Product Description

Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment. A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival, A FALL OF MOONDUST is a tour-de-force of psychological suspense and sustained dramatic tension by the field's foremost author.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75348 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-07
• Released on: 2008-01-07
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

About the Author
Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead in 1917. During the Second World War he served as an RAF radar instructor, rising to the rank of Flight-Lieutenant. After the war he won a Bsc in physics and mathematics with first class honours from King's College, London.One of the most respected of all science-fiction writers, he also won Kalinga Prize, the Aviation Space-Writers' Prize and the Westinghouse Science Writing Prize. He also shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which was based on his story, 'The Sentinel'. He lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008.

Customer Reviews

Radio SF at its best
This was a very nice radio play version of A Fall Of Moondust. I recall it being broadcast back in about 1981 and had a cassette for many years. Really well adapted, you can feel the tension far more in the voices of the actors on tape than in the book. A superb example of the power of good SF in the radio genre.

Early Clarke
This is one of Clarke's earlier and perhaps not so well-known science fiction novels. It's based on an intriguing idea that was, before the first landing on the moon in the 1960s, perceived as an actual possibility: that some lunar plains, because they appeared to be exceedingly flat and smooth, were composed of extremely fine dust. Such a "sea of dust" would be far more treacherous than any quicksand on Earth, and there was a very real fear that the first lunar probes would sink and instantly vanish into such a sea. Clarke wrote A Fall of Moondust between August and November 1960, and it wasn't until the mid-1960s, when the Luniks and the Surveyors landed on the Moon, that it was proved there were no dust seas there. Clarke had already used the idea of "moondust" in Earthlight (1955), but the original concept was first developed by James Blish, in one of his science fiction stories (as Clarke relates it in the preface to the 1987 edition of A Fall of Moondust).
The story is a psychological thriller in a science fiction setting on the Moon. Captain Pat Harris, "the skipper of the only boat on the Moon," is the pilot of the Selene, which is a dust-cruiser (the only one) on the Sea of Thirst. The Sea of Thirst is composed of moondust, and the Selene is basically a pleasure cruiser for wealthy tourists. Captain Harris, together with the stewardess Sue Wilkins (an attractive and capable young women who is the object of Harris's erotic fantasies), takes the passengers on a cruise across the sea to the Mountains of Inaccessibility and back. But on the way back, disaster strikes (when a huge gas bubble bursts under the surface), and the Selene begins to sink into the dust.
The rest of the book switches back and forth between the rescue efforts, under the command of Chief Engineer Lawrence, assisted by the arrogant and anti-social Dr. Tom Lawson from the observatory at the Lagrange II relay satellite, and the efforts made by the crew and passengers of the Selene to stay calm and occupy themselves until help arrives (and to stave off every new disaster that occurs, regular as clockwork). Also involved in the events, as an outside observer, is the news reporter Maurice Spenser of Interplanet News. Among the passengers in the sunken cruiser is the famous Commodore Hansteen, the Commodore of Space who "had led the first expedition to Pluto, who had probably landed on more virgin planets and moons than any explorer in history," and he quickly assumes a leadership position. Captain Harris, after a pep talk from the attractive Sue, realizes that since he's the captain, he must act like one (but there is never any friction with the Commodore, since people in Clarke's stories are usually far more reasonable and civilized than real people would ever be), and for this he is rewarded with the sexual favours of the desirable young stewardess.
One thing I thought was a little strange was how Commodore Hansteen, within minutes after the disaster had occurred, immediately began thinking about and planning how to occupy the passengers so that they wouldn't panic during the long wait until the rescue efforts began. I don't think that's how anyone would have reacted in a situation like that. The first impulse should have been to try by any means available to get out of there, and it would not have been until later, at the first signs of stress among the passengers and when it was clear beyond any doubt that they were all in for a long wait, that the time would have come for worrying about the passengers.
A Fall of Moondust is an interesting and pleasant read, and the outdated moondust idea actually gives the story a "Buck Rogers" kind of feel (I'm sure Clarke would be insulted at a suggestion like that). On the other hand, the story is, as always with Clarke, strictly scientific in all details, and it's quite interesting to see how the rescue efforts proceed. Recommended.

Ideal if you have two hours to kill
Quite clearly the disaster story that Irwin Allen didn’t have the money to make, Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust is a fairly economical tail of a group of lunar pleasure cruisers trapped under tons of suffocating dust after a freak Moonquake tears a gaping hole in the landscape.

Of course, all the usual ‘disaster flick’ elements are here in force: the victims vacillate between heroic stoicism, paranoia and absolute hysteria; whilst above the surface a plethora of super-brained scientists and square-jawed heroes combine forces to first locate, and then rescue the hapless day-trippers (who presumably have too much money to spend).

As is the case with most Arthur C. Clarke novels, A Fall of Moondust’s characterisation finishes a distant second to the evocation of ‘grandiose spectacle’. And it is in author’s remarkable descriptions of an arid, airless landscape that we find the true star of the book: the moon itself.

Quite frankly, I lost interest in the fate of the victims early on, instead I found myself pleading for more and more Moon imagery.

Almost certainly not one of Clarke’s best, but interesting nevertheless; its un-taxing approach makes it an ideal distraction for one of those depressingly long train journeys.