The Making of Comarre

The Making of Comarre

(excerpt from The Lion of Comarre by Arthur C. Clarke)

Slowly the will and character of Richard Peyton III returned from their banishment. Unsteadily he rose to his feet and made his way out of the room. Once again he found himself in the long corridor with its hundreds of identical doors. With new understanding he looked at the symbol carved upon them.

He scarcely noticed where he was going. His mind was fixed too intently on the problem before him. As he walked, his brain cleared, and slowly understanding came. For the moment it was only a theory, but soon he would put it to the test.

The human mind was a delicate, sheltered thing, having no direct contact with the world and gathering all its knowledge and experience through the body’s senses. It was possible to record and store thoughts and emotions as earlier men had once recorded sound on miles of wire.

If those thoughts were projected into another mind, when the body was unconscious and all its senses numbed, that brain would think it was experiencing reality. There was no way in which it could detect the deception, any more than one can distinguish a perfectly recorded symphony from the original performance.

 I don’t care if you think I’m abnormal, weird, strange, crazy, insane, odd and bizarre. Life is too short to be normal. Illustration by Elena

All this had been known for centuries, but the builders of Comarre had used the knowledge as no one in the world had had ever done befor. Somewhere in the city there must be machines that could analyze every thought and desire of those who entered. Elsewhere the city’s makers must have stored every sensation and experience a human mind could know. From this raw material all possible futures could be constructed.

Now at last Peyton understood the measure of the genius that had gone into the making of Comarre. The machines had analyzed his deepest thoughts and builte for him a world based on his subconscious desires. Then, when the chance had come, they had taken control of his mind and injected into it all he had experienced.

No wonder that everything he had ever longed for had been his in that already half-forgotten paradise. And no wonder that through the ages so many had sought the peace on Comarre coul bring!

The Star Bomb

The Star Bomb

Do you think, asked Hannar, that you will build fairer cities than this beneath those strange suns, when you have left our world forever? – If we feel that impulse, yes. If not, we will build other things. But build we must ; and what have your people created in the last hundred years? – Because we have made no machines, because we have turned our backs upon the stars and are content with our own world, don’t thing we have been completely idle. Here in Shastar we have evolved a way of life that I do not think has ever been surpassed. We have studied the art of living; ours is the first aristocracy in which there are no slaves. That is our achievement, by which history will judge us. (The road to the see. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth)

The capsule was scratched and stained with mud, but appeared undamaged. It was lying on its side now, looking rather like a giant milk-churn that had been tipped over. The passenger must have been bumped around. But if he’d fallen all the way back from the Moon he must have been well padded and was probably still in good shape (Hate. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth).

“It’s perfectly typical Class E culture”, said the professor. “Technically advanced, morally rather backward. However, they are already used to the conception of space flight, and will soon take us for granted. The normal precautions will be sufficient until we have won their confidence.” (Publicity Campaign. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth).

The Star Bomb. Illustration by Elena

In an infinite cosmos everything must happen somewhere – including their singularly bad luck. For it was hungry – very hungry – and a tiger or a man would have been a small yet acceptable morsel to any one of its half dozen gaping mouths. (The Other Tiger. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth).

A gray thunderbolt shot up out of the depths and smashed back onto the surface of the water, smothering Don with spray. It was just Benj’s modest way of drawing attention to himself; a moment later the porpoise had swum up to the conning tower, so that Don could reach down and tickle its head. The great, intelligent eyes stared back into his; was it pure imagination, or did an almost human sense of fun also lurk in their depths? (The Deep Range. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth).

He stared into the west, away from the blinding splendor of the sun – and there were the stars, as he had been told but had never quite believed. He gazed at them for a long time, marvelling that anything could be so bright and yet so tiny. (If I forget thee, oh Earth. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth).

”To ride secure the cruel sky.” Not even birds had ever possessed such freedom of the third dimension; this was the real conquest of space. The Levitator would open up the mountains and the high places of the world, as a lifetime ago the aqualung had opened up the sea. Once these units had passed their tests and were mass-produced cheaply, every aspect of human civilization would be changes. Transport would be revolutionized. Space travel would be no more expensive than ordinary flying; all mankind would take to the air. What had happened a hundred years earlier with the invention of the automobile was only a mild foretaste of the staggering social and political changes that mush now come. (The Cruel Sky. Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth).

Reactions to the BDI fell into three main categories, which divided the scientific community into fiercely warring groups. First there were the enthusiasts, who were certain that it was a wonderful idea. Then there were the skeptics, who argued that it was technically impossible – or at least so difficult that it would not be cost-effective. Finally, there were those who believed that it was indeed possible – but would be a bad idea (Arthur C. Clarke, On Golden Seas).

To ride secure the cruel sky. Illustration by Megan Jorgensen.

To Destroy the Future

To Destroy the Future

Think of all our reflections on those millions of other planets. Some of them are exactly the same but every possible variation that doesn’t violate the laws of logic must also exist. (Arthur A. Clarke, The Other Tiger).

The light of the rising moon sparkled on the sea; overhead, the arms of the crucifix were silhouetted against the darkness. A brilliant beacon on the frontiers of twilight, Venus was following the sun into the west (Arthur C. Clarke, The Parasite).

There are devices with which, by the use of suitable reduction gearing, one could carry out the most incredibly delicate operations. You moved your finger an inch – and the tool you were controlling moved a thousandth of an inch. The French scientists who had developed this technique had built tiny forges on which they could construct minute scalpels and tweezers from fused glass. Working entirely through microscopes, they had been able to dissect individual cells. Removing an appendix from a termite (in the highly doubtful event of the insect possessing one) would be child’s play with such an instrument. (Arthur C. Clarke. The Next tenants).

