The City And The Stars (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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Humanity has fled to this, the last city on Earth, to create a utopia of sorts: using the advanced technology of the Central Computer and its memory banks, its population is encoded to allow the computer to recreate them at a later time, wherein the pop into existence fully grown. During the Second World War he served as an RAF radar instructor, rising to the rank of Flight-Lieutenant. Arthur C Clarke must have been an incredible man, what a fantastic imagination he must have had to come up with some of the ideas that are in this book. This book also reaches into our human character of overcoming fear, our curiosity to explore, the dangers of conformity and social conditioning.

What Alvin finds on his journey, on Earth and beyond, takes us into more familiar territory for a Clarke novel.

She'll refuse and go about the long protocol you'd need to go through to be able to take the parcel. If you've completed Balance Due you will have access to the HHC building and won't need to use the Maintenance Tunnels.

He was a huge figure in sf and a key figure in making it more ‘respectable’ with idea-driven books which appealed to more than the sf crowd, and, of course, the hip recognition he gained from 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is how Clarke is able to tell a story - his world is just accepted by the reader; so the protagonist, Alvin, can get on with his adventure. The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths.

Written more than fifty years ago, The City and the Stars is remarkably timeless, even in its descriptions of technology. Head to the lunch area on the upper floor and have a quick chat, and she'll agree to let you into the lab. Here, the running theme of Alvin’s desire to escape Diaspar and see the stars compared to his compatriots’ irrational fear of leaving the safety of the city is a good example: I can read it as an allegory for 20th Century space exploration (amongst other things). Warmed by noble sandalwood, a dry down of powdery musk alludes to a passion that disperses only with the morning's first rays. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it involves the pastoral city of Lys, an ancient alien polyp, a long-lost religious messiah, a mute robot, and the vastness of space.