Denis Villeneuve to adapt Arthur C. Clarke's RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA for the screen

Denis Villeneuve has lined up his first post-Dune duology project. Villeneuve will be tackling a film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's classic 1973 science fiction novel, Rendezvous with Rama.

Set in the year 2130, Rendezvous with Rama charts what happens when an apparently huge, rogue asteroid enters the Solar system. A probe flyby reveals that the object is in fact a geometrically perfect cylinder, fifty kilometres long, and clearly of alien origin. The spacecraft Endeavour is diverted to intercept the object, which is dubbed "Rama." Penetrating the interior of Rama, the explorers discover an entire alien world held within a cylindrical construct, apparently devoid of organic life...but that does not mean it isn't dangerous.

Rendezvous with Rama is Clarke's most acclaimed novel, even moreso than 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rama won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel, as well as the Locus, Seiun, Jupiter and BSFA Awards. The book features a fictional space agency mission to look for rogue asteroids, known as Spaceguard. In 1992 NASA created a real Project Spaceguard, inspired by the fictional one. Since 1992, the Spaceguard and related programmes has discovered tens of thousands of Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids and comets.

Clarke returned to the setting sixteen years later, co-writing with former NASA engineer Gentry Lee a sequel trilogy dubbed The Rama Cycle: Rama II (1989), The Garden of Rama (1991) and Rama Revealed (1993). Lee later wrote two more novels in the same universe, but not featuring a Rama spacecraft: Bright Messengers (1995) and Double Full Moon Night (1999). These novels were not as well-received as the original book. Clarke noted that he considered these sequels to constitute one "possible" continuation or sequel to the original story, not the definitive one.

The novel has previously been adapted as a 1996 video puzzle game (inspired by Myst) and a 2009 BBC Radio adaptation. Morgan Freeman is a huge fan of the novel and in the 1990s picked up the film rights. He developed the project for many years, bringing on David Fincher to direct. The Freeman-Fincher partnership to make the film endured into 2012 before Fincher departed. Freeman noted that finding a script and finance for the film was difficult, partially due to the high vfx requirements but a distinct lack of traditional action sequences. Villeneuve is the perfect director to tackle this project, having encountered and overcome a similar restriction with his 2016 movie Arrival.

Alcon Entertainment (who shoot The Expanse for Amazon) will produce and finance the film. They are looking for a studio distribution partner. Villeneuve will tackle the project once Dune: Part Two is released in late 2023.

The Music of the Book

It has been standard for decades for films and TV shows to have soundtrack albums released. In the last twenty years or so this has extended to video games as well.

A less-tapped market is book soundtracks, although this seems self-evident: films, TV shows and video games have soundtracks as a matter of course, books do not. That makes the official (or semi-official, or even copyright-infringing) book soundtrack something a rarity in the field. But not completely unknown. Here's a few examples.

I Robot by The Alan Parsons Project (1977)

British rock band The Alan Parsons Project conceived of a soundtrack album based on Isaac Asimov's Robots series of science fiction novels and short story collections, particularly the first book, I, Robot, in the mid-1970s. Bandmember Eric Woolfson was particularly enthusiastic for the project and contacted Asimov himself, hoping to make it an official record. Asimov was keen on the idea, but noted that he had sold the media rights to a studio who was planning a big-budget feature film (which ultimately would not be released until 2004, with the most tenuous of connections to Asimov's book), so it could not be an official project but he gave his blessings for a "spiritual tribute" to the book.

For these reasons, the title was adjusted to I Robot (what a copyright difference a comma makes) and specific references to Asimov's universe and characters were omitted, with more general themes related to robots and artificial intelligence instead referenced.

The record did extremely well on release, perhaps helped by being released just days after the film Star Wars, which had re-awoken a hunger for science fiction material in the United States (and, later, in the UK).

Spotify link.

Apple Music link.

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Bob Johnson and Peter Knight (1977)

Founded in 1969, Steeleye Span are one of Britain's most successful folk rock bands, still touring today. In the 1970s, bandmembers Bob Johnson and Peter Knight hit on the idea of adapting the classic fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter for music.

Released in 1924, Lord Dunsany's novel has been cited as one of the taproot texts of modern fantasy, featuring political intrigue, war and adventuring in a well-realised secondary world, all more than a decade before J.R.R. Tolkien released The Hobbit. More obscure today, it was much better-known in the 1970s.

Johnson and Knight worked on the album after leaving Steeleye Span, and combined original music with spoken word excerpts from the novel with a full voice cast. Sir Christopher Lee - inevitably a strong fan of the book - was cast as the King of Elfland and also the narrator.

The album was released in 1978 but did not attract a strong critical reception.

Spotify link.

Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne (1978)

In the early 1970s, Jeff Wayne was best-known as David Essex's producer and arranger, but he felt his composing output had declined and he was no longer as creatively satisfied as he had been earlier in his career. His first project had been composing a score for his father Jerry Wayne's West End musical version of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1966), which had gotten him the gig working with Essex. He had also written advertising jingles and soundtracks.

