Seekers of Tomorrow (50 page)

Earlier, he had begun writing for the British science-fiction fan magazine novae terrae, a mimeographed, quarto-sized publication which was the official organ of the Science Fic-tion Association. In his article
Science Fiction
—
Past, Present and Future
(June, 1937), he stressed the importance of accurate science about rocketry in science-fiction magazines, since most of the BIS membership was recruited from the ranks of their readers. In the same magazine he advocated excellent science with good writing in a literary debate with C. S. Youd, who was to become well known as John Christo-pher, author of
No Blade of
Grass.

Clark joined forces with Maurice K. Hanson, editor of novae terrae, and William F. Temple, eventually to become a prominent science-fiction author, and rented an apartment at 88 Gray's Inn Road, novae terrae was mimeographed there and the science-fiction club used the apartment as a weekly informal meeting place. Club activities both in rock-etry and science fiction helped Clarke come in contact with people who could help in a writing career.

The first money he received from writing was from Eric Frank Russell. Russell, a fellow member of the British Inter-planetary Society, used some ideas supplied to him by Clarke in a science-fiction story he sold and turned part of the proceeds over to the young aspirant

Even more important was Clarke's association with Walter Gillings, the leading science-fiction fan in Britain during the thirties and publisher of scientifiction, a very professional-appearing fan magazine. Gillings had been driving hard to convince British publishers to issue a science-fiction periodi-cal and after many failures had convinced Worlds Work (1913) Ltd. to try a one-shot, tales of wonder. Worlds Work had a uniform series of 128-page pulp-magazine-sized them were tales of the seven seas, tales of the air, and titles which they called the "Master Thriller Series." Among tales of terror. If tales of wonder proved profitable they would publish a second collection under that title. In June, 1937, they set down on the news stalls, with Gillings as editor, the first issue of tales of wonder. It did well enough to warrant quarterly publication.

Because of relatively low rates per word and the paucity of English authors in the field, Gillings relied heavily on reprints, but he also published original material. He pur-chased from Arthur C. Clarke two articles. The first,
Man's Empire of Tomorrow
(Winter, 1938), was a smoothly writ-ten rehash of what was known about the planets of the solar system. The second,
We Can Rocket to the Moon
—
Now!

(Summer, 1939), championed the practicality of space flight. Clarke was now a professional writer. Secretly Clarke was working on a novel, which would eventually solidify in 1946 as
Against the Fall of
Night,
but during this period his only ventures into fiction were three minor efforts,
Travel by Wire, How
We Went to Mars,
and
Retreat from Earth,
the last two appearing in the March, 1938 issue of amateur science stories, a legal-sized mime-ographed fan magazine edited by Douglas W. F. Mayer and published under the auspices of The Science Fiction Associa-tion to encourage budding British writers.
Retreat from
Earth
was the longest and the best of these, quite readable in its story of termite science saving Earth from Martian inva-sion.

Important to the direction of his future was the appear-ance of his first technical article in the journal of the British interplanetary society for January, 1939,
An Ele-mentary Mathematical Approach to
Astronautics,
dealing with the problems of determining ratios of combustion of fuel to mass of the rocket as related to velocity.

Actually a heavy percentage of Clarke's time had been devoted to science-fiction fan activities, including reviews of the current science-fiction magazines, and a biographical skit of his roommate William F. Temple (now an author appear-ing in tales of wonder) for novae terrae. When that periodical suspended with its January, 1939, issue he switched his activities to other similar hobbyist journals. Time was running short for careers as far as science fiction was concerned. England was fighting World War II by the fall of 1939. No one realized the seriousness of the Nazi challenge and for a while draft calls were slow. For another year some semblance of normality was retained. As far as Clarke was concerned it was a good time for a frolic.

C. S. Youd's publication, the fantast, in its inaugural (April, 1939) issue, featured on the cover a long poem by Clarke,
The Twilight of the Sun,
which ended with the lines: The Intellect, pure, unalloyed, on courage

eternally buoyed.

Will span the vast gulfs of the void and win

a new planet's fair face.

