A Fall of Moondust

By Arthur C. Clarke

A “superbly ingenious” classic of space survival from the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey—one of science fiction’s most influential grandmasters (Daily Express).
 
Expanding the Moon’s population hinges on building a thriving tourist industry. But when a prototype tourist craft called the Selene encounters a moonquake, the ship plummets under a vast body of liquid-fine moondust called the Sea of Thirst. While time runs out for the passengers and crew, rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the unpredictable conditions of the lunar environment.
 
Nominated for the Hugo Award in 1963, this brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival is a tour-de-force of psychological suspense and sustained dramatic tension sure to appeal to fans of Andy Weir’s The Martian.
 
“The best book yet about man’s most dramatic journey, the most exciting science fiction novel for years.” —Evening Standard
 
“Expertly told and cruelly exciting to the end.” —The Sunday Times
 
“Extremely good . . . with some superbly ingenious and exciting new twists.” —Daily Express

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9780795325397

Arthur C. Clarke

Born in Somerset in 1917, Arthur C. Clarke has written over sixty books, among which are the science fiction classics ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’, ‘Childhood’s End’, ‘The City and the Stars’ and ‘Rendezvous With Rama’. He has won all the most prestigious science fiction trophies, and shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of the film of 2001. He was knighted in 1998. He passed away in March 2008.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

To be the skipper of the only boat on the Moon was a distinction that Pat Harris enjoyed. As the passengers filed aboard Selene, jockeying for window seats, he wondered what sort of trip it would be this time. In the rear-view mirror he could see Miss Wilkins, very smart in her blue Lunar Tourist Commission uniform, putting on her usual welcome act. He always tried to think of her as ‘Miss Wilkins’, not Sue, when they were on duty together; it helped to keep his mind on business. But what she thought of him, he had never really discovered.

There were no familiar faces; this was a new bunch, eager for their first cruise. Most of the passengers were typical tourists—elderly people, visiting a world that had been the very symbol of inaccessibility when they were young. There were only four or five passengers on the low side of thirty, and they were probably technical personnel on vacation from one of the lunar bases. It was a fairly good working rule, Pat had discovered, that all the old people came from Earth, while the youngsters were residents of the Moon.

But to all of them the Sea of Thirst was a novelty. Beyond Selene’s observation windows its grey, dusty surface marched onwards unbroken until it reached the stars. Above it hung the waning crescent Earth, poised for ever in the sky from which it had not moved in a billion years. The brilliant, blue-green light of the mother world flooded this strange land with a cold radiance—and cold it was indeed, perhaps three hundred below zero on the exposed surface.

No one could have told, merely by looking at it, whether the Sea was liquid or solid. It was completely flat and featureless, quite free from the myriad cracks and fissures that scarred all the rest of this barren world. Not a single hillock, boulder or pebble broke its monotonous uniformity. No sea on Earth—no mill-pond, even—was ever as calm as this.

It was a sea of dust, not of water, and therefore it was alien to all the experience of men—therefore, also, it fascinated and attracted them. Fine as talcum powder, drier in this vacuum than the parched sands of the Sahara, it flowed as easily and effortlessly as any liquid. A heavy object dropped into it would disappear instantly, without a splash, leaving no scar to mark its passage. Nothing could move upon its treacherous surface except the small, two-man dust-skis—and Selene herself, an improbable combination of sledge and bus, not unlike the Sno-cats that had opened up the Antarctic a lifetime ago.

Selene’s official designation was Dust-cruiser, Mark I, though to the best of Pat’s knowledge a Mark 2 did not exist even on the drawing-board. She was called ‘ship’, ‘boat’ or ‘moon-bus’ according to taste; Pat preferred ‘boat’, for it prevented confusion. When he used that word, no one would mistake him for the skipper of a space-ship—and space-ship captains were, of course, two a penny.

"Welcome aboard Selene, said Miss Wilkins, when everyone had settled down. Captain Harris and I are pleased to have you with us. Our trip will last four hours, and our first objective will be Crater Lake, a hundred kilometres east of here in the Mountains of Inaccessibility—."