Wayne disclosed his creative frustration to his father and they decided on a more elaborate version of the success they'd already had with A Tale of Two Cities. They read a number of well-known novels to find an appropriate story and they both felt that H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1897) was suitable. Wayne was inspired to expand the project into a full-on rock opera, and commissioned his stepmother Doreen to write a script whilst he worked on the score. Both were completed in early 1976, with recording sessions beginning that May. Wayne asked Essex to help and he readily agreed.

Wayne composed a completely original score with one exception: the "Forever Autumn" section kept reminding him of a Lego commercial he'd scored, which had turned into a very unexpected hit single in Japan. He re-contextualised the song for the opera. Otherwise all of the music was new. Wayne also realised he needed a strong voice for the narrator. He wrote a letter to Richard Burton, care of the theatre in New York where he was working, and was shocked to get a phone call from Burton's manager heartily approving of the idea and inviting him to fly to the States to record the narration. Burton, not always known to be the most diplomatic actor about the material he worked with, enjoyed the process and complimented Wayne on his dialogue. One possible problem was that Burton refused to have the music playing as he spoke, as he felt it was a distraction, so had to work with Wayne and David Essex on fitting the dialogue into the right spaces by instinct, which he nailed on repeated takes.

With the record complete, Wayne's publishers were baffled and nearly refused to release it, only relenting when Wayne produced a special cut of the album with the songs cut down to traditional single lengths. This allowed them to release two singles - "Forever Autumn" and "The Eve of the War" - to promote the record. CBS UK then got behind the project in a big way.

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds was released in June 1978 and was a surprise hit. To date it has sold more than 15 million copies, making it easily the biggest-selling record on this list, and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in live tours and media sales.

Spotify link.

Apple Music link.



"The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" by Leonard Nimoy (1968)

No.

The Songs of Distant Earth by Mike Oldfield (1994)

Mike Oldfield had shot to fame in the early 1970s with his classic Tubular Bells, but had struggled to produce a direct follow-up due to an increasingly sour relationship with Virgin Records. In 1991 he signed with Warner Music, who gave him complete creative freedom and he felt able to rework his original album into Tubular Bells II.

Oldfield discussed his next project with the record label chairman, Rob Dickins, a science fiction fan who was arguably one of the most influential and important figures in British music at the time. Dickins threw up some ideas, including for an album based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1984 novel The Songs of Distant Earth. Oldfield was familiar with Clarke's work but responded more to the title, which he considered evocative, than the novel itself, which he felt was "not one of his best."

Nevertheless, Oldfield flew to Sri Lanka to discuss the project with Clarke and found that Clarke was a fan of his work on the soundtrack to The Killing Fields. Clarke responded well to Oldfield's suggestions and gave Oldfield the creative freedom to open up the book and do some things differently. Oldfield found the recording process taxing, as he felt that his familiar instruments weren't "science fictiony" enough, so he relied more on keyboards and electronic music. At one point, he was so frustrated that he sat down and based out a theme in a few minutes in an absolute rage, and was later astonished that this worked as a process.

Also during recording, Oldfield played the adventure game Myst and was so impressed by it that he included a Myst-like series of puzzles on an enhanced CD-ROM version of the album.

The album was released in 1994 to a middling critical reception, although Clarke gave it his seal of approval.

Spotify link.

Apple Music link.

From the Discworld by Dave Greenslade (1994)

From the Discworld - slightly oddly officially called Terry Pratchett's From the Discworld, which may be creatively accurate but not physically - is a soundtrack album assembled by prog rocker Dave Greenslade and released in 1994. It was an official release created with the full approval of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Greenslade was a member for twenty years of British prog rock band Colosseum before embarking on an eclectic solo career that incorporated transmedia art projects (such as the epicly-titled Pentateuch of the Cosmogony). In the 1980s he switched to soundtracks, producing the music for BBC series including A Very Peculiar Practice, Kinsey, Tales of the Unexpected, Wipe Out, Bird of Prey and Gangsters.

Pratchett was a fan of Greenslade's music and Greenslade was a fan of Pratchett's books, and when they met in 1984 they became fast friends. Eight years later, Greenslade was moved to ask to produce music based on Pratchett's Discworld books and Pratchett agreed. Despite not having a huge amount of musical knowledge, Pratchett also made helpful suggestions, such as "This bit should sound like the opening of the Tory Party Conference," and "Can this bit sound grander? Can we add three more full organs?" Greenslade was also committed to making a soundtrack album, not an album of the songs from the books, so alas "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All" did not make the cut. "A Wizard's Staff Has a Knob on the End" did make it in, because it had to, but Pratchett and Greenslade did reluctantly take a knife to an extended reprise that sadly made the subtle and delicate subtext a bit too obvious (or possibly it was a bit too long, but whatever).

The most ambitious track on the album was "Small Gods," which attempted to distil the entire novel (arguably Pratcett's finest and thematically richest) into five minutes. The song is especially notable for guest keyboards from a young Rhianna Pratchett.

