Simple story but really nicely done. ( )

Originally published in 1961 this novel is now published in the science fiction Masterwork series. I have not been disappointed by Clarke's earlier science fiction novels and this one was another good solid read. It may lack that sense of wonder of some of his novels, but this one shows that Clarke could do characters as well as ratcheting up the tension in an escape from disaster scenario. There is enough hard science and mechanical engineering to satisfy those reader who want to be convinced that they are on solid ground with their science fiction reading, however it is the lack of solid ground that provides the excitement in this novel.

Captain Pat Harris earns a living on the moon by shuttling tourists over one of the moon's seas in a craft named the Selene. The Sea of Thirst is actually made up of very fine dust and the Selene skims along the surface. In the middle of the sea are the inaccessible mountains and Pat Harris provides some thrills for the tourists by hurtling the Selene through a narrow gorge. Coming out of the gorge and back on the sea there is a moonquake and the Selene sinks beneath the dust. There are 20 passengers on board as well as Captain Harris and a stewardess. They have lost all radio contact and are 20 metres below the surface and cannot move under they're own power. They have enough air and provisions to last a week. The story is a rescue attempt against the clock to get everybody out of the stricken vehicle. The moondust flows like a liquid making it impossible for individuals to reach the surface and threatens to encase the stationary vehicle.

Captain Pat Harris is a competent pilot of the Selene, but lacks ambition to become a space pilot, he is falling in love with the stewardess. He is fortunate that his passengers include a range of scientists as well as a celebrated, but retired spaceman. They must work together to keep their spirits raised while waiting to be found. Clarke's story alternates between the efforts of the passengers to survive the catastrophe and the efforts of the scientists and engineers to find the Selene and then launch a rescue mission.
Clarke does a good job in bringing his characters to life and the dialogue between them is well handled, tempers get frayed, but also friendships form. It is to Clarkes credit that life in the stricken craft is as interesting as the rescue mission.

The story takes place in 2042 and from snapshots of the conversation in the Selene we learn bits of the history that has enabled man to conquer the solar system. Unfortunately money still controls all men's actions and male chauvinism is similar to what it was in 1961. On the more positive side there is recognition of the destruction of ethnic people on earth, as one of the passengers a scientist and an aborigine tells moon born Pat Harris of the attempted elimination of his people and their culture. This is a good disaster novel whose moon setting creates additional and unforeseen problems. It is well written and a 4 star read. ( )

Vědeckofantastický román anglického spisovatele (nar. 1917), jenž má za sebou už na třináct prozaických knih. V této poslední z r. 1961 přenáší čtenáře do 21. století a na Měsíc, kde lidé už normálně žijí i kam podnikají výlety ze Země. Vypráví o cestě skupiny turistů měsíčním autobusem, jeho postižení přírodní katastrofou, pádu do hlubiny a zavalení měsíčním prachem a o složité a důmyslné záchraně cestujících.

It's fun reading hard science fiction novels from earlier times. This one is from 1960, before Yuri Gagarin's first flight into space, and long before his most famous novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey" and before Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon...

It's a standard disaster and rescue story. In this case a boat that's sunk beneath the surface of a sea of dust on the moon.

The plot is very linear, with only one problem being dealt with at a time and only one disaster at a time. Each time a problem happens (the boat sinking further, the temperature rising, etc.) it's fixed before the next occurs.

Clarke mostly glosses over the too-technical details involved, though he does give us readers a quick lecture on the difference between weight and mass and how that affects (or doesn't, in this case) a construction worker in low gravity.

Most of the characters take things easy enough and any psychological problems are solved quickly so the tension never builds to nail biting or edge-of-the-seat levels. ( )

Arthur C. Clarke is one of those authors of whom I'm never quite sure how fond I am. I hear his name and think “Gee willikers, I love Arthur C. Clarke!” And then I think back over the books I've read by him and I'm not so sure. Before today I'd read a total of thirteen books written or co-written by him, and had given him a rather underwhelming average score of 2.4 out of 5. If one ignores the ones he co-authored (and their style in each case suggests that his co-author did most of the writing) then he leaps up to a marginally less mediocre 2.8 out of 5. Those perhaps aren't the kind of statistics that should make me pick up yet more of his work, but A Fall of Moondust was only two pounds, and it sounded quite good on the back, and there's a quote on the front cover from John Wyndham saying it's Clarke's best work, and Wyndham is an author that I really do like (he averages a much better 3.7 out of 5 from me here on Goodreads).

A Fall of Moondust is basically an episode of Thunderbirds set on the moon. And also set in a Universe where International Rescue doesn't exist, otherwise Thunderbird 3 would've sorted everything out in a few pages. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A tour bus/boat travelling across a sea of quicksand-like dust on the moon's surface falls victim to a sudden seismic shift, and is pulled a short distance beneath the surface. Like Clarke's other works, all this happens very early on in the novel. He doesn't waste time with a bunch of mindless character development or tedious backstory – all that is dealt with while the real plot unfolds. This real plot is twofold – the efforts of the engineers on the surface to find and then save the sunken craft, and the efforts of the twenty-two people stuck underground to maintain their calm.

There's enough levity and drama in both storylines to maintain the novel for its fairly brief length. Particularly quaint in the underground side of things was Clarke's gentle fun with literature. The assembled tourists only have two books amongst them to allay boredom: a copy of that literary classic [b:Shane|257837|Shane|Jack Schaefer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327884576s/257837.jpg|444396], and a historical erotic-romance written by a teenager on Mars featuring the couplings of Isaac Newton and Eleanor Gwyn. The brief snippet we hear from this latter work sounds like a pitch-perfect parody of today's book market, flooded with [insert genre here]-erotica riding on the Fifty Shades bandwagon. And then you remember that Clarke published this in 1961 and you have to wonder if this new trend is so new after all.

The drama stakes are kept high through the fairly formulaic approach of letting the characters sort out a problem, having them relax, tossing in some foreshadowing, and then letting some fresh complication throw matters into disarray. Every long running science fiction show has episodes like this (oh no, the crew is trapped, we only have an arbitrary time period to save them!) and they all follow the same script (oh no, now we have even less time to save them!). Clarke even has one of the characters allude to this after one particular disaster, aghast that he “should ever get involved in the Number One cliché of the TV Space Operas.” Again, this was written in 1961 so either science fiction on TV was clichéd even then or this is Clarke's trademark prescience at work. Either way, little flourishes like this help counterbalance the story's occasional aged nature.

The story is far from perfect, and it's never entirely clear if it's setting up clichés for everyone else to follow, or satirising those that already existed. Either way, it's a ripping yarn and might well fulfil John Wyndham's promise even now of being “The best book Arthur C. Clarke has written.” ( )