Pat scarcely heard the familiar introductions; he was busy with his countdown. Selene was virtually a grounded space-ship; she had to be, since she was travelling in a vacuum, and must protect her frail cargo from the hostile world beyond her walls. Though she never left the surface of the Moon, and was propelled by electric motors instead of rockets, she carried all the basic equipment of a full-fledged ship of space—and all of it had to be checked before departure.

Oxygen—O.K. Power—O.K. Radio—O.K. ("Hello, Rainbow Base, Selene testing. Are you receiving my beacon?") Inertial navigator—zeroed. Airlock Safety—On. Cabin Leak detector—O.K. Internal lights—O.K. Gangway—disconnected. And so on for more than fifty items, everyone of which would automatically call attention to itself in case of trouble. But Pat Harris, like all spacemen hankering after old age, never relied on autowarnings if he could carry out the check himself.

At last he was ready. The almost silent motors started to spin, but the blades were still feathered and Selene barely quivered at her moorings. Then he eased the port fan into fine pitch, and she began to curve slowly to the right. When she was clear of the embarkation building, he straightened her out and pushed the throttle forward.

She handled very well, when one considered the complete novelty of her design. There were no millennia of trial and error here, stretching back to the first Neolithic man who ever launched a log out into a stream. Selene was the very first of her line, created in the brains of a few engineers who had sat down at a table and asked themselves: How do we build a vehicle that will skim over a sea of dust?

Some of them, harking back to Ole Man River, had wanted to make her a stern-wheeler, but the more efficient submerged fans had carried the day. As they drilled through the dust, driving her before them, they produced a wake like that of a high-speed mole, but it vanished within seconds, leaving the Sea unmarked by any sign of the boat’s passage.

Now the squat pressure-domes of Port Roris were dropping swiftly below the skyline. In less than ten minutes they had vanished from sight: Selene was utterly alone. She was at the centre of something for which the languages of mankind have no name.

As Pat switched off the motors and the boat coasted to rest, he waited for the silence to grow around him. It was always the same; it took a little while for the passengers to realise the strangeness of what lay outside. They had crossed space and seen stars all about them; they had looked up—or down—at the dazzling face of Earth, but this was different. It was neither land nor sea, neither air nor space, but a little of each.

Before the silence grew oppressive—if he left it too long, someone would get scared—Pat rose to his feet and faced his passengers.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, he began. I hope Miss Wilkins has been making you comfortable. We’ve stopped here because this is a good place to introduce you to the Sea—to give you the feel of it, as it were.

He pointed to the windows, and the ghostly greyness that lay beyond.

Just how far away, he asked quietly, do you imagine our horizon is? Or to put it in another way, how big would a man appear to you, if he was standing out there where the stars seem to meet the ground?

It was a question that no one could possibly answer, from the evidence of sight alone. Logic said "The Moon’s a small world—the horizon must be very close." But the senses gave a wholly different verdict; this land, they reported, is absolutely flat, and stretches to infinity. It divides the Universe in twain; for ever and ever, it rolls onwards beneath the stars….

The illusion remained, even when one knew its cause. The eye has no way of judging distances, when there is nothing for it to focus upon. Vision slipped and skidded helplessly on this featureless ocean of dust. There was not even—as there must always be on Earth—the softening haze of the atmosphere to give some hint of nearness or farness. The stars were unwinking needle points of light, clear down to that indeterminate horizon.

Believe it or not, continued Pat, you can see just three kilometres—or two miles, for those of you who haven’t been able to go metric yet. I know it looks a couple of lightyears out to the horizon, but you could walk in twenty minutes, if you could walk on this stuff at all.

He moved back to his seat, and started the motors once more.

Nothing much to see for the next sixty kilometres, he called over his shoulders, so we’ll get a move on.

Selene surged forward. For the first time there was a real sensation of speed. The boat’s wake became longer and more disturbed as the spinning fans bit fiercely into the dust. Now the dust itself was being tossed up on either side in great ghostly plumes; from a distance, Selene would have looked like a snow-plough driving its way across a winter landscape, beneath a frosty moon. But those grey, slowly-collapsing parabolas were not snow, and the lamp that lit their trajectory was the planet Earth.