The soundtrack was released in 1994 and did not set the charts on fire, although it did have a very long tail. A sequel soundtrack was discussed but never made it into the studio.

Additional Discworld music was produced by Mark Bandola and Rob Lord for the first two Discworld video games - Discworld (1995) and Discworld II: Missing, Presumed...? (1996) - whilst Paul Weir took over composing duties for Discworld Noir (1999). Paul Francis and David Hughes composed the music for Sky One's three Discworld TV serials: Hogfather (2007), The Colour of Magic (2008) and Going Postal (2010).

Spotify link.

A Soundtrack for The Wheel of Time by Robert Berry (2001)

The Wheel of Time got its own custom soundtrack album in 2001, although this was an outgrowth of an earlier project. In 1999 Legend Entertainment released the Wheel of Time video game, a well-made but somewhat incongruous first-person shooter based on Robert Jordan's fantasy series. Robert Berry and Leif Sorbye collaborated on music for the game and considered releasing it as a stand-alone album, but did not have enough material.

Robert Berry reconceived the project as a soundtrack based directly on the books and repurposed themes from the games and created new music for the project.

Berry had an impressive pedigree. As a guitarist, bassist, vocalist and producer he'd been active on the music scene since the 1970s, working with Hush, Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer and several other bands. He'd also worked on soundtracks and as a session player.

Unlike Pratchett, Jordan did not get involved in the creation of the Wheel of Time soundtrack album and had no contact with the composer.

Spotify link.

Apple Music link.

Geidi Primes by Grimes (2010)

Canadian singer-songwriter Claire Boucher - better known as Grimes - released her debut album in 2010. It was a concept album based on Frank Herbert's novel Dune, with the title being a (misspelt) reference to the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime. Track titles drew inspiration from the book: "Caladan," "Sardaukar Levenbrech," "Zoal, Face Dancer," "Feyd Rautha Dark Heart," and "Shadout Mapes."

Grimes, at the time unknown, released the record in a low key manner, assuming it would disappear without a trace. Instead, it helped propel her towards superstardom, making her later regret some of the most obscure song title choices.

In 2019 Grimes' career came full circle with a return to SF ideas in her fifth studio album, Miss Anthropocene, including songs that will feature in the forthcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077 (due for release in September this year).

Kaladin by The Black Piper (2017)

Kaladin is a soundtrack album based on Brandon Sanderson's novel The Way of Kings (2010), the first in his Stormlight Archive series. The album was created by The Black Piper, a soundtrack collective led by Michael Banhmiller, a veteran of the movie soundtrack industry where he worked on films such as The Jungle Book, Independence Day: Resurgence, The BFG, La La Land and Jason Bourne. Eleven composers eventually ended up working on the project.

Spotify link.

Apple Music link.

There are quite a few others out there, from individual songs to full albums to entire subgenres (the Tolkien-inspired music scene could certainly fill an entire article by itself).

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CHILDHOOD'S END and THE EXPANSE get airdates

SyFy has confirmed the airdates for its mini-series based on Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and the ongoing series based on James S.A. Corey's Expanse novels.

"Say what you like about my mother, but never insult the hat."

Childhood's End will air across three successive nights: 14, 15 and 16 December. The Expanse will debut with two episodes airing on 14 and 15 December, with a new episode every subsequent Monday. The Expanse will consist of a ten-episode first season based primarily on the first novel in the series, Leviathan Wakes, whilst a second season has already been provisionally approved.

The Expanse has been delayed from its originally-mooted early 2015 transmission date, leading to suspicions of problems. However, the very positive reception to an early screening of the first episode at Comic-Con suggests that SyFy instead wanted to hold it back to air as a one-two punch alongside Childhood's End, making for the kind of "event" programming the channel has lacked ever since Battlestar Galactica went off the air half a decade ago. The network is already boasting that The Expanse is the most expensive show in their history and they have made a firm commitment to it and a whole host of other genre programming after years of being perceived as only being interested in cheap-and-cheerful disaster movies and firmly Earth-set dramas.

It remains to be seen how successful this move will be.

Trailer for CHILDHOOD'S END

SyFy have released a proper trailer for Childhood's End, their three-part mini-series based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1954 novel. It looks like the series will follow the approximate storyline from the novels, but will feature more characters and storylines to pad out the book's modest length.

The series will air in December 2015.

SyFy greenlights THE MAGICIANS TV series, dates THE EXPANSE and CHILDHOOD'S END

SyFy has greenlit a TV series based on Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy (The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician's Land). The first season will consist of twelve episodes and will shoot in Vancouver in July, probably for a 2016 debut.

SyFy has also confirmed that its mini-series based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End will air in December. Surprisingly, they also confirmed that the first season of The Expanse, based on James S.A. Corey's novels, will also air in December. The Expanse started shooting in October 2014 and it was assumed would be a summer or early autumn launch. SyFy will either have to greenlight the second season before the first airs, or may envisage there being a long gap until 2017 until the second season can air. It's a slightly odd move for a show that looked ready and raring to go in the trailer released four months ago.

