The seven suns

The seven suns (English original title: The City and the Stars , published 1956) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke , which is a complete revision of his novel Forgotten Future , Also This Side of the Twilight (English Against the Fall of Night ) represents. The novel was most recently published in Germany under the title Die Stadt und die Sterne .

Creation of the novel

Against the Fall of Night was Clarke's first published novel and was published in Startling Stories in 1948 after John W. Campbell , as reported by Clarke, rejected it. A few years later, Clarke revised the book comprehensively and gave it a new title in order to demonstrate with the new version what literary skills he had acquired in the meantime. The most striking differences between the two versions concern individual scenes as well as details of the opposing civilizations Diaspar and Lys . To everyone's surprise, however, the first version of the book remained popular enough to remain in print even after The Seven Suns appeared . In the preface to the novel, Clarke gives an anecdote that one day a psychiatrist and his patient were talking about the book without realizing that each of them had read a different version of the book. A sequel to the novel by Gregory Benford written in collaboration with Clarke, appeared in 1990 under the title Beyond the Twilight (English. Beyond the Fall of Night ).

content

Even if the following section is a summary of The Seven Suns , it is a largely accurate description of both books. The main differences are the characters Khedron (who replaces another person in the first version of the book) and the last inhabitant of the ruins of Shalmirane and the way in which the inhabitants of Diaspar are immortal.

Background to the plot

The action of The Seven Suns takes place more than a billion years in the future in the city of Diaspar . At this point the earth is already so old that the oceans have disappeared and humanity has also almost completely abandoned it. As far as the residents of Diaspars know, they inhabit the last remaining city in the world. Diaspar is completely covered and closed off from the outside world. As long as the city's residents can remember, no one has entered or left the domed city, and all of its residents suffer from instinctive agoraphobia . The story told as the cause of this fear tells of a race of unscrupulous invaders who drove mankind from the stars back to Earth to survive on the condition that humans never leave the planet again.

The city of Diaspar is fully operated and monitored by a central computer. Not only is the city maintained by machines, but its residents are also brought to life by them. The central computer creates the bodies in which the residents of Diaspars live and stores their personality again when they end their present life after 1000 years. At any given point in time, around 10 million people populate the city with only about one percent of the total population, the rest “sleep” in the memory banks of the central computer, only to become part of the living population at a later point in time. The central computer constantly shuffles the composition of the population. The city's permanent structures are similarly related to the city's memorials. Their physical structure is kept in harmony with the patterns in the memory banks by the machines down to the molecular level.

All the people who currently exist in the city have had previous "lives" in Diaspar - with the exception of one person: Alvin, the main character of the story. He is unique because he differs from all other living residents of Diaspar not only in that he has no past lives to remember, but also in that he has the will to leave the city instead of facing himself to fear the outside world. In the novel, Alvin has just reached the age he is considered an adult and is putting all his energy into getting out of town. Finally, a fancy person named Khedron the Joker helps him find a way out of Diaspar with the help of the central computer. This succeeds after both discover that Diaspar was connected to other cities by an underground transport system in the distant past. Although the associated station was sealed and can only be accessed via a secret entrance, this transport system still exists.

Alvin's search

After leaving the city, Alvin discovers that another human settlement remains on earth. In contrast to the walled-in and high-tech Diaspar, Lys is a large green oasis that is shielded from the global desert by a ring of mountains. The people there are not saved and brought back to life by machines, but rather naturally conceived and born in order to subsequently age and die. You have given up the highly developed Diaspars technology in favor of a nature-loving way of life and only use machines to make work easier. As a result, the residents of Lys concentrated on perfecting their intellectual abilities: They are telepaths and can communicate with one another without language, even over long distances.

Alvin continues his search there, too, until he discovers the truth about why the people of Diaspar are so afraid of the outside world and why the residents of Lys are just as afraid of space and mechanical things. In Lys he goes on an excursion with a young man named Hilvar. When the two of them see a signal light, they decide to examine it. It leads the two to Shalmirane, the remains of a fortress from which the invaders were finally repelled with the help of unimaginable weapons. There they meet an alien being and a strange robot. The being is the last survivor of a religious cult from the time of the Galactic Empire , to which mankind once belonged. The robot was the companion of the founder of this cult, the master who followed his followers to earth at the end of his life. Alvin and Hilvar are unable to understand the content of the religious cult except that it refers to "the great ones" who have left but will one day return. Alvin can convince the being to entrust the robot to him by arguing that the master would have wanted him to see how things in the world have developed. However, since the master has forbidden the robot to reveal its secrets before the return of the great ones, Alvin does not manage to find out more at first.