The passengers relaxed, enjoying the smooth, almost silent ride. Every one of them had travelled hundreds of times faster than this, on the journey to the Moon—but in space one was never conscious of speed, and this swift glide across the dust was far more exciting. When Harris swung Selene into a tight turn, so that she orbited in a circle, the boat almost overtook the falling veils of powder her fans had hurled into the sky. It seemed altogether wrong that this impalpable dust should rise and fall in such clean-cut curves, utterly unaffected by air resistance. On Earth it would have drifted for hours—perhaps for days.

As soon as the boat had straightened out on a steady course and there was nothing to look at except the empty plain, the passengers began to read the literature thoughtfully provided for them. Each had been given a folder of photographs, maps, souvenirs ("This is to certify that Mr/Mrs/Miss… has sailed the Seas of the Moon, aboard Dust-cruiser Selene") and informative text. They had only to read this to discover all that they wanted to know about the Sea of Thirst, and perhaps a little more.

Most of the Moon, they read, was covered by a thin layer of dust, usually no more than a few millimetres deep. Some of this was debris from the stars—the remains of meteorites that had fallen upon the Moon’s unprotected face for at least five billion years. Some had flaked from the lunar rocks as they expanded and contracted in the fierce temperature extremes between day and night. Whatever its source, it was so finely divided that it would flow like a liquid, even under this feeble gravity.

Over the ages, it had drifted down from the mountains into the lowlands, to form pools and lakes. The first explorers had expected this, and had usually been prepared for it. But the Sea of Thirst was a surprise; no one had anticipated finding a dust-bowl more than a hundred kilometres across.

As the lunar ‘seas’ went, it was very small; indeed, the astronomers had never officially recognised its title, pointing out that it was only a small portion of the Sinus Roris—the Bay of Dew. And how, they protested, could part of a Bay be an entire Sea? But the name, invented by a copy-writer of the Lunar Tourist Commission, had stuck despite their objections. It was at least as appropriate as the names of the other so-called Seas—Sea of Clouds, Sea of Rains, Sea of Tranquillity. Not to mention Sea of Nectar….

The brochure also contained some reassuring information, designed to quell the fears of the most nervous traveller, and to prove that the Tourist Commission had thought of everything. All possible precautions have been taken for your safety, it stated. "Selene carries an oxygen reserve sufficient to last for more than a week, and all essential equipment is duplicated. An automatic radio beacon signals your position at regular intervals, and in the extremely improbable event of a complete power failure, a Dust-ski from Port Roris would tow you home with little delay. Above all, there is no need to worry about rough weather. No matter how bad a sailor you may be, you can’t get sea-sick on the Moon. There are never any storms on the Sea of Thirst; it is always a flat calm."

Those last comforting words had been written in all good faith, for who could have imagined that they would soon be proved untrue?

As Selene raced silently through the earthlit night, the Moon went about its business. There was a great deal of business now, after the aeons of sleep. More had happened here in the last fifty years than in the five billions before that, and much was to happen soon.

In the first city that Man had ever built outside his native world, Chief Administrator Olsen was taking a stroll through the park. He was very proud of the park, as were all the twenty-five thousand inhabitants of Port Clavius. It was small, of course—though not as small as was implied by that miserable TV commentator who’d called it ‘a window-box with delusions of grandeur’. And certainly there were no parks, gardens, or anything else on Earth where you could find sunflowers ten metres high.

Far overhead, wispy cirrus clouds were sailing by—or so it seemed. They were, of course, only images projected on the inside of the dome, but the illusion was so perfect that it sometimes made the C.A. homesick. Homesick? He corrected himself; this was home.

Yet in his heart of hearts, he knew it was not true. To his children it would be, but not to him. He had been born in Stockholm, Earth; they had been born in Port Clavius. They were citizens of the Moon; he was tied to Earth with bonds that might weaken with the years, but would never break.

Less than a kilometre away, just outside the main dome, the head of the Lunar Tourist Commission inspected the latest returns, and permitted himself a mild feeling of satisfaction. The improvement over the last season had been maintained; not that there were seasons on the Moon, but it was noticeable that more tourists came when it was winter in Earth’s northern hemisphere.