Charles Dance cast on SyFy's CHILDHOOD'S END adaptation

SyFy has cast British actor Charles Dance in a major role on its upcoming six-hour mini-series Childhood's End, based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel of the same name.

 
Charles Dance is best-known for his recent four-season stint as Tywin Lannister on HBO's Game of Thrones, although his acting career is extensive, incorporating roles on the BBC's Bleak House mini-series and in films like The Golden Child and Last Action Hero, amongst many, many others. Dance will be playing the role of Karellen, the spokesperson for the alien Overlords who arrive on Earth and create a utopian world even over the objections of those humans who don't want it. In the book Karellen's appearance is kept secret but it's unclear if the same device will be used in the TV series. If so this may be more of a vocal performance than anything else.

The series is still in pre-production for airing in 2015 or 2016. Although SyFy's rep in adapting classic SF novels is poor (Earthsea, Riverworld) to middling (Dune), this is a little more promising thanks to the presence of Matthew Graham (the original UK Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes) as the main writer.

RINGWORLD and CHILDHOOD'S END coming to TV

SyFy has announced that it is producing new mini-series based on the classic SF novels Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke and Ringworld by Larry Niven.

Ringworld is set eight centuries into the future and revolves around an expedition to a vast artificial ring in the space, so huge it extends completely around its star. It was an inspiration behind the titular structures of the Halo series of computer games (although, properly speaking, the Halo rings are much closer in size and function to one of Iain M. Bank's Culture Orbitals). The novel was published in 1970 and won the triple crown of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. The novel has three sequels (The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children), so presumably if it's a big hit SyFy can turn this into an ongoing franchise. The four-hour mini-series is being produced by MGM TV in conjunction with Universal Cable Productions. Michael Perry (co-creator of The River and writer of Paranormal Activity 2) is helming the adaptation.

Childhood's End was originally published in 1953 and, alongside 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama, is one of Clarke's best-known novels. Its iconic opening, which huge alien ships arriving at Earth and plunging the major cities into shadow, was later echoed by both the V mini-series in 1983 and the movie Independence Day in 1996. It is noted as one of Clarke's most speculative novels, featuring paranormal elements and talkative aliens, rather unlike his later books which were driven much more by hard science and completely unknowable alien intelligences. This mini-series will be helmed by Michael DeLuca (a producer on Seven, Boogie Nights and The Social Network).

Whilst sounding promising, it's hard to forget the complete pig's ear that SyFy made of both the Earthsea and Riverworld books, and the channel's seeming difficulty in actually making SF in the last few years. Alongside the the Blake's 7 reboot, this indicates that SyFy is at least focusing on the right ideas. It remains to be seen if they can follow through with them.

Wertzone Classics: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

Humanity is about to launch its first manned mission to another world. Finally, the human race is about to escape its cradle and take its first step towards the stars. But on the eve of the launch the skies over the Earth's major cities are blotted out by the appearance of huge, alien spacecraft. The Overlords have arrived, and nothing will ever be the same again.


Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most famous writers the science fiction field has ever produced, thanks to his work on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and his role as a popular science commentator (he covered several of the Apollo moon landings for American television and had several successful TV series in the 1980s). Clarke's work is notable for its straightforwardness (he was never a great prose stylist) but also its scientific rigour. With a few exceptions, Clarke had little truck with what he considered to be some of the more fantastical concepts of SF (such as faster-than-light travel and artificial gravity) and did not use them in his work. In his view, the universe is vast, timeless and unknowable. Much of Clarke's work is notable for a certain melancholic optimism: the human race can be much more than it is now, but even so is unlikely to challenge the vastness of the universe.

Childhood's End was published in 1953 and was his fourth novel, although his first published in the United States, where it immediately established him as a major voice in the field. In many ways it is atypical Clarke. The aliens are comprehensible and easily relate to human beings, unlike the enigmatic entities of say 2001 or Rendezvous with Rama. At the same time, his normal scientific vigour is a little slacker than normal, as concepts such as telepathy and group consciousnesses are explored (Clarke had a passing fascination with the supernatural at the time, though later firmly rejected such notions). Clarke's influences are clear, with the presence of Olaf Stapledon particularly hard to ignore.


The novel is extremely concise, with my paperback copy clocking in at 160 pages. For its short page count, the novel is fairly epic. It is split into three sections, each with a distinct cast, focus and storyline (unsurprising, as the first section was originally a stand-alone short story). In the first, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has to oversee the painful transformation of humanity from bickering nation-states to a single world government. In the second, a family 'escape' the Overlords' utopia to live in an island commune free of their influence, only to discover the real reason for the Overlords' arrival on Earth. In the final section, a lone human who stowed away aboard an Overlord ship returns to Earth eighty years later (though only a few months later by his count, due to time dilation) to find a world vastly changed from the one he left. Clarke doesn't waste a word as he lets the story unfold inexorably, moving to a conclusion that looms somewhere between awe-inspiring and horrific.

