Radio SF at its best
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This was a very nice radio play version of A Fall Of Moondust. I recall it being broadcast back in about 1981 and had a cassette for many years. Really well adapted, you can feel the tension far more in the voices of the actors on tape than in the book. A superb example of the power of good SF in the radio genre.
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Early Clarke
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This is one of Clarke's earlier and perhaps not so well-known science fiction novels. It's based on an intriguing idea that was, before the first landing on the moon in the 1960s, perceived as an actual possibility: that some lunar plains, because they appeared to be exceedingly flat and smooth, were composed of extremely fine dust. Such a "sea of dust" would be far more treacherous than any quicksand on Earth, and there was a very real fear that the first lunar probes would sink and instantly vanish into such a sea. Clarke wrote A Fall of Moondust between August and November 1960, and it wasn't until the mid-1960s, when the Luniks and the Surveyors landed on the Moon, that it was proved there were no dust seas there. Clarke had already used the idea of "moondust" in Earthlight (1955), but the original concept was first developed by James Blish, in one of his science fiction stories (as Clarke relates it in the preface to the 1987 edition of A Fall of Moondust).
The story is a psychological thriller in a science fiction setting on the Moon. Captain Pat Harris, "the skipper of the only boat on the Moon," is the pilot of the Selene, which is a dust-cruiser (the only one) on the Sea of Thirst. The Sea of Thirst is composed of moondust, and the Selene is basically a pleasure cruiser for wealthy tourists. Captain Harris, together with the stewardess Sue Wilkins (an attractive and capable young women who is the object of Harris's erotic fantasies), takes the passengers on a cruise across the sea to the Mountains of Inaccessibility and back. But on the way back, disaster strikes (when a huge gas bubble bursts under the surface), and the Selene begins to sink into the dust.
The rest of the book switches back and forth between the rescue efforts, under the command of Chief Engineer Lawrence, assisted by the arrogant and anti-social Dr. Tom Lawson from the observatory at the Lagrange II relay satellite, and the efforts made by the crew and passengers of the Selene to stay calm and occupy themselves until help arrives (and to stave off every new disaster that occurs, regular as clockwork). Also involved in the events, as an outside observer, is the news reporter Maurice Spenser of Interplanet News. Among the passengers in the sunken cruiser is the famous Commodore Hansteen, the Commodore of Space who "had led the first expedition to Pluto, who had probably landed on more virgin planets and moons than any explorer in history," and he quickly assumes a leadership position. Captain Harris, after a pep talk from the attractive Sue, realizes that since he's the captain, he must act like one (but there is never any friction with the Commodore, since people in Clarke's stories are usually far more reasonable and civilized than real people would ever be), and for this he is rewarded with the sexual favours of the desirable young stewardess.
One thing I thought was a little strange was how Commodore Hansteen, within minutes after the disaster had occurred, immediately began thinking about and planning how to occupy the passengers so that they wouldn't panic during the long wait until the rescue efforts began. I don't think that's how anyone would have reacted in a situation like that. The first impulse should have been to try by any means available to get out of there, and it would not have been until later, at the first signs of stress among the passengers and when it was clear beyond any doubt that they were all in for a long wait, that the time would have come for worrying about the passengers.
A Fall of Moondust is an interesting and pleasant read, and the outdated moondust idea actually gives the story a "Buck Rogers" kind of feel (I'm sure Clarke would be insulted at a suggestion like that). On the other hand, the story is, as always with Clarke, strictly scientific in all details, and it's quite interesting to see how the rescue efforts proceed. Recommended.