How could he keep it up? That was always the problem, for tourists wanted variety and you couldn’t give them the same thing over and over again. The novel scenery, the low gravity, the view of Earth, the mysteries of Farside, the spectacular heavens, the pioneer settlements (where tourists were not always welcomed, anyway)—after you’d listed those, what else did the Moon have to offer? What a pity there were no native Selenites with quaint customs and quainter physiques at which visitors could click their cameras. Alas, the largest life-form ever discovered on the Moon needed a microscope to show it—and its ancestors had come here on Lunik 2, only a decade ahead of Man himself.

Commissioner Davis riffled mentally through the items that had arrived by the last telefax, wondering if there was anything here that would help him. There was, of course, the usual request from a TV company he’d never heard of, anxious to make yet another documentary on the Moon—if all expenses were paid. The answer to that one would be No; if he accepted all these kind offers, his department would soon be broke.

Then there was a chatty letter from his opposite number in the Greater New Orleans Tourist Commission, Inc., suggesting an exchange of personnel. It was hard to see how that would help the Moon, or New Orleans either, but it would cost nothing and might produce some goodwill. And—this was more interesting—there was a request from the water-skiing champion of Australia, asking if anyone had ever tried to ski on the Sea of Thirst.

Yes—there was definitely an idea here; he was surprised that someone had not tried it already. Perhaps they had, behind Selene or one of the small dust-skis. It was certainly worth a test; he was always on the look-out for new forms of lunar recreation, and the Sea of Thirst was one of his pet projects.

It was a project which, within a very few hours, was going to turn into a nightmare.

CHAPTER TWO

Ahead of Selene, the horizon was no longer a perfect, unbroken arc; a jagged line of mountains had risen above the edge of the Moon. As the cruiser raced towards them, they seemed to climb slowly up the sky, as if lifted upon some gigantic elevator.

The Inaccessible Mountains, announced Miss Wilkins. So-called because they’re entirely surrounded by the Sea. You’ll notice, too, that they’re much steeper than most lunar mountains.

She did not labour this, as it was an unfortunate fact that the majority of lunar peaks were a severe disappointment. The huge craters which looked so impressive on photographs taken from Earth turned out upon close inspection to be gently rolling hills, their relief grossly exaggerated by the shadows they cast at dawn and sunset. There was not a single lunar crater whose ramparts soared as abruptly as the streets of San Francisco, and there were very few that could provide a serious obstacle to a determined cyclist. No one would have guessed this, however, from the publications of the Tourist Commission, which featured only the most spectacular cliffs and canyons, photographed from carefully-chosen vantage points.

They’ve never been thoroughly explored, even now, Miss Wilkins continued. "Last year we took a party of geologists there, and landed them on that promontory, but they were only able to go a few kilometres into the interior. So there may be anything up in those hills; we simply don’t know."

Good for Sue, Pat told himself; she was a first-rate guide, and knew what to leave to the imagination, and what to explain in detail. She had an easy, relaxed tone, with no trace of that fatal sing-song that was the occupational disease of so many professional guides. And she had mastered her subject thoroughly; it was very rare for her to be asked a question that she could not answer. Altogether, she was a formidable young lady, and though she often figured in Pat’s erotic reveries, he was secretly a little afraid of her.

The passengers stared with fascinated wonder at the approaching peaks. On the still-mysterious Moon, here was a deeper mystery. Rising like an island out of the strange sea that guarded them, the Inaccessible Mountains remained a challenge for the next generation of explorers. Despite their name, it was now easy enough to reach them—but with millions of square kilometres of less difficult territory still unexamined, they would have to wait their turn.

Selene was swinging into their shadows; before anyone had realised what was happening, the low-hanging Earth had been eclipsed. Its brilliant light still played upon the peaks far overhead, but down here all was utter darkness.

I’ll turn off the cabin lights, said the stewardess, so you can get a better view.

As the dim red background illumination vanished, each traveller felt he was alone in the lunar night. Even the reflected radiance of Earth on those high peaks was disappearing as the cruiser raced further into shadow. Within minutes, only the stars were left—cold, steady points of light in a blackness so complete that the mind rebelled against it.

