Down to the wire: The Fountains of Paradise (1979) by Arthur C. Clarke

A better future through mega-engineering

Few mega-engineering concepts have inspired science fiction writers like the space elevator. It has long since become a “beloved SF device” (SFE), often as a secondary detail. What is commonplace in the genre today, though, was once very new and so it was with the space elevator in 1979. That was the year two major novels by British-born expatriate authors popularised the concept: one was The Web Between the Worlds by Charles Sheffield (1935 - 2002), and the other was The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008).

The two novels have striking similarities, but Clarke wrote at the time that the publication of the two books reflected not a “clear case of plagiarism” but “merely an idea whose time has come”. It was The Fountains of Paradise which made the bigger impact; it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, possibly in part due to Clarke’s claim that it would be his last novel. 

Viewed in retrospect, The Fountains of Paradise is classic Clarke - something of a throwback to his work of the 1950s and 1960s, it contains his usual optimism, hard science credentials, and emphasis on engineering challenges rather than human conflict. At the same time it is something more, especially in its depiction of a fictionalised version of Clarke’s adopted home of Sri Lanka which is intriguing, if in some ways problematic.

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Bridge to the stars

The novel is set in the 22nd century, and begins around the year 2142. The setting is familiar Clarke territory - a future of peaceful human flourishing across the solar system, recognisable from several of his previous novels. The protagonist is Vannevar Morgan, a well-known figure in this future and a master engineer who has recently completed construction of an enormous bridge over the Mediterranean Sea. 

Although humans have established themselves on the moon, Mars, and beyond, further exploration and colonisation is limited by the vast cost of rocket launches. To address this issue, Morgan launches a bold new project which he calls the Orbital Tower. This is a space elevator, a means of cheaply taking payloads and passengers into space without rockets, it requires an immensely strong cable to link our world with a massive counterweight 36,000 kilometres away in geostationary orbit.

Breakthroughs in materials science have given Morgan the means to do this in the form of a revolutionary new monomolecular wire. Unfortunately, the only viable site for the Orbital Tower’s base is at Sri Kanda, a holy mountain on the island of Taprobane. Two thousand years earlier, the tyrant Kalidasa failed to create a stairway to heaven there, and now Morgan must confront a similar challenge of his own if humans are to reach the stars.

A position of privilege

When The Fountains of Paradise was published, Clarke was the most prominent and well-known science fiction writer in the world. The publication of the novel fulfilled a contract for three books which was the most lucrative ever signed by an SF writer; the previous books were Rendezvous with Rama (1973) and Imperial Earth (1975). At one time, Clarke had viewed Imperial Earth as “the big one” but was ultimately disappointed with it. He had similarly high hopes for The Fountains of Paradise, and briefly held that it would be his last novel. 

Clarke had emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956 and the context of his presence there should not be overlooked. As Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera has put it, Clarke was “an almost ludicrously privileged Englishman sahibing it up in the colonies.” He lived in wealth and luxury, treated so favorably that in 1975 the Sri Lankan government created a new class of immigration status for Clarke specifically. It should also be noted that he may have been a paedophile. 

Clarke had referred to his adopted home previously in his fiction, and would do so again - but The Fountains of Paradise is his definitive Sri Lanka novel. It is largely set on an imagined alternate version of the island, modified to suit Clarke’s plot purposes and named Taprobane, after the name used for the island by the ancient Greeks. Clarke wrote that his imagined country was 90% the same as the real Sri Lanka, albeit moved to the equator. While Clarke’s love for Sri Lanka is more than evident, his Taprobanean characters are highly passive observers of the novel’s events, as Jo Walton has noted.

If we build it

The Northern Irish writer James White was a devoted pacifist, and famously used medical drama - rather than conflict - as a source of tension in his science fiction. With his highly optimistic, peaceful view of the future, Clarke deployed a similar approach. In The Fountains of Paradise, it is the engineering challenges of the Orbital Tower which drive much of the plot. Morgan must prove the viability of the monomolecular wire, secure access to a site for the Tower’s base, maneuver a massive rock into geostationary orbit, build the “Midway” station at the half-way point, and overcome various other setbacks.

Clarke’s research on and familiarity with the physics of the project is evident, and there is a lot to enjoy here for fans of technically-minded SF. Not uncommonly for Clarke, there is little in the way of human drama. However, the final section consists of an impressively tense, high-stakes rescue sequence, which to some extent resembles a miniature version of Clarke’s earlier novel A Fall of Moondust (1961).

The appeal of much of Clarke’s fiction is in his fusion of hard science with a sense of optimism about humanity’s future - not necessarily a commonplace combination. The Fountains of Paradise is also one of his books which most clearly shows Clarke’s sensitivity to spiritual perspectives. His fictionalised portrayal of Sri Lanka puts its people in a distinctly passive and secondary position, but the setting is apt for a novel which, at its best, does summon up a sense of wonder. 

Far more substantial than Imperial Earth, The Fountains of Paradise rivals Rendezvous with Rama for the status of Clarke’s best novel of the 1970s and while it may have been somewhat dated on publication, its optimism is refreshing today.

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• Clarke references the influential and controversial British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 - 1975). Toynbee’s theories on the rise and fall of civilisations inspired a number of SF works, including The Paradox Men (1953) by Charles L. Harness and “The Toynbee Convector” (1984) by Ray Bradbury.
• Various aspects of Taprobane are slightly fictionalised versions of ones in Sri Lanka. The mountain “Sri Kanda” equates to Adam’s Peak, the ruined palace of Yakkagala is the real-life rock fortress of Sigiriya, and the murderous king Kalidasa is a version of Kashyapa I, who died in 495 AD.