Against the Fall of Night

I read this book first when I was probably 15, 45 years ago, and it became a book with a story that has haunted me my whole life. It has always seemed a masterpiece of science fiction and, with City and the Stars - a richer novel than Against the Fall of Night, but the title less so! - one of Clarke's finest works. I found it's depiction of a human culture set billions of years in the future so alien to our own to be engrossing because of the characterizations and the mysteries as absorbing as they are strange. There are no real villians in the piece, and their world was one in which I wanted to live. I also identified strongly with the protaganist, who seeks to discover the secrets of his culture's lost past. The City of the novel, Diaspar, is as also a character in the story. I would recommend this novel very highly, especially to young readers. However, I must say that City and the Stars, a later re-conception of Against the Fall of Night, is a much richer expansion of Against the Fall of Night, and it is the the former that has stayed with me for so many years.

As I understand it, Clarke started plotting this novel out early in WW2 before he volunteered for the RAF. This would then technically make it his earliest novel- even though it didn't get published until 1953 by the legendary Gnome Press (first of the dedicated science fiction publishing houses.) Clarke would later feel compelled to extensively rewrite this novel and release it under a different title (The City and the Stars.) Personally I prefer this version. The Technology is set over a ten billion years into the future so a mere 50 years or so since it was first published doesn't really "date" it. This book doesn't share the high degree of hard science fiction detail that you find in most of his books. The technology is so advanced (machines never break down and read your mind to know what you want of them)that it seems more like magic. In fact, there is a statement that there are no more engineers in the world of the future since once the master robots started building themselves- and everything else- they were no longer needed and engineers faded away. I can identify with that, why work a thankless, unappreciated, arduous pursuit like engineering if the machines can do it better? The cosmic sweep of this novel over vast intervals of time and the entire universe reads more like an Olaf Stapledon novel (a British science fiction author that died in 1950 and whose works Clarke was no doubt familiar with.) If you like old-fashion space operas about the lost glories of the galactic Empire this book still weaves that classic atmosphere.

Thoroughly enjoyable, my first read from ACC. Not the longest book, but he does present a good storyline within the pages.

Arthur C. Clarke's masterpiece The City and The Stars (which I'm glad to note is back in print, which is loooooong overdue), is, in fact, an extended version of this early Clarke masterpiece. The City and The Stars is widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written, and with good reason. And, although I would agree with Clarke in saying that the later novel is the better of the two, this is a certifiable masterpiece in itself. Most all science fiction is, inevitably, set in the future, but this book is set in the far, far, far future. The world Clarke posits is a logical one, and is great as both a story and a warning. Far from being a dystopia, the city of Diaspar in the book is the genuinely archetypal Utopia. It is into this stagnant, decadent setting that Clarke creates one of his grandest visions. This book is sweeping in its vision and its prose. Clarke has always had a deft poetic touch, and this story contains some of his most beautiful outpourings of words. An absolutely essential read for any science fiction fan, as is the novel that it bequeathed.

This book is set in the far future, when humanity is hiding from reality and has set up a constantly renewing but artificial society. One man searches for "a way out" of the "city" that protects all that they know of humankind. His search is fascinating and what he finds out is haunting and exciting and a warning.