It was hard to recognise the familiar constellations among this multitude of stars. The eye became entangled in patterns never seen from Earth, and lost itself in a glittering maze of clusters and nebulae. In all that resplendent panorama, there was only one unmistakable landmark—the dazzling beacon of Venus, far outshining all other heavenly bodies, heralding the approach of dawn.

It was several minutes before the travellers realised that not all the wonder lay in the sky. Behind the speeding cruiser stretched a long, phosphorescent wake, as if a magic finger had traced a line of light across the Moon’s dark and dusty face. Selene was drawing a comet-tail behind her, as surely as any ship ploughing its way through the tropical oceans of Earth.

Yet there were no micro-organisms here, lighting this dead sea with their tiny lamps. Only countless grains of dust, sparking one against the other as the static discharges caused by Selene’s swift passage neutralised themselves. Even when one knew the explanation, it was still beautiful to watch—to look back into the night and to see this luminous, electric ribbon continually renewed, continually dying away, as if the Milky Way itself were reflected in the lunar surface.

The shining wake was lost in the glare as Pat switched on the searchlight. Ominously close at hand, a great wall of rock was sliding past. At this point the face of the mountains rose almost sheer from the surrounding sea of dust; it towered overhead to unknown heights, for only where the racing oval of light fell upon it did it appear to flash suddenly into real existence.

Here were mountains against which the Himalayas, the Rockies, the Alps were new-born babies. On Earth, the forces of erosion began to tear at all mountains as soon as they were formed, so that after a few million years they were mere ghosts of their former selves. But the Moon knew neither wind nor rain; there was nothing here to wear away the rocks except the immeasurably slow flaking of the dust as their surface layers contracted in the chill of night. These mountains were as old as the world that had given them birth.

Pat was quite proud of his showmanship, and had planned the next act very carefully. It looked dangerous, but was perfectly safe, for Selene had been over this course a hundred times and the electronic memory of her guidance system knew the way better than any human pilot. Suddenly, he switched off the searchlight—and now the passengers could tell that while they had been dazzled by the glare on one side, the mountains had been stealthily closing in upon them from the other.

In almost total darkness, Selene was racing up a narrow canyon—and not even on a straight course, for from time to time she zigged and zagged to avoid invisible obstacles. Some of them, indeed, were not merely invisible but non-existent; Pat had programmed this course, at slow speed and in the safety of daylight, for maximum impact on the nerves. The Ahs and Ohs! from the darkened cabin behind him proved that he had done a good job.

Far above, a narrow ribbon of stars was all that could be seen of the outside world; it swung in crazy arcs from right to left and back again with each abrupt change of Selene’s course. The Night Ride, as Pat privately called it, lasted for about five minutes, but seemed very much longer. When he once again switched on the floods, so that the cruiser was moving in the centre of a great pool of light, there was a sigh of mingled relief and disappointment from the passengers. This was an experience none of them would forget in a hurry.

Now that vision had been restored, they could see that they were travelling up a steep-walled valley or gorge,

Reviews for A Fall of Moondust

[deanclark · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Quality science fiction. No fantasy, no magic.