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Ideal if you have two hours to kill
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Quite clearly the disaster story that Irwin Allen didn’t have the money to make, Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust is a fairly economical tail of a group of lunar pleasure cruisers trapped under tons of suffocating dust after a freak Moonquake tears a gaping hole in the landscape. Of course, all the usual ‘disaster flick’ elements are here in force: the victims vacillate between heroic stoicism, paranoia and absolute hysteria; whilst above the surface a plethora of super-brained scientists and square-jawed heroes combine forces to first locate, and then rescue the hapless day-trippers (who presumably have too much money to spend). As is the case with most Arthur C. Clarke novels, A Fall of Moondust’s characterisation finishes a distant second to the evocation of ‘grandiose spectacle’. And it is in author’s remarkable descriptions of an arid, airless landscape that we find the true star of the book: the moon itself. Quite frankly, I lost interest in the fate of the victims early on, instead I found myself pleading for more and more Moon imagery. Almost certainly not one of Clarke’s best, but interesting nevertheless; its un-taxing approach makes it an ideal distraction for one of those depressingly long train journeys.
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Not up to standard
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Im a big fan of Arthur C Clarke and I am measuring this book against his other works, rather than as an isolated work of fiction. And its a disappointment. The story line is simple - a tourist vehicle on the moon sinks into the lunar dust and there is a race against time to rescue the 22 people on board. And, er, thats about it. Pretty formulaic stuff. A few plot twists, but nothing major, minimal characterisation, and no 'wow' factor. I am being a little harsh - when this book was written in 1960, im sure it appeared far more impressive. But the moon has been demystified, and Clarke's more futuristic works (the Odyssey sequence, Songs of Distant Earth, Rendevous with Rama, to name a few) pack a lot more punch. Only really worth reading if you have a great desire to read all of Clarke's works.
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Silly premise, written like a pot-boiler
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You can tell this is an Arthur C Clarke novel because the first thing the stranded crew and passengers of the lunar pleasure cruiser Selene do on finding themselves stuck fifteen metres under the moon's dust is form an entertainments committee. Boredom is a killer, especially when you only have a copy of Shane and some dreadfully contrived Clarke historical romance to keep you amused. The second thing they do is form an elite "riot squad" to keep the rest of the passengers under control, which at one point means forcefully injecting them all with sleeping potions.
Ever the revisionist -- and each edition has its own revised preface -- Clarke's future-science blunders are slightly less grating (they, at least, can be excused) than his depiction of women, who are either helpless or harpies. There's even one overweight woman, who fifteen years later would undoubtedly have been played by Shelley Winters in the disaster movie spinoff, who Clarke describes as a "hippopotamus". Another is portrayed as so obnoxious -- it's only the women who shriek and panic, of course -- that physical force seems a perfectly reasonable course of action. The men, by and large (even the rather bizarrely underused heroin addict) are cool, collected, and have upper lips so stiff you could balance your in-flight meal on them.The plot is very slight, and the book hardly sustains even its modest 220 pages without daft longeurs, including some ill-informed tripe about flying saucers (ridiculous rubbish, says Clarke, a good twenty years before hosting his Mysterious World). One thing the directors of those 70s disaster movies knew is that once you have a group of ill-matched humans together facing death, all their secret human hopes and fears are revealed. Here, it's hard to care about any of the passengers since there's not a character between the lot of them. Rather than reveal anything as subtle as a life story, they hold a transparent "court" to interrogate each person in turn about their reasons for being there. "Well I was just on holiday, see, and the dust caved in." For the most part, the escalating problems hampering the rescue are all dealt with in the most obvious ways. It's not a very "photogenic" film -- the premise is silly, and after that it's fairly boring, which is exactly why they all take to playing poker. It might have been nice to know who won. That had me on the edge of my seat. According to Amazon's search engine, there are currently 11 different editions of "A Fall Of Moondust" to choose from. The one I'm holding is volume 49 of Gollancz's increasingly patchy (and increasingly under-marketed) S F Masterworks series. Inside the attractive cover (though Fred Gambino's illustration breaks most of the Rules of Pedantic Sci-Fi Illustration even Clarke would have complained about, such as soft shadows and visible stars) it's the same old typesetting you've seen many times before, complete with innumerable typesetting errors, missing punctuation and omitted words. Quality control was seemingly lacking when the book was first published and has never been reviewed. In fact, on the inside, where the list of other works usually sits, the book is listed not as S F Masterworks Number 49 but as Number 9 in a different series altogether, "Gollancz Classic SF". Ho-hum. It's a clunky old pot-boiler, and it really does need to be put quietly to bed.
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