For one day our vessels will ply to the uttermost

depths of the sky,

And in them at last we shall fly, ere the darkness

sweeps over our race.

The poem was serious, but much of Clarke's other materi-al was zany, including a fictional extrapolation involving science-fiction fans,
A Short History of Fantocracy, 1948-1960,
(December, 1941), or gambols like
At the Mountains of Mirkiness or Lovecraft-into-Leacock,
a spoof in the Love-craft tradition for an undated (1940) issue of a journal named satellite published by John F. Burke (later to be-come a prolific science-fiction author.)

Modesty was not one of Clarke's youthful virtues and his nickname, everywhere in the amateur publications, was "Ego." After a while it became so much a part of him that he began to byline his articles Arthur Ego Clarke.

Conscription cut short the period of his science-fiction play and Clarke entered the Royal Air Force in 1941 and would remain until 1946. He started as a radio technician and rose to flight lieutenant. His scientific interests and aptitudes now stood him in good stead, since he was involved as a technical officer on the first experimental trials of Ground Controlled Approach Radar. The units were built in the United States and shipped to Britain complete with the scientists who had worked on its development. Once Clarke had mastered the unit, he spent two years teaching others how to operate it and to tend to its 400 vacuum tubes. Another two years was spent in service electronics.

While in the RAF he began writing again. A technical paper on time-basis circuits appeared in wireless engineer, but more important was
Extra-Terrestrial Relays
in wire-less world for October, 1945, in which he proposed three earth satellites in orbit for global television. This may have been the first serious suggestion of the concept and Clarke indulged in self-recriminations for not attempting to patent the idea at profitable length in an article he did for rogue magazine, November, 1962,
How I Lost a Billion Dollars in
My Spare Time by Inventing Telstar.

At the end of the war he won first prize in raf quarterly for his essay
The Rocket and the Future of
Warfare,
involv-ing the wedding of atomic warheads and rockets.

Major credit for reviving The British Interplanetary Soci-ety after World War II belongs to Clarke. He strenuously set about drawing other rocket societies under the aegis of the BIS. Early in 1946 the BIS

resumed operations and the same year Clarke was elected chairman of the society in recogni-tion of his services. These services transcended the mere organizational when he enrolled George Bernard Shaw as an enthusiastic member. Shaw voluntarily sent in his member-ship when he received Clarke's article
The
Challenge of the Spaceship,
published in the December, 1946, issue of the JOURNAL OF THE

BRITISH INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY. The ar-ticle superbly explained the scientific and philosophical rea-sons for space travel and was the title essay of a book of, related articles published by Ballantine in 1961.

With the end of the war, the British publishing industry struggled to return to normal. Edward John Carnell, a lead-ing scientifictionist who had been guest editor of the Decem-ber, 1937, issue of the journal of the BIS, talked Pendulum Publications into issuing a new science-fiction magazine, new worlds (the title of a fan magazine previously published by Carnell and the English translation of novae terrae). At the same time, Walter Gillings whose magazine tales of wonder was forced to suspend because of the paper shortage in 1942, convinced The Temple Bar Publishing Co., London, to try a similar venture, fantasy. Learning that Gillings was recruiting British authors, Clarke, still in uniform, began spending some time on science fiction. Gillings accepted several stories, including one titled
Earthlight.
Delays continued to plague the first issue of the magazine so he suggested that Clarke try elsewhere, returning among other stories
Rescue Party.

Clarke began submitting to astounding science-fiction in the United States, impressing its editor, John W. Camp-bell, with a short story titled
Loophole,
which appeared in the April, 1946, issue. Dealing with precognition and a son destined to fulfill his father's vision, the story really did not merit publication. By contrast,
Rescue Party,
published in the following (May, 1946) number provided taut, fascinating, imaginative sus-pense as an alien spaceship attempts to explore earth's vacated cities eight hours before the sun will explode into a nova. In this short story, two of the major influences on Clarke are instantly apparent: John W. Campbell, in the Don A. Stuart vein creating a mood of sympathy and admiration for the creations of man and the faithful machines that have served him, and Olaf Stapledon, whose intellectual grandeur sent the imagination racing to the limits of time and space.