As a novelist, Clarke was much more interested in ideas (thematic, scientific or both) than people. His characterisation was often variable, although Childhood's End is actually one of his better books in that regard. Its major protagonists (even the Overlords) are clearly defined and sympathetic. In terms of structure, Childhood's End is unusual in that the entire story is pre-ordained, and nothing any of the characters do can change what is happening. They - and the reader - can only witness it and make their own minds up about whether it is something that can be called 'good' or not, and I suspect many will fall on the 'not' end of the spectrum.

As a result Childhood's End can be viewed as a colossal tragedy. The book has a tremendous emotional charge as it poses a simple question: how would we face it if our way of existing ended tomorrow? Clarke's answer is surprisingly bleak but, one suspects, one that would be close to the truth.

The novel has aged in some respects. The first edition opened with the USA and USSR battling to land a man on the moon, since Apollo 11 was still sixteen years in the future at the time it was published. Clarke also makes a very dated joke where he discusses how the Overlords have to force the rulers of South Africa to treat all their citizens equally regardless of skin colour. The 'joke' is that by this time majority rule in South Africa has been restored, and it's the white population that's being mistreated. An amusing aside in 1953 actually feels rather cynical today, assuming as it does that the African population would be as racist and authoritarian as the white one was. However, another point about how the people of Israel bitterly resist being absorbed into the Overlords' hegemony and giving up the freedom they have spent centuries fighting for, is more resonant. There's also a recurring problem in Clarke's work where he underestimates the power of religion, and the sequences where the Overlords' arrival causes the downfall of all world religions in a matter of months are rather unconvincing.

In most respects, Childhood's End (****½) has not aged badly at all, and its central themes of parenthood and the futility of railing against the night - but the effort nevertheless being laudable - remain interesting. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Famous for the wrong book?

The Guardian has an interesting topic asking if novelists' most famous works are their best. Their list examines literary fiction, so I thought it would be interesting to look at the SFF field.


Stephen Donaldson
Most famous work: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.
Best work: The Gap Series.

Stephen Donaldson became one of the founders of the modern epic fantasy movement in 1977 with Lord Foul's Bane, the first in his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series (originally a trilogy but now nine books, with one more to come). It's his biggest-selling and most famous work, and certainly a laudable attempt to bring more adult and literary techniques to bear on the subgenre, but for me it's outclassed by The Gap Series. The Gap starts with a short, lyrical novella about perspective and truth before suddenly exploding into a colossal SF reworking of Wagner's Ring Cycle, filled with complex clashes of characters and cultures and delicious political intrigue. The best thing Donaldson's written. No-one bought it though, hence the return to the Covenant books.


Arthur C. Clarke
Most famous work: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Best work: Childhood's End

Thanks to the era-defining movie version, 2001 is easily Arthur C. Clarke's best-known work. However, the novel is actually among his less impressive books, rich in atmosphere but lacking in overall incident. In fact, purely on a novel basis, I'd rate its sequel 2010: Odyssey Two as being a much stronger book. Childhood's End, on the other hand, is for its day visionary, transcendent and mind-blowing, with a stunning finale marking the end of the human race (or rather our current stage of existence) and doing so in an unforgettable way.


Isaac Asimov
Most famous work: The Robots/Foundation universe
Best work: Nightfall

Picking out Asimov's most famous work would have probably involved some elaborate Twitter polling on whether I, Robot or Foundation was up there, but fortunately Asimov solved this problem by, somewhat unconvincingly, retconning them into the same universe. However, for me his strongest work is the short story Nightfall, in which some scientists on a planet with six suns in its sky discover that for the first time in recorded history there's going to be an eclipse with only one sun visible, meaning that for the first time in thousands of years, night will fall. A simple story based on a rudimentary scientific premise with tremendous ramifications for society and the individual people involved. Terrific and, rather unlike the 15-book Robots/Foundation/Empire universe, straight to the point. The novel version (with Robert Silverberg) is interesting but lacks the short story's punch.


Paul Kearney
Most famous work: The Monarchies of God
Best work: A Different Kingdom

Possibly a bit of a stretch, given that Paul Kearney is still chronically under-read and even the splendid Monarchies of God fantasy series is still reasonably obscure (though now rising, with the recent reissuing of the series in two omnibus volumes). However, when people talk about Kearney, it's his epic fantasy series which are always mentioned (Monarchies, Sea-Beggars and the current Macht trilogy). His finest work for me is A Different Kingdom, which starts out as a semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in rural Northern Ireland before fantastical events start taking place. The protagonist finds himself drawn into the woods neighbouring his farm, and finds a different world waiting. Rich and mythic, A Different Kingdom can be summed up as an Irish Mythago Wood, whilst also being totally different to Holdstock's masterwork. Overdue a re-release.



