The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [1]
• • •
“Arthur Clarke is probably the most critically admired of all currently active writers of science fiction . . . awesomely informed about physics and astronomy, and blessed with one of the most astounding imaginations I ever encountered in print.”
—New York Times
“THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE is the most considerable work of the latter part of Clarke’s career.”
—Science Fiction Encyclopedia
“Our most important visionary writer.”
—Playboy
“Intellectually provocative.”
—Newsday
“Sets the standard for science fiction that is both high-tech and high-class.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Remarkable.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Books by Arthur C. Clarke
The Fountains of Paradise
The City and the Stars/The Sands of Mars
(omnibus)
The Ghost from the Grand Banks/The Deep Range
(omnibus)
Cradle
(written with Gentry Lee)
Available from Warner Aspect
To the still-unfading memory
of
LESLIE EKANAYAKE
(13 July 1947–4 July 1977)
only perfect friend of a lifetime,
in whom were uniquely combined
Loyalty, Intelligence and Compassion.
When your radiant and loving spirit
vanished from this world,
the light went out of many lives.
NIRVANA PRĀPTO BHŪYĀT
“Politics and religion are obsolete; the time has come for science and spirituality.”
Sri Jawaharlal Nehru
To the Ceylon Association
for the Advancement of Science
Colombo, 15 October 1962
Introduction
In the two decades since the 1978 Sources and Acknowledgments was written, there have been some astonishing developments in this particular field of space engineering. The literature is now so extensive that I can no longer keep up with it; I contributed to it myself at the Thirtieth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation at Munich in 1979 (see “The Space Elevator: Thought Experiment or Key to the Universe?” reprinted in Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography, John Wiley & Sons, 1984).
Perhaps most amazing is the discovery of the material that will make the elevator possible. As I suggested in this novel, it is indeed carbon—but not, fortunately, diamond. The unexpected and Nobel Prize–winning discovery of the C60 molecule, Buckminsterfullerene, has opened up the prospect of materials hundreds of times stronger than steel. Indeed, one of the first statements made by Smalley and Kroto when they discovered this material was that it could be used to make a space elevator.
In 1979 I recorded much of the novel on a twelve-inch record (Caedmon, TC 1606). The record sleeve had a long essay about the space elevator, together with a drawing of it reaching from Sri Lanka to geostationary orbit—and by a truly incredible coincidence, these were kindly provided by my old friend Buckminster Fuller! What a tragedy that he never lived to see the discovery of the material bearing his name.
The space elevator does indeed seem to be an idea whose time has (almost) come. At a recent workshop at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, NASA engineers concluded that “this is no longer science fiction.” (For details, explore their Web site: www.nasa.gov. And that was science fiction when I wrote the novel!)
One of my most valued possessions is a photograph taken aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis during the first mission (STS 75) to lower a payload on a tether—one small step toward the space elevator. It shows astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman with a copy of this book floating in space beside him. When they returned to Earth, the shuttle crew autographed it and mailed it to me.
Finally, I’d like to record that I had the great pleasure of meeting the charming inventor of the space elevator, Yuri Artsutanov, in Leningrad during my visit to Russia in 1982 (see my collection of essays 1984: Spring a Choice of Futures), and I am glad that Yuri has now received recognition for his brilliant and daring concept.
Colombo, Sri Lanka
21 September 2000
Preface
“From Paradise to Taprobane is forty leagues; there may be heard the sound of the Fountains of Paradise.”
Traditional
Reported by Friar Marignolli, A.D. 1335
The country