[brucecoulson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a student of real disasters, this is an excellent book on a possible future disaster. Dramatic and realistic (within the science of the time) the details of the unfolding story hold up well, even with derailing by various side plots that have little to do with the problem at hand. Believable characters and situations, complete to real-time coverage of the protagonists' plight on interplanetary TV. Well worth reading.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A story about a rescue in difficult conditions; well researched, well played. Another good sci-fi by Arthur C Clarke.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Solid science fiction...or fiction with a science base. With a little Irwin Allen thrown in.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I see from the now barely decipherable scrawl on the flyleaf of my copy of this book that I bought it in November 1979, now thirty six years ago, and it was already nearly twenty years since the novel's first publication. By way of context, I was then sixteen and had just entered the lower Sixth Form at Loughborough Grammar School. Pink Floyd were on the verge of releasing 'The Wall', and we were six months into Margaret Thatcher's first term as British Prime Minister.Is it fair to criticise a novel that is now more than fifty years old for seeming dated? Probably not, though the mere fact that I offer the thought is a testament to how well Arthur C Clarke's other novels have survived the passage of time. I do recall thinking this novel was marvellous when I first read it as a teenager, yet a little of that glow was absent now.The basic story is, as so often with Clarke, beguilingly simple. At an unspecified date in the 21st century man has colonised the Moon, and some of the wealthiest citizens now spend their holidays there. Several of them have gone for an excursion in the Selene, a specially designed craft which skims across the dust filled 'seas' of the moon offering fantastic view of earth dominating the lunar skyscape. By great misfortune, Selene's passage over the dust bowl coincidence with a 'moonquake' which causes an underground cavern to collapse. The disturbance causes Selene to be pitched down into the chasm where it is immediately covered by tones of fine silicon dust which, as well as smothering the ship and hiding it from vie, also render radio contact impossible.The rest of the story revolves around the attempts firstly to locate and then rescue the Selene. Clarke always pitched his stories in the realms of the scientifically plausible and unlike many science fiction writers, he had a great understanding of human relations. His characters are always utterly believable, regardless of the outlandish circumstances in which they might find themselves. Here he gives us a varied list of passengers from different walks of life back on earth, including, fortuitously, ex-Commander Hansteen, one of the leading space navigators of his generation, who happened to be visiting the Moon in his retirement.The sense of datedness arises partially from the attitudes of the characters. The all-pervasive male chauvinism is, no doubt, a reflection of attitudes prevalent at the time it was written, but that does not hold true for most of Clarke's other works. I also felt that he might have dashed this off rather quickly - it displayed an uncharacteristic ponderousness that left if feeling more like a latest draft than the finished article. Despite these doubts, I enjoyed rereading it, but this is clearly not a work in the forefront of what is generally an outstanding portfolio from one of the masters of the oeuvre.

[ikeman100 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Typical Clark. Good SF story. Not his best.

[merrymary_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The characters may not be as finely tuned as I would wish, but the story is superb. I love the setting - a moon tour bus in trouble, inter-planetary media sharks, primitive survival amidst useless technology, the rescue efforts that run into one snag after another, and the snotty prude on the bus that pushes the pilot and "stewardess" into a romantic interlude!

[olyra_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very good, if somewhat drawn out story. it could have been a bit more concise.

[sf_addict · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent book about what happens when the crew of a lunar tourist expedition sink into the regolith of the moon. Although dated and somewhat innacurate it still holds the reader's attention.

[xuebi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Arthur C. Clarke is one of the best writers of hard science fiction and A Fall of Moondust is a tense but enjoyable rescue mission set on the Moon. Clarke creates a fully believable futuristic world in which humanity has colonised the Moon and tourist cruises run across its "seas". Herein is the story set as one of pleasure cruises suffers an accident as is trapped beneath the moon dust. Each problem is presented after the previous one is solved, keeping a brisk pace, and though the characters remain rather flat, the story keeps the reader reading onwards, hoping that the rescue is a success.

The science in A Fall of Moondust is somewhat dated, but Clarke admits that in the preface to the new edition. Nevertheless, the book is still enjoyable in spite of this, and remains an excellent example of classic hard sci-fi.

[pastorbob_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A simple story of a lunar tourist vessel that is sucked into a 'sea' of surface dust on the moon during a rare seismic event. Clarke's account in this book is not quite as technically focused as some of his work, such as in Prelude To Space, and that actually means there is a bit more story to enjoy in this book. There's even a romantic sub-plot, though it is rather flat.Since the book was written in advance of man's landing on the moon, it provides a fascinating insight into the expectations and imagination of that era as shaped by the educated guesses of a master science fiction mind. Also interesting is Clarke's perception not only of the science and discoveries to come, but also his estimation of social developments like the use of music, people born and raised on the moon, and even a kind of developing multiculturalism (New Zealand aboriginals, for example). Worth a read!