Christopher Priest
Most famous work: The Prestige
Best work: The Separation

Thanks to Chris Nolan, Priest's very fine novel about battling 19th Century magicians is now quite well-known. However, for me his finest novel remains his most recent, The Separation. Almost killed at birth by uncaring publishers, the book was rescued by Gollancz and is a staggering achievement. A pair of twins become embroiled in the Second World War, but not necessarily the war we are familiar with. With dizzying shifts in perspective and constant evolution of the backstory, the book is mind-blowing and will invite constant re-reads and analyses to tease out its secrets.


George R.R. Martin
Most famous work: A Game of Thrones
Best work: Fevre Dream

After HBO's great adaptation of A Game of Thrones, it's easily currently Martin's best-known work. But it's not his best. In the context of A Song of Ice and Fire itself, my favourite piece of writing is The Hedge Knight, the novella set 90 years before the novels and introducing the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, which uses Westeros' rich backdrop for a much simpler, much more concise story than the expansive novels. However, even beyond that, Martin's 1982 horror novel Fevre Dream has something going for it his fantasies don't (so far): an ending. Martin's story about vampires on the Mississippi trying to develop a drug to wean them off blood is dark, gripping, rich in atmosphere and tragic. Someone needs to make the movie (and cast Ron 'Rodrik Cassel' Donachie as Abner Marsh!) yesterday. And resist the urge to turn it into a True Blood prequel.


Tad Williams
Most famous work: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
Best work: Otherland

Tad Williams exploded onto the scene with his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy in the late 1980s, which was hugely influential and set the scene for many of the authors who followed. Whilst overall a fine work, the trilogy skews very much to the traditional and has a somewhat annoying ending. Otherland, on the other hand, is much more original, being a cyberpunk-fantasy crossbreed. Williams uses the SF backdrop to explore a lot of excellent and fantastical ideas. Whilst the saga is still too long, its episodic structure makes it fun to read and the premise makes for a rich vein of story ideas which could sustain entire series (the reverse-Aztec invasion of Spain is particularly interesting). Overall, a strong series which has now spawned an MMORPG and a particularly large fanbase in Germany.

Any other thoughts and suggestions? On Twitter I've already had Gene Wolfe nominated, for Soldier of the Mist over The Book of the New Sun.

Does science fiction need faster-than-light travel?

The simple answer to that is: no, but it's fun.

The slightly less-simple answer to that is no, but the number of science fiction authors, even 'hard' SF authors, who don't try to explore what an FTL-less universe would be like is surprising.

The Enterprise goes plaid.

According to Einstein and backed up by many theories since, the speed of light is the absolute maximum velocity that any object within our universe that possesses mass can travel at. This speed is just short of a startling 300,000km per second, but interstellar and even interplanetary distances dwarf this number. Travelling to the moon at the speed of light would still take 1.3 seconds, for example, whilst the Sun is 8 minutes, 19 seconds away. Travelling to our nearest interstellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri, would take about four and a half years. It would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy from one side to the other and two million to travel to Andromeda. Compared to the size of the universe, that's still mucking around in our back yard.

For this reason, most works of science fiction employ a faster-than-light (FTL) drive which circumvents the lightspeed restriction. The name is actually a misnomer, as simply accelerating past the speed of light is impossible (it would require infinite energy and would also result in time going into reverse for the traveller, creating significant paradoxes). Most FTL 'cheats' by allowing the traveller to suspend the rules of relativity by instantly teleporting from one point to another by way of wormholes (used in Dune or Peter F. Hamilton's work), or by 'warping' space so the laws of physics no longer apply (this is the favoured approach in Star Trek). Another approach is to have spacecraft move into a parallel universe which is either much smaller than our own but where every point corresponds to a point in our universe. This approach is favoured in Babylon 5, where a ship enters hyperspace, travels a few hundred thousand kilometres, and returns to our universe several light-years from where it started out. Warhammer 40,000 uses a similar realm known as the Immaterium (popularly called the Warp) although the difference is scale is not so extreme, where journeys between stars a few light-years apart can still take days or weeks, whilst traversing the entire Galaxy takes several years. Star Wars mixes the two approaches by having a ship accelerate in real space to lightspeed and is then blasted into hyperspace by the acceleration.

All of these approaches and many others are interesting, but tend to ignore a very interesting feature of real-life physics, namely time dilation.

As a spacecraft approaches the speed of light, relative time on board the spacecraft slows down compared to the outside universe. For example, a spacecraft that travels to Alpha Centauri and back again at 90% of the speed of light would appear, from the POV of people on Earth, to take roughly nine years to complete its trip. From the POV of people aboard the spacecraft, however, it would take just a few weeks. As lightspeed is approached, time aboard the spacecraft slows to the point where immense journeys that take thousands or even millions of years from the perspective of the outside universe are achievable in just a few years of on-board travel.