The robot then enables Alvin to escape the humans of Lys when they try to alter his memory and send it back to Diaspar. (Other unique people who had reached Lys before him stayed there. But since it was too late to prevent the news of Lys from spreading in Diaspar, this path is not open to Alvin.) Back in Diaspar he can With the help of the central computer, he frees the robot from the master’s locks by creating a convincing and apocalyptic illusion of the return of the great for the robot.

Discoveries

Alvin now learns from the robot that the master's spaceship is still waiting outside Diaspar. He has the ship fetched, fetches Hilvar from Lys and travels with him to the seven suns, a ring-shaped star constellation that marks the former center of the Galactic Empire. They meet Vanamonde, a being that exists as a pure intellect and with whom Hilvar can communicate telepathically. They bring Vanamonde back to Earth, where it finally reveals the truth about the historical events.

As it turns out, the fearsome invaders are just a myth . (The Shalmirane Fortress was actually used to destroy the moon when it threatened to collide with Earth.) Rather, the inhabitants of Diaspar and Lys are the descendants of people who willfully turned their backs on the rest of the universe after the greatest scientific one Human history experiment failed: the creation of a pure, disembodied intellect. At the first attempt a powerful but insane being had been created, the “mad mind ”. The mad brain then devastated the entire galaxy and its civilization before it could be locked in a "strange artificial star" called the "Black Sun".

Vanamonde is the result of the second, successful experiment of the previous empire: a being of pure intellect, immeasurably old and powerful, able to go instantly anywhere in the universe - yet it is perfectly childlike: intelligent but inexperienced. Hilvar realizes that it is Vanamonde's destiny to fight the insane brain when it gets out of its prison at the end of time.

After these events, most of the Galactic Empire had left our galaxy . Only a scattered few remained and rule of the galaxy was left to Vanamonde. The cause of the Exodus was her contact with something “very strange and very great” that she had called to her.

Thanks to Alvin's discoveries, Diaspar and Lys are reunited. He sends the ship, under the command of the robot, to search for the long-lost population of the Empire. He himself does not go on the search - even if other people still remain in our galaxy, they have probably regressed - since there is still enough for him to do on earth. Even the desert environment, he hopes, can be revived.

Comparison of the two versions

Clarke had assumed that the newer version of the book ( The Seven Suns ) would simply replace the older one ( This Side of Twilight ). Instead, a large number of readers preferred the earlier version of the novel. As a result - which is rare - both versions are in circulation to a similar extent and with the same popularity.

Beginning

This Side of Twilight begins with a fragment that was originally written in 1935 independently of the rest. In it all life in Diaspar has come to a standstill, and Alvin is called out of the house by his father to look at something in the sky. Alvin's father says he has only seen something similar once in his life. It's a cloud. This moment stages the background of the plot as "desert at the end of time" in a dramatic way, but contradicts the detail mentioned later in the book that Rorden has never seen the stars before when Alvin shows him the outside world.

Alvin the only child?

In This Side of Twilight , Alvin is the only child born in Diaspar within seven thousand years, and the city's residents are described as immortal, although their lifespans seem extremely extended - a subject the book leaves in the dark. In The Seven Suns, the residents of Diaspars experience an endless sequence of limited life spans, in the course of which they repeatedly receive new bodies in the “Hall of Creation” and their personalities are kept unchanged in the storage banks of the city during the time in between. In this version, Alvin is just a "one-of-a-kind," a person who, unusually, has never lived before - a phenomenon that has rarely occurred before. In both versions it is Lys' rejection of the “false dream” of immortality that led to the break with Diaspar.

Support and AI

In the book This Side of the Twilight , Alvin is assisted in his efforts to leave Diaspar by Rorden, the city's archivist. In The Seven Suns , Rorden is replaced by Khedron the joker, whose job it is to bring a certain amount of disorder into public life from time to time, which is why he also has access to unusual places in the city. However, Alvin's success is ultimately made possible by the tacit consent of the central computer. This has no direct equivalent in this side of twilight and illustrates the new possibilities that were opened up by computers in the post-war years. In the first version of the book there are master robots, but these are a multitude of machines and do not seem to take on the actively controlling role of the central computer in the later version. Here, too, the central computer is not a single machine, but only the primary artificial intelligence that controls and monitors all computer systems in the city. While the central computer shows no consciousness of its own in this side of twilight , it shows a clearly defined personality in The Seven Suns .

robot

There are also some plot differences that affect the robot. In the first version, the master's follower is a human who has three robots, one of which he lends to Alvin. In the newer version it is an alien being with only a robot at its side. As mentioned above, the blockage of the robot in The Seven Suns is overcome by an apocalyptic illusion. In the earlier version, a duplicate of the robot is made instead, in which the blockage is missing.