Suspense in
Rescue Party
is created by the intellectual presentation of the problems and not by its stylistic rendi-tion. In method, Clarke acted in this story and in most of his future stories as the observer or historian and never as the participant. The reward for concentration in reading is a surprise ending.
Rescue
Party
proved to be a matter for chagrin to Clarke because its popularity and frequent reprint-ings implied that he had improved little over the years. This attitude toward any unusual popularity of early stories is often found among successful writers.

Gillings finally cleared postwar paper-shortage hurdles and got the first issue of fantasy out with the date line Decem-ber, 1946, carrying Clarke's story
Technical Error.
The plot concerned a powerhouse accident in which a technician's body is reversed like a mirror image and he is unable to absorb nutrition from his food as a result. In an attempt to restore him to normalcy by repetition of the accident, the entire installation is destroyed. The story required concentra-tion for impact because of the heavy-handedness of its telling, but it won first place in reader approval in the issue and four years later was reprinted in the United States by thrilling wonder stories (June, 1950) as
The Reversed Man.

Fantasy ran only two more issues and Clarke had a story in each under a pen name, "because I want only my choice pieces to appear under my own name." He used Charles Willis for
Castaway
in the April, 1947, issue, a mood piece in which navigators on an airliner obtain a glimpse of a strange and awesome life form that has been blasted free of the sun and is dying in the "frigid" clutch of the earth. Nothing else happens, but Clarke successfully conveys the wonder and the tragedy of that brief encounter.
The Fires
Within,
published under the name E. G. O'Brien in the August, 1947, and final issue of fantasy (printed in the United States in the Sep-tember, 1949, startling stories) was one of Clarke's most successful short stories. The discovery and emergence of a high-density race of creatures from underground inadver-tently destroys all surface life, leaving the subterranean race conscience-stricken. Through the auspices of a Member of Parliament, Clarke as a war veteran was subsidized by the government at King's College, London, where in two years he obtained a First Class Honors B.Sc. in physics as well as in pure and applied mathematics. He entered school in October, 1946, and gradu-ated in 1948. Little of his writing appeared during these two years but he finally saw published
Against the Fall of
Night
in the November, 1948, startling stories, a novel regarded as one of his key works.
Against the Fall of Night
was begun in 1937 and after five revisions was completed in 1946. It had been turned down for astounding science-fiction by Campbell, who proba-bly was instantly aware that this novel had been intended as a prelude to his own stories
Twilight
and
Night,
published in 1934 and 1935. In
Twilight,
a man is transferred to the future and finds a curiously decadent people served by efficient, almost immor-tal machinery. Transcendental cities function automatically for "masters" who no longer understand how they run. This is the situation in the city of Diaspar, when young Alvin begins searching for answers as to what lies beyond the city.

The smoothly functioning underground transport, which so fascinates Clarke in both
Against the Fall of
Night
and
Rescue Party,
is derived from Warner Van Lome's two popular stories,
Strange City
(astounding stories, January, 1936) and its sequel,
World of Purple Light
(astounding stories, December, 1936.)* The poetic passages in
Against the Fall of Night
reflect the method of Clark Ashton Smith in capturing a mood but with a shallower rhetorical depth. A bow should also be made here in the direction of Lord Dunsany, who also was one of the shapers of Smith. The final chapters with all their far-flung implications acknowl-edge the direction of Olaf Stapledon.

What Clarke has done in his novel of a determined boy who frees a moribund civilization of its ennui and gives it back the stars is to explore in additional detail the implica-tions of the intriguing cities of Campbell's
Twilight,
with the utilization of the fascinating automatic transportation of Warner Van Lome, creating a mood in the fashion of Clark Ashton Smith, and zeroing in to a climax on the ideas of Olaf Stapledon. Clarke essentially changed nothing when he expanded the novel to
The City and the Stars
in 1956. Knowledge of the early genesis of this particular story buttresses a generalization that Clarke is one and apart from