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is more of a thriller than many other Clarke novels. It is the 2040s and a group of tourists is visiting the Moon's Sea of Thirst, a featureless desert of incredibly fine powder, in a vessel logically if unimaginatively called Selene. A freak combination of circumstances causes Selene to sink into the dust without visible trace on the surface. The passengers and crew have only days to live before the oxygen runs out. Then begins a desperate race against time by the outside world (the Earth and the Moon) to locate and rescue them, punctuated by numerous setbacks. This is a very good read, though it lacks the majesty and grandeur of The City and the Stars or Rendezvous with Rama. Most of the characters are fairly wooden. Like a lot of SF, it tells more about the time in which it was written (1960) than about the future, in terms of relations between the sexes and the state of technology. Finally, it is also dated scientifically as in 1960 there were some scientists who believed the Moon's surface was made of such dust, caused by billions of years of erosion of the rocks out of which it was formed, and that no spacecraft would ever be able to land there. Clarke concedes this anachronism in a foreword to this edition, written in 1987. Despite these flaws, this is another great novel by one of the masters of SF.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm probably unique in this, but to be honest this is my favorite novel by Clarke, despite it being very atypical for him. Arthur C. Clarke was my mother's favorite author. She loved the transcendental in him, the religious flavor in his futuristic science fiction. She loved to tell the story of how she took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in theaters when I was a toddler and ruined it for her by squalling during the psychedelic scenes--it's actually one of my oldest and most traumatic memories. But for her, that's what she loved--the idea of all of us as star children, of a apotheosis of space and the heavens. If you're looking for that Clarke, you might want to put this book down and go find Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, The City and the Stars or 2001: A Space Odyssey, either the book or film. So many might find this book prosaic compared to his more cosmic, ambitious works. Rather this is a suspenseful book of disaster and rescue--more The Poseidon Adventure than 2001. Twenty-two people, the passenger and crew of the tourist boat Selene, are caught in "a fall of moondust" on the Sea of Thirst. They're trapped 15 meters below the surface with no way of communicating with the outside--and time--and breathable air--is running out. The basic premise about how moondust works is dated--this was published in 1961 before the moonlandings and when there had been only a few unmanned probes of the lunar surface. But did I care? Not in the least. Great read.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A great set piece hamstrung by the need to fill an entire book with it. At times too much seems to happen that doesn't have to, like the subplot of the private investigator chasing down some kind of Walter Mitty character.

[ilirwen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some bits were quite exciting, but the sexism bothered me a lot. So did the absence of personal computers, the internet and mobile phones, though I guess it isn't fair to expect that from a book written in the early 1960's.

[unclebob53703 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Crackerjack story about a rescue mission on the Moon.

[yosarian_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the books that makes it easy to see why Arthur C Clarke is so highly regarded, it was nominated for a Hugo Award [for best sci-fi novel] in 1963 being beaten by Philip K Dick's book 'The Man in The High Castle'; one of his I have yet to read ... it must be good to have beaten this!It's a hard sci-fi book, that is it is puts an emphasis on technical detail and scientific accuracy, so don't expect little green men on the moon or captains of rocket ships beaming down ... The story is of a tourist ship that takes passengers skimming over a dust filled 'sea' on the moon in much the same way as a jet ski would, there's an accident and the ship sinks. The moon tourist board and technicians then have a fixed amount of time to try and rescue the crew and passengers before their oxygen runs out. It reminded me of the film Apollo 13 in that sense and certainly there is a very real sense of pace and urgency fom the technicians as they try to solve the problem of bringing the ship up on the moon's surface despite unhelpful suggestions from members of the public back on Earth watching the tragedy. But there are also some great moments from the passengers as the story shows how they are becoming affected by the situation and especially from the committee set up to organise fun and games to keep morale high.This book gets 4 stars from me, this means I will certainly re-read it again.