Details about life in Diaspar

The seven suns also contain some additional details about life in Diaspar. For example, the adventures are mentioned - virtual realities with total immersion , which are used for entertainment and within which one obviously loses one's knowledge of the rest of the environment. Alvin has a lover, Alystra , whom he leaves behind. (Sex and even a certain amount of romantic love still exist in Diaspar, albeit independent of procreation and family life.) When the inhabitants of Diaspar leave the hall of creation after their (re) birth , they are assigned “parents” who take care of them take care of their social education, as well as a tutor. Although the new residents step out into the world in the body of an adult, at first they do not remember their previous lives. This only happens when they are around twenty years old. This fact is not addressed to the young residents until their “parents” have a conversation with them about the “seriousness of life”. At least these circumstances were not addressed to Alvin beforehand, so that he only becomes aware of his special role when he “grows up”. Very little of it is mentioned in This Side of Twilight . In the original version, Alvin is apparently a newborn baby in the true sense of the word - the first in 7,000 years. It does not explain whether this interval is normal or whether children are expected at all.

Alvin's role

Diaspar was obviously planned in The Seven Suns as a self-contained city whose true past was deliberately concealed. It would appear that the Uniqueness were incorporated into society by the city's original planners, who believed that a safety mechanism was necessary to regularly explore what was outside of the city (this makes Alvin's role less independent : While he is an adventurer in this side of the twilight - mind you, the first successful one - in The Seven Suns at the end he appears more as if he were just a character in a predetermined game). The way out of Diaspar contains the grave of Yarlan Zey in both versions . In The Seven Suns , Yarlan Zey is one of the leading figures among the original planners of Diaspars, but could also have been the one responsible for the appearance of the unique.

The journey of Diaspar's leading figures to Lys

At the end of the story, when the leading figures Diaspars travel to Lys, they are simply able to conquer their own fears in This Side of the Twilight , whereas in The Seven Suns this requires powerful psychology. Alvin's tutor Jeserac goes through a special adventure in which Yarlan Zey explains to him how Diaspar was founded, and then frees him from his fears, both symbolically and real.

The master and the great

There is also a slight difference in how the two books describe the master and the great . In This Side of Dawn it is finally revealed that the greats are that part of the Empire's citizens who left the galaxy. The master is represented there as a wise man or a philosopher, whose teachings have been misunderstood and made into a religion by superstitious followers. In The Seven Suns , on the other hand, he is a religious leader who has also made use of many deceptions to achieve his goals. The blockade he placed on the robot was to keep its secrets (although he also taught many things that were wise and noble). In the later version the big ones are not identified.

In general, in This Side of the Twilight, the falsified history and dystopian society seem more organically grown, while in The Seven Suns they appear as deliberate planning. While this makes little difference to Diaspar, it makes the fact that Lys shares the same skewed historiography less plausible.

expenditure

Against the Fall of Night

• First print: Against the Fall of Night . In Startling Stories. November 1948, pp. 11-70.
• American first edition: Against the Fall of Night. Gnome Press, New York 1953.
• German first edition: Forgotten Future. Translated by Elisabeth Simon. Ullstein 2000 Vol. 84 (3103). Ullstein, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-548-13103-4 .
• Later book edition: This side of the twilight. Unabridged translation by Walter Brunn. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-06429-1 .
• Current issue (English): with Gregory Benford: Against the Fall of Night / Beyond the Fall of Night. Orbit, London 2000, ISBN 1-85723-026-4 .
• Ebook (English): Against the Fall of Night. RosettaBooks, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7953-2492-5 .

The City and the Stars

• American first edition: The City and the Stars . Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York 1956.
• British first edition: The City and the Stars . Frederick Muller, London 1956.
• German first edition: The seven suns. Translated by Tony Westermayr. Goldmanns Science Fiction Vol. 13. Goldmann, Munich 1960.
• First paperback edition: The seven suns. Goldmann's space paperbacks. Vol. 9. Goldmann, Munich 1962.
• Current issue: The city and the stars. Revised new edition with a foreword by Gary Gibson. Series of Science Fiction Masterpieces . Heyne, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-453-53397-4 .
• Ebook (English): The City and the Stars. RosettaBooks, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7953-2501-4 .

literature

• David Pringle : Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels: An English-language Selection, 1949–1984. Gateway, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-4732-0807-0 , # 22: ARTHUR C. CLARKE: The City and the Stars .

Web links

• The seven suns in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)