Paging through BOYS' LIFE, Part 2: Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sunjammer"
Google has now scanned in my all-time favorite issue of Boys' Life, namely March 1964.
We were deep into the Space Age, racing the Russians to the Moon. Mercury was over; Gemini was about to begin.
I read the SCIENCE section faithfully in Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine, along with anything about space in Reader's Digest or National Geographic or any other magazine I could get my hands on.
I had recently discovered that the library had stories about rockets and astronauts and trips to other planets! They were called "science fiction" and there was generally a rocket sticker on the spine. The best of them was Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke. There were also nonfiction books by him.
So Boys' Life arrives in the mail one day, with a cover filled with fantastic spaceships, and a story by Clarke inside: "The Sunjammer." You can imagine my delight.
The enormous disk of sail strained at its rigging, already filled with the wind that blew between the worlds. In three minutes the race would begin, yet now John Merton felt more relaxed, more at peace, than at any time for the past year. Whatever happened when the commodore gave the starting signal, whether Diana carried him to victory or defeat, he had achieved his ambition. After a lifetime spent in designing ships for others, now he would sail his own.
In a few short pages, Clarke portrays a solitary pilot striving to win a solar-sailing race, and also tells the reader enough about the science of light pressure (hitherto unsuspected by me) to fire the imagination of the sternest hard-science buff. From the moment I read this story, I adored him.
Better yet, there were multiple illustrations by Robert McCall, making the story even more vivid.
About the only complaint I have is that the story was printed in a section of light-blue newsprint paper bound into the magazine's usual slick white paper. But through the magic of image processing, for the first time in my life, I can see what McCall's paintings would have looked like if they had been printed on white paper! A triumph for the Space Colorization Movement.
Eventually, when collected into books, the story was retitled "The Wind from the Sun." But I like "Sunjammer" better.
Clarke became my guide to the future. This story led me to his Dolphin Island, full of hovercraft, dolphins, and diving. Then to more of his books about spaceflight, and about the oceans.
And you can imagine how excited I became when Popular Mechanics (by then I had discovered Popular Mechanics) brought word that Clarke was working on a movie.
I could hardly wait.
(Part 1 in this series was Donald Keith's Time Machine Stories. Part 3 is Robert A. Heinlein's Scouts into Space.)
We were deep into the Space Age, racing the Russians to the Moon. Mercury was over; Gemini was about to begin.
I read the SCIENCE section faithfully in Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine, along with anything about space in Reader's Digest or National Geographic or any other magazine I could get my hands on.
I had recently discovered that the library had stories about rockets and astronauts and trips to other planets! They were called "science fiction" and there was generally a rocket sticker on the spine. The best of them was Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke. There were also nonfiction books by him.
So Boys' Life arrives in the mail one day, with a cover filled with fantastic spaceships, and a story by Clarke inside: "The Sunjammer." You can imagine my delight.
The enormous disk of sail strained at its rigging, already filled with the wind that blew between the worlds. In three minutes the race would begin, yet now John Merton felt more relaxed, more at peace, than at any time for the past year. Whatever happened when the commodore gave the starting signal, whether Diana carried him to victory or defeat, he had achieved his ambition. After a lifetime spent in designing ships for others, now he would sail his own.
In a few short pages, Clarke portrays a solitary pilot striving to win a solar-sailing race, and also tells the reader enough about the science of light pressure (hitherto unsuspected by me) to fire the imagination of the sternest hard-science buff. From the moment I read this story, I adored him.
Better yet, there were multiple illustrations by Robert McCall, making the story even more vivid.
About the only complaint I have is that the story was printed in a section of light-blue newsprint paper bound into the magazine's usual slick white paper. But through the magic of image processing, for the first time in my life, I can see what McCall's paintings would have looked like if they had been printed on white paper! A triumph for the Space Colorization Movement.
Eventually, when collected into books, the story was retitled "The Wind from the Sun." But I like "Sunjammer" better.
Clarke became my guide to the future. This story led me to his Dolphin Island, full of hovercraft, dolphins, and diving. Then to more of his books about spaceflight, and about the oceans.
And you can imagine how excited I became when Popular Mechanics (by then I had discovered Popular Mechanics) brought word that Clarke was working on a movie.
I could hardly wait.
(Part 1 in this series was Donald Keith's Time Machine Stories. Part 3 is Robert A. Heinlein's Scouts into Space.)