| "Against the Fall of Night" and "The City and the Stars", although
essentially the same story, are two very different books. I can't
decide which I like better.
AtFoN was one of Clarke's first published stories; some years later,
he went back and revised/polished it into TCatS. I have both books,
and generally prefer the last one I've read. I love 'em both.
I think either one'd make a great movie.
The first time I read AtFoN it was packaged with another story,
"The Lion of Commarre", I think it's name was. I was under the
impression that they we both stories by Clarke, but I have never
seen TLoC since. Has anybody else seen this one? I don't even
remember the story itself, just the title. (jmb?? ;-)
Cheers,
Ian S.
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Note 810.2 Against the Fall of Night --> The City and the Stars? 2 of 2
STKHLM::LITBY "...and he built a Crooked House" 16 lines 11-JUL-1989 11:10
-< TLoC >-
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So they were two different books... Whadda you know. Which means that I now
have to get Agains the Fall of Night as well.
The Lion of Comarre uses a similar plot - the young man who lives in a stagnant
society but is somehow different and wants to explore things. Comarre is a
semi-mythical city located in some faraway forest where one's not supposed
to go; nobody who has gone there has ever come back.
Anyway, our hero manages to find Comarre; it turns out to be a "dream factory"
where you can lie down in a room and permanently become part of a dream. It's
one-way; once dreaming, there is no way out. Except for the hero, of course.
The lion, btw, is something he finds on the way and which becomes his
travelling companion.
/pol
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| Clarke talks about ATFoN/C&tS in one of his autobiographicals ("The
View from Serendib"? Could be) and tells an interesting story.
He and his wife were on vacation, on a cruise ship in the Indian Ocean.
He'd been writing a lot and felt he needed some time off. Well, the
cruise ship was fine, but he was extremely bored after a short while,
and as the trip progressed, the boredom was getting to be intolerable.
Finally, one afternoon, he got a typewriter from the purser, sat down,
and dashed off "Against the Fall of Night" - without rewrites,
research, or any of the stuff you typically have to go through to write
a story. Something like six hours later, it was done. He put it away
for a while, and months later, the manuscript was published as "ATFoN".
Years later, he was going through a steamer chest and came across the
orginial manuscript. He read it, and liked it. He recalled the
circumstances under which it had been written - six hours, soup to
nuts. "If I rewrote this, and actually put some thought and effort
into it, it could actually be a better story" he thought, and so he
did. And that was how the City and the Stars came to be.
I read both, and they're both terrific. Personally, I like the
original "Against the Fall of Night" more - maybe because I read it
first, I can't say -
The best scene: when Alain of Diaspar is looking for a way out of the
city, and he goes to the Tomb of Yarlan Zey, and stands on the square
where the statue is looking, and thinks the secret word... and the tile
begins to sink under the city...
Yee-hah! What a great story.
Mark M. (Back in SF after a long absence)
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