To destroy the future. Photo by Elena

I gave a rather forced smile; I’m never very sociable at breakfast, and I’d learned to be on my guard against the cranks, bores, and enthusiasts who seemed to regard me as their legitimate prey. What did it feel like, he wanted to know, to wake up in the morning and see that great, golden globe with its scudding cloud belts dominating the sky? And the rings themselves – what did they do to your mind when they were so close that they filled the heavens from and to end? You want a poet, I said – not an engineer. But I’ll tell you this; however long you look at Saturn, and fly in and out among its moons, you can never quite believe it. Every so often you find yourself thinking: “It’s all a dream – a thing like that can’t be real.” And you go to the nearest view-port – and there it is, taking your breath away. (Arthur C. Clarke. Saturn Rising)

About twelve centuries ago there were people who said that everything had been invented – and that was before the coming of electricity, let alone flying and astronautics. They just didn’t look far enough ahead – their minds were rooted in the present. (Arthur C. Clarke, The Lion of Comarre).

… Still quite young when I realized that there was something wrong with Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation. In particular, there seemed to be a fallacy underlying the Principle of Equivalence. According to this, there is no way of distinguishing between the effects produced by gravitation and those of acceleration. But this is clearly false. One can create a uniform acceleration; but a uniform gravitational field is impossible, since it obeys an inverse square law, and therefore must vary even over quite short distances. So tests can easily be devised to distinguish between the two cases, and this made me wonder if… (Megan Jorgensen, Future Essays).

Underwater Space Basket Lost in Time. image : Megan Jorgensen.

Frankly I Don’t Care

Frankly I Don’t Care

If you’ve never had a nerdy bone in your body, feel free to skip this note. But, if you ever laid on your back under the stars and thought about Mercury, Gemini, Apollo or the Space Shuttle, read on and see if you’re as geek-struck as I was researching this. (Unknown observer).

I don’t care what you do as long as it’s something we can be proud of. But why the craze for gadgets? We’ve got all the machines we need. (Arthur C. Clarke, The Lion of Comarre).

Now that all other approaches have failed, the “frankly-I-don’t-care” attitude is the only one left open to me (Megan Jorgensen, Frankly I don’t care)

Fancy an artist saying that anything’s perfect. Father, I’m ashamed of you! ((Arthur C. Clarke, The Lion of Comarre).

Frankly I don't care. Illustration by Elena

It’s not a dark age, because we haven’t forgotten anything. (Arthur C. Clarke, The Lion of Comarre).

I’ve got better things to do with my time. Too much damn gold around, anyhow. I’m after the commercially useful metals – the ones our civilization is going to be desperately short of in another couple of generations. And as a matter of fact, even with my sieve it wouldn’t be worth going after gold. There are only about fifty pound of the stuff in every cubic mile. (Arthur C. Clarke, The Man who Ploughed the Sea).

When are we going to cross interstellar space? – Who wants to go to the stars, anyway? (Arthur C. Clarke, The Lion of Comarre).

Laagi

Laagi

(by Gordon R. Dickson, from The Forever Man)

The human race had been in war with Laagi so long, over five generations, that the contest had become something that was almost as taken for granted as the physical facts of the universe itself. It seemed they had always been at war with the Laagi. They would always be at war with them… these aliens, these people no human had ever seen, whose worlds no human had ever seen; but only the hulls of their heavy-bellied space warships. It was almost as if Mollen had suggested altering all the continents of Earth into unfamiliar shapes.

It was not just what he wanted, of course. It was what everyone wanted. No more of this war which had drained Earth’s resources and brought her nothing in return – unless it was the feeling of being safely entrenched behind a line of fighting spaceships. But with no more Laagi to fight, what was next?

Hopefully, they could then go out to colonize livable worlds, wherever these could be found, which had been what they had been engaged in when they found that there were no ready-to-live-on planets within practical phase-shifting distances, they were the world already occupied by the Laagi or in that area of space to which the Laagi barred the way.

Laagi. Illustration by Elena

No one even knew why the Laagi fought. They had attacked, on contact, the first unarmed human spaceships that had encountered them. Clearly, they would have followed this up by carrying their attacks against Earth, itself, if the aroused world had not hastily combined to arm and man the defensive line in space that was the Frontier. Clarly, the Laagi wanted colonizable planet-space, too: and in spite of the fact no human had ever seen one, Earth must be enough like their world or worlds to be usable.

In the early years after human and Laagi ships had first encountered each other, their ships had come close enough to be observed just outside Earth`s atmosphere. But meanwhile Earth had been frantically building ships fitted for space combat; and by the time the first of these went up in effective numbers, hunting for the Laagi, they had to travel almost as far as the present Frontier before encountering any of them.

But beyond the Frontier all the military strength of Earth had not been able to push, in well over a hundred years. The larger a fleet of fighter ships with which they tried to penetrate, the greater the number of Laagi ships that came to oppose them. Were the Laagi from one world or many? Were they paranoid or reasonable? What were they, physically and mentally?

No Laagi ship ever surrendered. They fought or ran, but once engaged in combat they kept fighting until they were destroyed, or destroyed themselves. Continual efforts to find a way of capturing a Laagi ship had been without success. There seemed to be the equivalent of a dead-man`s switch in each of their ships that triggered its destruction if it became too badly crippled either to run or fight any more.

Did you ever know a spaceship to tell a lie? (Gordon R. Dickson) Illustration : © Megan Jorgensen.