Set roughly two-hundred years in the future, Arthur C. Clarke’s Earthlight is a science-fiction drama set on The Moon during a political crisis, between the Earth-aligned governments and a federation of solar system colonies. What is particularly interesting about Earthlight is that Clarke published this in 1955, fourteen years before humans walked on The Moon (in fact, two years before Sputnik 1 first reached low Earth orbit). And he gets a lot of it right. However, it’s not the scientific vision that is most telling about this novel, but the blind spots Clarke displays, which mar a potentially brilliant story.
Table of Contents
Concept
Bertram Sadler is an accountant, working for the Audit Bureau. He has been sent to The Moon’s Observatory to perform an audit upon their operations. Or so he says. In truth, he secretly works for Central Intelligence and is on The Moon to catch a spy, that has been transmitting sensitive information to the federation.
This wonderful concept has a lot of potential. Lots of intrigue. Lots of character development, as Sadler delves for the truth. A hint of danger, just from being on The Moon, but also with the looming threat of war. A classic, intense spy drama but set on The Moon.
Or an analogy of Cold War espionage. Or any of a thousand other ideas. Anything, but what Earthlight delivers.
Realisation
The plot of Earthlight is unfocused. It bounces from one mundane scene to the next. From a political talk fest to a boy’s own adventure tale. While the underlying story supposedly involves the search for the spy, it quickly becomes forgotten – at least, until the ‘tacked-on’ epilogue. Instead, the story focuses upon the war between Earth and the Federation, initially the preparations and discovery of a secret military base (Project Thor) – masquerading as a mining operation – located near the Observatory, but ultimately the plot fixates upon the battle between Project Thor and three Federation cruisers.
Similarly, Sadler is nominally the protagonist, but he quickly gets sidelined – reduced to nothing more than a witness to the events that unfold. And, not even a first-hand witness for much of it. Instead, we see much of the story through the eyes of two of the Observatory’s scientists, Jamieson and Wheeler. Initially, they’re considered spying suspects by Sadler, but once he rejects that notion, the two of them soon become the primary witnesses to the unfolding events.
That’s all they are: witnesses. They don’t move the plot forward, and their involvement itself is a contrivance. They display very little emotion, despite a massive battle (including nukes going off) happening nearby. There’s no real sense of risk to any of the main characters. No stakes, at all. It’s all experienced as though it were through a thick layer of Valium: numb, and disconnected.
Blind Spots
Amid all this, there are even bigger problems that I alluded to at the beginning: Clarke’s blind spots. The most prominent is that there is exactly one reference to a woman in this story. ONE. We never see her, though. Sadler writes a letter to his wife. That’s it.
As a result, Clarke also misses an obvious opportunity in the epilogue, which is set thirty years after the main events of the book. Sadler revisits The Moon and wonders at how much has changed. He meets a small child during the visit, and instead of making that child a girl – more indication of just how much has changed – Clarke continues with the sausage fest.
Then, there’s the ridiculous notion that permeates through the story’s solution: that scientists are simply better and more rational than ‘real people’. The subtext being that none of the politics or problems would have happened if scientists had been in charge. Yet, scientists are affected by the same biases as everyone else. It’s not only naive, it’s fucking stupid. Serendipitously, Neil DeGrasse Tyson discusses scientist biases at the end of this recent video.
As for the world-building in Earthlight, there’s practically none. Apart from the technological advances, there appears to have been no cultural or social advances made in the last two-hundred years. The astronomers from the 1950s (in their brown, polyester suits) would feel very much at home in The Moon’s Observatory. Not only are there no women, there’s also no non-whites, no beatniks, no punks, no goths, no non-smokers. Nobody with any sense of soul – or character.
Summation
I was prompted into writing this review partly as a result of a conversation I had with two friends on Mastodon. They saw that I was reading Earthlight (via my Bookwrym) and commented they had read the novel in the 70s or 80s, but they couldn’t remember much about it. And that’s my biggest issue with this novel. If I had to sum up Earthlight in a word, I’d say it is completely forgettable.
Feature image: NASA Orion Spacecraft – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Lunar Liquid mirror telescope: ESO/M.Kornmesser – CC BY 4.0
Leave a comment