Prelude to Space [Mass Market Paperback]

Despite the fact that this was Arthur's first published novel (came out in 1951), it is one of his most interesting in many ways. First, note the date I listed above of it's publication. That's right, it came out several years before Sputnik (much less Apollo) and yet still offers up numerous technical-drenched in-book conversations detailing the ins and outs of rockets and spaceships. Arthur describes an elaborate plan of how to build and execute a spaceship, many of which were taken into account in the eventual building of the first spaceships (ACC placed the first Moon landing in 1977, and thought he was being optimistic), and several of which we have yet to fulfill. An interesting thing to note is that he uses atomic technology for the spaceships.

Aside from what I already mentioned above, there are several othe prophetic things in this book. For example, Clarke mentions an array of satellites positioned above earth to be used for communications purposes (this is written by the man who invented the Com-Sat, after all), and this book was written in 1947!

Also, Clarke fans will notice that this lays the foundation for many of his later works. It is a Prelude To Space in more ways than one. For one thing, he mentions in the book how we will attempt to colonize the Moon, something that has been done in the majority of his subsequent novels. It makes one wonder why we haven't done this in real life. Also, in an ironic twist of fate, the novel ends with the earth at the turn of the century, in the year 2001! Truly amazing stuff.

This is a good story in and of itself, and it is interesting to go back and read older (pre-Apollo) books like this and see how close they were to the real thing. As interesting as it would have been to read a groundbreaking (back then) book as this at the time it first came out, it is just as interesting, if not more so, to read such a book now.

"Prelude to Space" is the first novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008) and was published in 1951 in the series of Galaxy Science Fiction novels. Originally this short novel was written in 1947. According to the introduction which he wrote, Clarke wrote the entire novel in just 20 days, but it took a while to get it published even though he was a successful writer of short fiction. The story is about the first manned mission to the moon. Some of the correct predictions that Clarke made include the first Lunar impact in 1959 and he had the number of astronauts on the lunar mission correct, but much more impressive was his discussion of telecommunications satellites. He didn't do too bad with his prediction of when the landing would be, as he was within a decade by setting it in 1978.

The story is told in three parts, the first of which takes place in England where we meet Dirk Alexson, a historian who has been hired by Interplanetary to record the project of sending men to the moon for posterity. This section provides the background of how man came from the end of World War II to the verge of space travel. Clarke believed that the rocket would be nuclear powered, and that the mission would be one supported by many nations, and in particular England, with Australia being the launch site due to the vast unpopulated areas in the interior. In part two the preparations are made for moving the operation to Australia in preparation for the launch. Part three details the final preparations and finishes with the launch itself. There is an epilogue which looks back from further in the future as man continues to reach out to other planets in the solar system.

The strength of this story is the science. Clarke has done an excellent job of putting together a realistic scenario of a trip to the moon, which holds up today. The weakness of the story would be in the characters. There are a couple who are well done, such as Dirk Alexson and Professor Maxton, but many of the others are rather shallow as there is a parade of people who Dirk interacts with in order to get their stories, and the science.

While this is far from Clarke's best work, when one considers that it was written in just 20 days it is rather amazing, and those who like hard science fiction will appreciate the effort which Clarke made here. He obviously had been preparing such a story for a while before starting to write it. It tied for 25th on the Astounding/Analog All-Time Poll in 1956 for science fiction books.

I'll read anything Clarke wrote. That's my bias. As soon as I saw that a number of his books had finally come to Kindle, I bought most of them (the rest come with my next paycheck). This is one of his early pieces. Honestly, I don't think it's up there with Rendezvous with Rama or City and the Stars, but it's still a solid story with Clarke's always-interesting voice. I have no problem recommending it to any Clarke fan.