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Excerpt: Arthur C. Clarke's upcoming, and last, sci-fi novel

10:29 AM Tue, Jul 29, 2008 |
By Sheila Lennon    Email this author |   Email this entry

The Last Theorem by Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl. The Telegraph publishes an excerpt from Arthur C Clarke's final book of science fiction, written with Frederik Pohl, available August 5. Its topic: the first Lunar Olympics -- the one-sixth gravity games.

It begins,

She did go there, too.

Not immediately, of course. A lot had to be done before that first-ever lunar Olympics could be held - a lot done to the Moon to make it possible, for example, and a quite large lot that had to be done to the Skyhook to at least make it possible to carry passengers with a reasonable hope that they would get there alive. ...

Backstory (Arthur C Clarke's last words - from beyond the stars, in the Independent):

Mr Pohl explained that illness and writer's block had prompted Clarke to ask for his help: "Arthur said to me that he woke up one morning and didn't know how to write any of the books he had contracted. The stories had just gone out of his head."

With the bare bones of the story and a handful of notes to work with, Mr Pohl shaped the novel from Clarke's visions and ideas over two years. "Everything in the novel is something he either suggested or wrote or I discussed with him," Mr Pohl said.

Nice: In final book, Arthur C. Clarke's last vision of the future. Canadian Press warmly details the relationship between the two disabled authors intent on completing this.

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1 Comments

Silas Scarborough said:

This subject was partially-covered forty+ years ago in a scfi-fi short story that described what it would be like if giant lunar caverns were used as air reservoirs for colonies there. His speculation was that people would use wings to exploit the low gravity and the size of the cavern would give enough room to really fly.

It's quite a charming idea, almost as charming as the idea of Clarke and Pohl collaborating on a vision of what Lunar Games might be like.

Link | July 29, 2008 8:45 PM
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