★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The Songs Of Distant Earth
• Author: Arthur C. Clarke
• Year: 1986 (mine was 1987 mass market paperback)
• Pages: 319
• Genre: Science Fiction, Distant Future
• Publisher: Ballantine Books*
• ISBN 0-345-32240-1 (paperback)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* Publisher is also listed as Del Rey, and Random House)

 

Summary

Based on a 1958 short story of the same name, this 1986 novel is one Clarke called his favorite (in an introduction to a later collection). Set in the 3800s, it tells the story of humans who’ve colonized a planet called Thalassa — entirely ocean except for three islands — and more humans who left Earth just prior to Earth’s catastrophic end, who arrived in orbit around Thalassa on the way to another destination. The Thalassians, who are descended from the original colonists there, and the Earthlings aboard the starship, get to know each other during the ship’s stopover, but then part ways again as the starship (Magellan) continues on its way.

 

The Loss Of Plot

Aside from what I mentioned above, there is very little plot in this book, though Clarke kept hinting at possibilities — most of which never occurred. He kept saying the crew of the Magellan had nothing in common with the Thalassians due to hundreds of years of cultural divergence, which the reader might think would cause problems. But instead there is very little difference between them — the same language, the same lack of religions, enjoying the same foods and music, etc. Clarke hints at the possibility of a dangerous mutiny on the Magellan, but nothing comes of it — a few crew members want to stay on Thalassa, so the captain “exiles” them there. There are hints of a love triangle causing disruption, but instead everyone is okay with it.

 

Points Off For...

In addition to the lack of a plot, mentioned above, I had other problems. Perhaps because there were too many main characters for such a short novel, none of them were treated to very much character development. Usually a title or job description, sometimes a physical description, and often a sentence or two about what made them different — but then they turned out to be much like everyone else. This meant that I, as a reader, couldn’t really identify with any of them — which is usually one of the first things I do when I begin reading a novel.

At one point, it began to look like the big plot point was going to be the creatures found in the seas of Thalassa, called “scorps”, who showed signs of intelligence. This was even hinted at on the cover (“...the monumental evolutionary event slowly taking place beneath their seas...”). There was some talk about how the colonization initiative wanted to avoid interferring with sentient species. But instead the humans simply have a couple of documentary-style encounters with the scorps and the creatures (probably sentient) are forgotten by the author. Nothing ever comes of it.

I added points for Clarke putting women in leadership positions (the mayor of the Thalassian city, for example), and for having one female character be identified as the smartest person on the planet — these were pretty rare in sci-fi in the 1980s — but when it came to childbearing I think Clarke missed a huge opportunity. He simply assumes that this smartest person on the planet will be bound by biology when she decides to come off birth control and have a child — despite his previous detailed explanation of how the robots carried frozen human embryos across light years and hatched them on an alien planet. Couldn’t he have liberated women just one step further there, by noting Mirissa had the choice (once her egg was fertilized) to grow it in a facility designed for that purpose?

 

So Why Give It Three Stars?

If I have so many complaints, and if there really isn’t a plot, why did I shell out three stars? Am I merely being generous to one of the “Big Three” of 20th Century science fiction?

For one thing, there were plenty of Big Ideas in the book, which is one thing I enjoy about sci-fi: it can be more than an adventure story or a mystery — there can be huge philosophical, social, and political points too. The first one, Clarke mentioned in the opening Author’s Note. He refers to “the recent rash of space-operas on TV and movie screen”, and mentions Star Trek by name, along with “the Lucas/Speilberg epics” and calls them “works of fantasy, not science fiction in the strict meaning of the term”. He attempted to write this novel using only “known or foreseeable technology” — “there is nothing in this book that defies or denies known principles”. This premise dovetails well with my recent reading of Putting The Science In Fiction.

Another idea explored here was how humanity might deal with the certain knowledge that the Earth will be destroyed. This is part of the historical background/setting for the novel, that scientists eventually put a specific date to the Earth’s coming destruction, which spurred tumultuous social and political changes and resulted in the expensive efforts to colonize. In the novel, a cosmic accident is the cause, but in real life it’s climate change and man’s destruction of the requisite ecosystem. So far, we aren’t handling it well in real life. Fortunately in the book, humanity had centuries to work through the implications of the coming crisis.

Still another idea that intrigued me was the idea of robotic colonization. Since realistic starships would require hundreds of years to reach the next star system, and since the “hibernation” often depicted in science fiction isn’t known to be possible either, Clarke has his human colonists shipped as frozen embryos in starships piloted by computers. Once landed safely, robotic machines incubate and care for the embryos until they’re viable, and then raise them to adulthood. Later starships, called “seedships”, carried only genetic material. So, although the humans on the colony worlds are technically descended from Earthlings, they have no cultural connection to them. I think he could have gone a lot further in developing this idea — how would humans be different on the other side of such a distinct break with their ancestors? What kind of culture/society might arise if the entire first generation of humans on a particular planet was raised by robots, without the hangups of their biological ancestors?

There is also the matter of the type of government used on the Thalassian colony. The details are never spelled out, but Clarke says the president is chosen randomly by a computer. Anyone within the age range (30-70), not terminally ill or “mentally defective”, and without a criminal record could be chosen at random to be the president. This thought had actually occurred to me a few weeks before reading this book: what if our U.S. president was chosen at random, like drawing names from a hat? Wouldn’t that give us just as much chance at an honest, hard-working head of state as our current system? Clarke says:

“Once it was universally accepted that anyone who deliberately aimed at the job should be automatically disqualified, almost any system would serve equally well, and a lottery was the simplest procedure.”

— page 62

And, finally, something that several reviewers complained about: the lack of religion. Naturally, if scientists design robots to nurture human younglings on some distant planet, they wouldn’t program the robots to indoctrinate the young humans with religion, and so those humans would grow up without it, though it would be part of the historical record. Clarke went a step further. In his backstory for Thalassa, “those who prepared the archives” censored the literature and history of humanity so that anyone who grew up on Thalassa would have no idea religion had ever existed.

“The Thalassians were never poisoned by the decay products of dead religions, and in seven hundred years no prophet has arisen here to preach a new faith. The very word ‘God’ has almost vanished from their language, and they’re quite surprised — or amused — when we happen to use it.”

— page 72

This too, I had wondered about recently. How would a full-grown human react to our tales of religion if they’d never heard of them before? I’m convinced that human would never believe in any of our religions, but how to test it? I figured you’d have to isolate a human baby from the rest of society somehow, and raise it with carefully curated educational materials. You would even have to hide pop culture from them, because the references to gods and religions are almost ubiquitous. Clarke doesn’t dwell on it, but has one of the characters judge that the success of Thalassa’s “total atheism” doesn’t really prove anything, because it’s only one sample.

 

Conclusion

As a novel, this one isn’t great. The lack of plot and multiple false hints at excitement were disappointing. But there were enough big ideas and starting points for trains of thought that I think it was worth reading, for me. I won’t recommend it to others.

 

 

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