Paging through BOYS' LIFE, Part 2: Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sunjammer"

[beamjockey]

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

Comments

[peteralway]

Hey, I just read that one a few months ago, when I checked out the collected stories of Arthur C Clarke from the library. That was a cool era for science fiction--space travel was real, but we were ignorant enough of the solar system for it to be full of infinite possibilites.

Your taste and mine

[markiv1111]

I thought your and my mutual interest in science fiction would have considerable overlap until now. I consider *Islands in the Sky* by Arthur C. Clarke to be the worst science-fiction novel I have ever succeeded in finishing, and I had no trouble at all selling it back to Uncle Hugo's Bookstore for very little. I do want, though, to go back and reread *Dolphin Island* -- although I may have liked that one because I was so much younger when I read it.

Nate

[wcg]

I remember that issue of Boys Life. Alas, it went out with all the others when we moved from Detroit to Tucson, lo these many years ago.

Also, have you seen this?

[beamjockey]

No, I hadn't.

I probably should be writing books like that.

I've never met rosefox-- I've seen her around LJ, of course-- but if I do I'll ask her about it. I'll bet there are some interesting stories...

[wcg]

Yeah, the book is right up your alley.

I've known Rose since she was 16, about half a lifetime ago for her. She's been in the New York City publishing house biz for quite a while. I think she had an internship when she was still in high school.

I created, based on this

[archiver_tim]

This is the one I read at that time, also. But, for the first time that I can recall, it was the first story that caused me to become a fan-participant. Junior High School, 8th or 9th grade, an art class assignment to paint something. I don't know if the assignment was multi-media to start with, but mine ended up that way. I wanted to paint one of the Sunjammers, but use aluminum foil and thread for the sail. I recall it being the German Cross sail seen in the lower right of the cover picture we see now. I don't recall if I was working from illustrations I could see at the time, or my impression of what the ship should be. But I created fan-related art 20 years before I found their was a whole community of this type of creativity. The art teacher and or school liked the result enough that they wanted to show it off for awhile, so I gave the painting to them, now more proud of what I had done. I never did get it back. I don't know how long it stayed on exhibition

[carbonel]

I read my brothers' copies of Boy's Life, but I don't recall reading this one until I got my SFBC copy of The Wind From the Sun when I was in college. I liked the basic setup of the story, but even then, I must have been deeply interested in story structure, because I remember feeling exceedingly annoyed that the story had no real drama because it didn't end, it merely stopped, with the race cancelled because of the solar flare.

[mmcirvin]

Clarke often wrote stories that had arresting images but very little plot, or in which the protagonists were helpless bystanders to the main action. Even when the protagonists did manage to do something, there was often some significant intrusion from huge uncontrollable phenomena that came and went as they pleased.

I think he thought of it as an evocation of the human relation to astronomical events. Even though his futures were usually hopeful, there was a note of melancholy there that was reminiscent of Stapledon and Wells.