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I was in 7th grade, I discovered Jules Verne. I read several of his books, and fell in love with science fiction. I began reading Frank Herbert’s epic series beginning with Dune. I watched films such as Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still. I tackled the two volume story, When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide. This last, by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, occupies one slot in the top five best SciFi thrillers. But the number one spot is firmly held by Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust.I do not know how many years it has been since I last read Moondust, or Clarke, or even any SciFi for that matter, but Clarke’s novel seemed to be exactly what the librarian ordered. I have been searching for a hardback first edition with no luck, so all I have now is a worn and yellowed paper back from the 60s. Oh how the years have altered my reading habits! I wondered if this novel would stand the test of neglect I had imposed on it.From the first page, Clarke’s brilliant and clever prose drew me in, but I began to notice a series of time stamps he had unwittingly written into his novel. His foresight was most definitely NOT 20/20. For example, I laugh when I watch Forbidden Planet and the captain lifts a microphone from a console with a retractable wire to address the crew. Likewise, Clarke did not imagine some things that would make us cringe today. Male characters notice, and comment on, physical characteristics of women.Bu the most astounding thing I discovered involved the plot. As I was making notes for this review, I began to feel as if I recognized some of the characters. I began making a list, and suddenly, it dawned on me – the plot of Moondust had a remarkable resemblance to the 1972 film, The Poseidon Adventure, based on a novel by Paul Gallico, with a screenplay by Stirling Siliphant and Wendell Mayes.Both involve a set of tourists, stranded in a boat after a natural disaster. Each story has a charismatic leader, who has the talent and confidence to lead the others to safety. In the final scene of the film, the survivors reach the stern of the capsized ship and bang on the floor/ceiling. A return thumping lets the survivors know of their imminent rescue. A similar situation occurs in Moondust. I think I need to get a copy of Gallico’s novel and make a closer comparison. Unfortunately, Paul Gallico died in 1978, but research might reveal another reader who noticed the difference, or – better yet – an acknowledgment by Gallico of his inspiration. After all, if Irving Block could write a short story loosely based on Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, why couldn’t Gallico been inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust?My next book club read is also science fiction, so I am glad I am easing into that work by returning to those wild days of my youth when Arthur C. Clarke thrilled and inspired me to write my first story of horses, about which I knew almost nothing, and alien abductions, about which I knew even less. Thankfully, that manuscript is long lost. But Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust has hung in there as my favorite work of science fiction. 5 stars-Jim, 9/21/13

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“He was a boy again, playing in the hot sand of a forgotten summer. He had found a tiny pit, perfectly smooth and symmetrical, and there was something lurking in its depths—something completely buried except for its waiting jaws. The boy had watched, wondering, already conscious of the fact that this was the stage for some microscopic drama. He had seen an ant, mindlessly intent upon its mission, stumble at the edge of the crater and topple down the slope.It would have escaped easily enough—but when the first grain of sand had rolled to the bottom of the pit, the waiting ogre had reared out of its lair. With its forelegs it had hurled a fusilade of sand at the struggling insect, until the avalanche had overwhelmed it and brought it sliding into the throat of the crater.As Selene was sliding now. No ant-lion had dug this pit on the surface of the Moon, but Pat felt as helpless now as that doomed insect he had watched so many years ago. Like it, he was struggling to reach the safety of the rim, while the moving ground swept him back into the depths where death was waiting. A swift death for the ant, a protracted one for him and his companions.”In “A Fall of Moondust” by Arthur C. ClarkeBack in the day, I worked in IT for real as a lowly SysAdmin, also known as a computer whisperer (like a horse whisperer, only in binary...). When I was done gently soothing my big beasts with the soft lullaby of 0's and 1's, I always ended by singing them the song their daddy taught them: "Daisy, Daisy . . . " Don't laugh, it worked! Really. They all frequently express their continued enthusiasm for the mission.A director like Paul Greengrass could really make “A Fall of Moondust” tense (remember “United 93”). The problem would be that, as Clarke himself admitted, the sea of dust idea is a myth, disproved by later research. Still a good story though. Yes indeed - they'd have to modify it so perhaps it was a sink hole caused by mining - extraction of water etc. But come to think of it, no need. I'd happily suspend any amount of disbelief to watch a film version of “A Fall Of Moondust”. Retro-futuristic, perhaps? That would be fun. Lots of flashing lights and magnetic tape whizzing around representing a 1960's view of the far future.Standing the test of time is part of what constitutes "greatness," surely. Clarke was obviously much more influential than Phil Dick when they were writing and because he paid such attention to technical detail, any number of ideas he popularized later came to be. But Phil Dick has risen in stature as the unthinkable (Nazis openly accepted as leaders in America, for example) in his books has become plausible. He starts to feel almost prophetic whereas when he wrote it probably just seemed a silly idea for a story. And while "Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" has a few rough edges, it poses most of the pertinent questions in bioethics; Clarke for all his brilliance was more of a science booster than a science critic.