BotM: “The Sands of Mars” by Arthur C. Clarke

[Richard]

So we’re finally reading Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sands of Mars , which is probably older than every member of this group. Or at least close.

Per the Wikipedia page —

The Sands of Mars is Arthur C. Clarke’s first published science fiction novel. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke’s becoming one of the world’s foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground.

       

[Tomislav]

I last read this 39 years ago, as a freshman in college. It's hard to believe this 1951 novel was approximately 20 years old then, and approximately 60 years old now. I re-read it now because it was the yahoogroups Hard-SF book of the month for March 2012, and in order to count it in the paperbackswap 2Q2012 SF Challenge as a first novel of a British writer. This could be considered a precursor, set in the same universe, as Clarke's Space Odyssey books.

I'm afraid I remembered next to nothing about the novel from my first read. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting, but probably mostly those were feelings of nostalgia for a past era of science fiction. At this point, even though Clarke aimed for a scientifically accurate description of Mars, distancing himself from the misconceptions of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom, his descriptions seem quaintly optimistic with regards to life on Mars and the Moon.

Some aspects of this novel are probably auto-biographical. The one well-developed main character - a science fiction writer - had a single traumatic female relationship in his past. Two years later Clarke himself had a brief and failed marriage. Given what is generally suspected about Arthur C. Clarke's private life, there seems to be a lot left unsaid in this writing. I also noticed that the colonists of Mars included few or no women whose purpose was other than to be the wives and families of the men. This is so unlike the contemporary science fiction vision of Mars colonization, more like a large military base. It could be Clarke's own military background, or possibly an indication of an over-idealized and unrealistic understanding of women.

I thought the book was well written for its time, but expect it to be of limited appeal now in the 21st century.