A Fall of Moondust (Classic Radio Sci-Fi)

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.


Not up to standard   September 19, 2002
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

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.


Silly premise, written like a pot-boiler   June 3, 2002
 10 out of 18 found this review helpful

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.