In fact, time dilation can create incredibly warped effects. A ship that left Earth and could constantly accelerate at 1G would achieve 99.99999% of lightspeed and, as a result, could reach the edge of the observable universe (about 13.5 billion light-years away) in less than a century of on-board time, i.e. within a human lifespan. Of course, this would require a fantastically advanced space drive and some mechanism to prevent the ship from exploding the second it hit any interstellar debris larger than a pinhead, but it is certainly feasible within the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

On a more modest scale, ships accelerating to appreciable fractions of lightspeed and flitting back and forth between nearby stars is reasonably realistic and, in fact, is the basis of interstellar travel in Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe. For the stories to unfold in the Revelation Space novels, Reynolds has two storylines proceeding in tandem on different planets, but they are actually taking place in different years. For example, Storyline A is happening in AD 2500 but Storyline B is taking place in AD 2530 on a planet thirty light-years distant. At some point the characters from Storyline A get on a spacecraft equipped with a Conjoiner drive (which allows rapid acceleration to 95%-99% lightspeed) and travels to the second planet, where they arrive in AD 2530 and join in the storyline there. Thanks to time dilation, the journey only seems to take a few months, maybe a couple of years, from the perspective of the first set of characters, and they age accordingly.

The Millennium Falcon flies into a Doctor Who title sequence, circa 1976.

Bizarrely, very few SF authors seem to pursue this way of handling FTL travel. Mainly this is because space operas love to have multiple sets of characters on multiple planets and it's important that the journeys between the planets take place very quickly and everyone remains in the same temporal space as everyone else otherwise things will get very confusing very quickly. This is a decent enough reason, and is necessary to make the stories make sense. However, it is intriguing that more stories are not written which take into account the lightspeed restriction from the outset.

Outside of Reynolds though (and Reynolds does include a back-door FTL method in the Revelation Space books, albeit a method that appears to be inaccessible for humans, and does use FTL in other books), the only author who seemed to rigorously enforce the lightspeed limitation was Arthur C. Clarke (with the sole exception of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even there the FTL method was retconned out of existence in the sequels). His Rama Cycle of novels had an alien spacecraft travelling at a bit above half the speed of light (taking twelve years to travel the eight light-years from Earth to Sirius, for example), whilst The Songs of Distant Earth has a human-built spacecraft travelling at lower speeds with the crew in suspended animation.

Whilst the development of new physics which permits FTL travel is possible, at the moment such a drive appears flat-out impossible. While this should not restrain authors' imaginations from using FTL methodology, it is a shame that more authors do not employ time dilation as an acceptable way of getting characters between stars without dropping dead from old age as certainly that appears to be the only way of realistically carrying out interstellar travel at this time.

Recommended reading
Pushing Ice and the Revelation Space Trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap) by Alastair Reynolds.
Rama II and The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee.
The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.

New ring discovered around Saturn, solves long-standing mystery

For many decades, the mystery of why Saturn's moon Iapetus has a very dark hemisphere and a much brighter one has stumped astronomers and scientists. It has been great fodder for SF authors, inspiring Arthur C. Clarke's ideas in the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (the conclusion to which happens at Saturn, not Jupiter as in the movie). In the former the explanation is the Monolith (what else?), which is acting as a giant stargate in the surface of Iapetus, whilst in the latter Iapetus itself is revealed to be a vast alien spacecraft in disguise.


Today, it was revealed that scientists have discovered the, sadly somewhat more mundane, reason behind the mystery: Iapetus is orbiting Saturn in the on the inner edge of an absolutely vast 'new ring' of dust discovered orbiting the planet at a distance of 8 million miles. The ring is approximately 20 times thicker than the diameter of Saturn itself. The ring is being 'generated' by the outer moon Phoebe, and like that moon is in retrograde orbit. This is why the impact of the dust fragments on Iapetus is highly marked, as the fragments are hitting Iapetus with tremendous force, even though the fragments are not particularly large.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke Has Passed Away

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, British science fiction writer and visionary, probably the most famous and well-known science fiction writer of all time, passed away yesterday at his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset on 16 December 1917 and grew up reading the early SF pulp magazines. During WWII, Clarke worked in the RAF on radar projects, and contributed to the development of Ground-Approach Radar, which later played a key role in the Berlin Airlift. After the war he achieved a degree at King's College, London and became involved with the British Interplanetary Society, later going on to serve as its chairman. In October 1945 he published an article in Wireless World outlining how relay satellites positioned in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres above the Earth could be used to create a global communications network. After the publication of the article the geostationary orbit became known as the 'Clarke Orbit', a term still used today by the International Astronomical Union.

Clarke begun his writing career by penning short stories in WWII. His first sale was Rescue Party, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1946. In1948 he wrote The Sentinel for a BBC competition, but it did not win. The same year he also wrote Against the Fall of Night, one of his earliest classic stories, and in 1950 wrote another short story called Guardian Angel. In 1951 he began writing full-time, quickly publishing his first two novels, Prelude to Space and The Sands of Mars, that year. In 1953 he rewrote Guardian Angel as Childhood's End, which rapidly became his first truly successful novel, and the one that brought him to international attention, particularly in the USA. In 1956 his short story The Star won him his first Hugo Award. In 1958 he moved to Sir Lanka, then still called Ceylon, and remained there for the rest of his life, attributing his longevity to the climate and his love of scuba diving.

