Beyond the Fall of Night

"Against the Fall of Night" is the great Arthur C. Clarke's novella dealing with the future of mankind one Billion (yes, billion) years from now. Most authors would botch a theme of such scope and ambition, but Clarke carries it off brilliantly. "Against the Fall of Night" is the earlier version of the novel "The City and the Stars." I prefer the latter, but this novel (which in this book is labeled as Part 1 of "Beyond the Fall of Night") is fun to read, interestingly different from "The City and the Stars" and to this day has its own following among Clarke's many fans, me among them. Without giving too much away, the story is set in the far distant future. Humanity has gone out among the stars to a strange destiny, but ages ago at least a branch of humanity returned to Earth, turned its back upon the Cosmos, and established two very different civilizations: the great City of Diaspar, and the telepathic community of Lys. This is the story of Alvin, one of the first children to be born in Diaspar for millenia. Alvin alone does not fear leaving Diaspar (its other citizens are conditioned to fear leaving the city) and indeed he possesses a strange compulsion to do so. This is a great story, containing magnificent speculations about the future destiny of mankind from the fascinating perspective of the far distant future looking back upon an almost forgotten human and galactic history. Part 2 of this novel is written by Gregory Benford, and it is supposed to deal with what happens after the events in "Against the Fall of Night." Benford has completely botched this effort, and this sequel, if that is what it was, is simply awful--a complete failure. Most of the time the reader can barely figure out what is going on in the story. The story is largely pointless, aimless, and in no way constitutes a sequel to Clark's great work. Almost any of the better science fiction authors of today could have done better, and I cannot imagine how this fiasco found its way into print. Buy this book if you want a good copy of Clarke's novella. Don't bother with Benford's story; it is a complete waste of time.

Benford has written a nice sequel to "Against the Fall of Night." But in doing so, he has taken something away from one of the great classics. And the strange part is, it's the high quality of the sequel that does the most damage. Arthur Clarke's "Against the Fall of Night" was a classic. Spare and elgant, it managed to convey (by stimulating our imaginations) a wonderfully rich sense of the truly distant future. It's an empty universe---although signs of a galaxy-spanning empire abound, all that remains is one peopled city on a desert Earth. And it really is peopled: despite the billions of elapsed years, the inhabitants are almost indisitnguishable from us. They act like we do and wonder about the same things. So it's easy for us to get caught up in their story. Alvin's sense of abandonment by history, his curiosity about where everything went, and his sense of wonder as he discovered some of the answers, became mine as well. And though he was only one man, his actions, though never particularly "heroic," (indeed, the bulk of the book simply has Alvin travelling from place to place and seeing things) seemed somehow to matter in the overall scheme of things. I found this wonderfully uplifting. Since that book was written, science fiction has become sophisticated. We realize that people won't be anything like us in a billion years, and that one person is unlikely to have a significant impact on the universe. We consider it silly that Alvin had no virtual reality, no nanotech, no bioengineering, no group mind. We find it unfortunate that Alvin's character is "flat", without nuance, without internal conflict. If "Against the Fall" were written today, it would likely be panned. Gregory Benford, one of my favorite science fiction writers, pens a modern answer to Clarke's book. He shows how Alvin missed the point, how humans are just tiny players in a universe too complicated for one of them to understand fully. He gives details, describing Alvin's differences from present day humans. He writes conflict---people struggle and grow or die. Adjectives are everywhere---nuances, careful descriptions of sight and sounds, and of how his characters feel. Benford is great at this sort of thing. He's one of the "literary" science fiction writers whose plots, settings, and characterizations all work at a high level of quality. His books put us inside other people, and let us understand what they are thinking and why. "Ocean of Night" and its many sequels do a stupendous job of mapping out a future history of the human race while simultneously exploring the growth of fascinating characters. I've loved all of his work. And standing on its own, "Beyond the Fall" is no exception. It tells an entertaining and story full of neat ideas. But it does something terrible to Clarke's original work. That book asked questions; Benford answers them. He shows up the foolish human-centered assumptions of that book. He destroys the sense of mystery and grandeur that