The Wall of Darkness

The Wall of Darkness

When Shervane gazed up at the monstrous ebony sheet that had so troubled his mind, it seemed to be overhanging and about to crush him beneath its falling weight. With difficulty, he tore his eyes away from the hypnotic sight, and went nearer to examine the material of which the Wall was built.

It was true, as Brayldon had told him, that it felt cold to the touch – colder than it had any right to be even in this sunstarved land. It felt neither hard nor soft, for its texture eluded the hand in a way that was difficult to analyze. Shervane had the impression that something was preventing him from actual contact with the surface, yet he could see no space between the Wall and his fingers when he forced them against it. Stranger of all was the uncanny silence of which Brayldon’s uncle had spoken: every word was deadened and all sound died away with unnatural swiftness.

Brayldon had unloades some tools and instruments from the pack horses, and had begun to examine the Wall’s surface. He found very quickly that no drills or cutters would mark it in any way, and presently he came to the conclusion Shervane had already reached. The Wall was not merely adamant: it was unapproachable.

The Universe is even stranger than we can possibly imagine (Haldane’s hypothesis). Illustration : © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

At last, in disgusts, he took a perfectly straight metal rule and pressed its edge against the wall. While Shervane held a mirror to reflect the feeble light of Trilorne along the line of contact, Brayldon peered at the rue from the other side. It was as he had thought: an infinitely narrow streak of light showed unbroken between the two surfaces.

Brayldon looked thoughtfully at his friend. “Shervane,” he said, “I don’t believe the Wall is made of matter, as we know it.”

“Then perhaps the legends were right that said it was never built at all, but created as we see it now”.

“I think so too,” said Brayldon. “The engineers of the First Dynasty had such powers. There are some very ancient buildings in my land that seem to have been made in as single operation from a substance that shows absolutely no sign of weathering. If it were black instead of colored, it would be very much like the material of the Wall.”

He put away his useless tools and began to set up a simple portable theodolite.

“If I can do nothing else,” he said with a wry smile, “at least I can find exactly how high it is!”.

The Lion of Comarre

The Lion of Comarre

By Arthur C. Clarke

Civilization was completely mechanized – yet machinery had almost vanished. Hidden in the walls of the cities or buried far underground, the perfect machines bore the burden of the world. Silently, unobtrusively, the robots attended to their masters’ need, doing their work so well that their presence seemed as natural as the dawn.

There was still much to learn in the realm of pure science, and the astronomers, now that they were no longer bound to Earth, had work enough for a thousand years to come. But the physical sciences and the arts they nourished had ceased to be the chief preoccupation of the race. By the year 2600 the finest human minds were no longer to be found in the laboratories.

The men whose names meant most to the world were the artists and philosophers, the lawgivers and statesmen. The engineers and the great inventors belonged to the past. Like the men who had once ministered to long-vanished diseases, they had done their work so well that they were no longer required.

Five hundred years were to pass before the pendulum swung back again.

Shows very unusual mechanical ability – has done original work in sub-electronic research, et cetera, et cetera. Good heavens, I thought the human race had outgrown those toys centuries ago! Illustration : © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

… The view from the studio was breath-taking, for the long, curving room was over two miles from the base of Central Tower. The five other giant buildings of the city clustered below, their metal walls gleaming with all the colors of the spectrum as they caught the rays of the morning sun. Lower still, the checkerboard fields of the automatic farms stretched away until they were lost in the mists of the horizon. But for once, the beauty of the scene was wasted on Richard Peyton II as he paced angrily among the great blocks of synthetic marble that were the reaw material of his art.

The huge, gorgeously colored masses of artificial rock completely dominated the studio. Most of them were roughly hewn cubes, but some were beginning to assume the shapes of animals, human beings, and abstract solids that no geometrician would have dared to give a name…

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.