr. Clarke what changes will we see in the new millennium?” I found it interesting that his response was “the death of religion and the birth of spirituality”. He found religions repressive and ultimately deadly for human civilization but our hope was in our “spirituality”. He never really expressed what he meant by that word but he was certainly prophetic. The new atheists have written extensively on the dangers of religion and we have seen a great growth in spiritual matters in our cultures. I believe this illustrates humanity’s fascination with the potential for the human race at the expense of ignoring that arcane part of us that will never disappear. As you so eloquently put it, Clarke ignored the potential damaging nature of sin. And, sin will not go away even if you redress our desire to know God as mere “spirituality”.
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Monday, March 24. 2008
XDpaul wrote:
Well-put. To paraphrase St. Paul, if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing.
Without the love of Christ, the "religious" love (in the body, communing with saints, engaged in worship) of Christ, so to speak, one is left with an ill-defined, unrealistic, and surprisingly dangerous "spiritualism" that says much, and signifies nothing.
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Monday, March 24. 2008
Rebecca LuElla Miller wrote:
Great discussion. I appreciate these thoughtful comments--keeps me thinking.
Becky
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