A string of successful novels and short story collections followed in the 1950s and early 1960s, including A Fall of Moondust, The Deep Range and The City and the Stars, his novel-length rewrite of Against the Fall of Night. In 1964 Clarke began a collaboration with film-maker Stanley Kubrick designed to make 'the proverbial good science fiction movie'. They used the jokey working title How the Solar System Was Won and Clarke's story The Sentinel as a basis for the project before retitling it 2001: A Space Odyssey. Production of the movie, and Clarke's accompanying novel, took over four years and involved the creation of never-before-used special effects technology. The movie was released in 1968 to immediate acclaim and won plaudits from critics for its innovative visuals and stunning use of classical music, as well as its philosophical outlook. However, the movie became a popular hit due to its basic storyline (about a murderous computer) and its 'trippy' end sequence. Clarke became a popular figure after the movie came out and was an official commentator for the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in July 1969.

In 1973 Clarke published what became his most successful novel, Rendezous with Rama. It was his first novel to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, but it simultaneously won the John W. Campbell Award and the Nebula as well. It remains the only book to have won all three awards. Thanks to Clarke's friendship with Sovient cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the novel was also published in the Soviet Union with absolutely no edits or changes from the original text, an extreme rarity for Western books during the Cold War. After the success of Rama, Clarke entered a period of growing critical acclaim. He released a further string of successful novels - Imperial Earth, The Fountains of Paradise, 2010: Odyssey Two, and The Songs of Distant Earth and 2061: Odyssey Three - as well as producing and presenting a television series, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.

In 1988 Clarke began to seriously suffer the effects of post-polio syndrome (having previously suffered from polio in 1959). He became increasingly reliant on wheelchairs and left Sri Lanka less often. His writing also changed, with a shift to collaborations with other authors such as Gentry Lee, Michael P. Kube-McDowell, Mike McQuay and Stephen Baxter. Two of his last solo novels, The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990) and The Hammer of God (1993), were not as well-received as earlier efforts, although both proved influential. Ghost predicted the problems associated with the Millennium Bug, whilst God, about an impending asteroid collision, both directly influenced the movie Deep Impact and ironically featured a NASA project named SPACEGUARD, which was inspired by Clarke's own novel, Rendezvous with Rama. His last solo novel was 3001: The Final Odyssey, published in 1997 after Clarke received the largest advance in SF history for the novel. The book was partially a 'greatest hits' of Clarke's ideas, taking in computers, computer viruses, ancient alien intelligences and space elevators (the idea for which - first visited in The Fountains of Paradise - he believed he would eventually be best-remembered by history).

In 1989, Clarke had been made a Commander of the British Empire and in 1998 was made a Knight Bachelor, although the ceremony was delayed until 2000 due to unfounded allegations about Clarke's personal life made by the The Sunday Mirror, which subsequently withdrew them.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, CBE, died at 1.30 am, 19 March 2008, local time, from breathing difficulties and complications arising from his post-polio syndrome. He left behind no immediate family, but a colossal body of work and the condolences of millions of fans.

On the occasion of his 90th birthday, he sent this message to his fans:

"I want to be remembered most as a writer. I want to entertain readers and hopefully stretch their imaginations as well.

"If I have given you delight in all that I have done, let me lie quiet in that night, which shall be yours anon."

For all his fame and prolific output, only one movie has ever been directly made based on his work: 2010. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a collaborative effort between Clarke and Kubrick, but with substantial differences between movie and novel. A film version of Rendezvous with Rama (directed by David Fincher and starring Morgan Freeman) has been in development for some years.

Bibliography of Novels
Prelude to Space (1951)
The Sands of Mars (1951)
Islands in the Sky (1952)
Against the Fall of Night (1953)
Childhood's End (1953)
Earthlight (1956)
The City and the Stars (1956)
The Deep Range (1957)
A Fall of Moondust (1961)
Dolphin Island (1963)
Glide Path (1963)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, with Stanley Kubrick)
Rendezvous with Rama (1972)
Imperial Earth (1976)
The Fountains of Paradise (1979)
2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
The Songs of Distant Earth (1986)
2061: Odyssey Three (1987)
A Meeting with Medusa (1988)
Cradle (1988, with Gentry Lee)
Rama II (1989, with Gentry Lee)
Beyond the Fall of Night (1990, with Gregory Benford)
The Ghost From the Grand Banks (1990)
The Garden of Rama (1991, with Genry Lee)
Rama Revealed (1993, with Gentry Lee)
Richter 10 (1996, with Mike McQuay)
3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)
The Trigger (1999, with Michael P. Kube-McDowell)
The Light of Other Days (2000, with Stephen Baxter)
Time's Eye (2003, with Stephen Baxter)
Sunstorm (2005, with Stephen Baxter)
Firstborn (2007, with Stephen Baxter)

"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.