A Fall of Moondust

by Arthur C. Clarke

“I suppose you could call it ingrowing virginity. It’s a common complaint, and the symptoms are always the same. There’s only one cure for it.”

he remembered an old Chinese proverb: “Do not stoop to tie your laces in your neighbour’s melon-patch.”

works of such brazen fraudulence or childish naïveté that they had shaken his belief that men were rational beings. That such a literature could ever have flourished was a disturbing thought—though

Well, was I surprised to find someone criticising pseudoscience and fake news, conspiracy theories and alternative truths , 60 years ago!!!! Still as valid today as ever

if not Atlantis, then Lemuria or Mu. They all appealed to the same type of unbalanced, mystery-mongering mentality.

around the mid-twentieth century a substantial percentage of the population was convinced that the world was about to be destroyed, and that the only hope lay in intervention from space. Having lost faith in themselves, men had sought salvation in the sky. The Flying Saucer religion flourished among the lunatic fringe of mankind for almost exactly ten years; then it had abruptly died out, like an epidemic that had run its course.