Notes for Clarke’s ‘Rescue Party’

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gs_ship_detail_thruster1_small_webNotes and comments for Arthur C. Clarke’s Rescue Party

Clarke, A.C. (1946). Rescue Party. In Astounding Science Fiction. May, 1946. Accessed 11 May, 2016 at <http://www.baen.com/Chapters/0743498747/0743498747___1.htm>

 

 

Index

Observations on the short story

  1. The narrative introduces Alveron, a member of an ancient species who had been “lords of the Universe since the dawn of history” (Clarke, 1941). With these lords lies infinite responsibility as if there was a fault in the administration of the civilised galaxy (also our own galaxy) the fault was on Alveron’s head.
  2. The mistake for Alveron was one of the greatest tragedies in history and he flicks out a tentacle to tell all aboard his mile-long spaceship that a star is about to explode and they have discovered that the third planet of the star’s system has a civilisation. Their job is to rescue as many as possible within a four hour timeslot before the Sun goes nova.
  3. Clarke explains how this disaster occurred, because the last time the Survey looked (the organisation Alveron represents) there was no intelligent life on the third planet, four hundred thousand years before. This rescue ship is told that the whole operation to save all those still on the third planet must be completed as soon as possible and how this will be accomplished.
  4. The story then switches to Earth, the third planet, confirming that indeed all that is left is ashes. Watching from space, Alveron realises that most on Earth would be dead from the incredible heat of the Sun’s expansion and deep in his heart, “he thought it might be better so. The ship could only have carried a few hundred survivors, and the problem of selection had been haunting his mind” (Clarke, 1941) This shows Alveron’s empathy with survivors and even more, his pain in having to choose who should survive from this civilised planet of Earth, if there were any.
  5. Alveron and his crew watch from their mother ship and smaller, exploratory vessels as the data comes in to show there was no human life left on Earth.
  6. The story switches to a minor commander of Alveron’s mother ship, now on a salvage vessel looking more closely at Earth and they see an observatory. The commander of this vessel is Orostron and his crew discovers a transmission heading into deep space. The crew discover an abandoned Earth city and from it they learn that the Earth inhabitants were bipeds “with only two arms ,,, only two eyes” but they managed well, in spite of their handicaps.
  7. Another small vessel from the mother craft, this one commanded by Torkalee, had found more than Osorstron. They find a great hall with computers capable of analysing five thousand million punched cards with records of every human on Earth.
  8. With only two hours to go before the Sun exploded, the rescue vessel commanded by Torkalee and its crew on the surface of Earth find a tunnel and a transport and they travel around an advanced subway under the earth and sea. The rescue party are in great danger looking for Earth survivors in their primitive technologies, though these are very much advanced of the reader’s technologies on Earth.
  9. Using extraordinary science and technology, Alveron recues the stranded rescue party once they are recovered they gather in the great mother ship’s control roonm to watch the final destruction of the Earth by its exploding Sun. They lament the fact that they did not meet the inhabitants of Earth, as they seemed to have done so much with their primitive technologies in such a short space of time, compared with other sentient species they both knew and cooperated with.
  10. Alveron has a full report on the findings of the rescue parties and learns that the Earth inhabitants were sending data out to deep space. Then, slowly, through careful scientific discussion and examination, Alverson and his crew realise that the humans from Earth had done more than just develop radio signals to beam into space.
  11. As it turns out, Alveron and his command crew find that their limp back to their base showed a vast fleet of vessels. These were Earth vessels, fleeing the Sun’s explosion and they have formed a Generation Spaceship fleet, “…thousands of tiny pencils of light. They were moving swiftly; the whole immense lattice holding its shape as a single unit” (Clarke, 1941)
  12. The crew of Alveron’s ship are astonished by the technological expertise of the Earth inhabitants, before they meet them. These creatures have known radio “for only two centuries” but they have built “the greatest fleet of which there has ever been a record” (Clarke, 1941). They are very primitive, using just rockets to bridge interstellar space, knowing their journey would take centuries to reach the closest star.
  13. The Earth travellers are the youngest in the known Universe, but they are clearly extraordinary engineers and show an unparalleled drive to survive. Alveron admits to being a little afraid of these humans from Earth, “Something tells me they’ll be very determined people,” he added. “We had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one.” While his subordinate laughs, he finds only a few years later that Alveron was right.

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Discussions of Clarke’s ‘Rescue Party’

Some stories begin at the outset of or after the end of a generation-starship voyage. Arthur C Clarke‘s early story “Rescue Party” (May 1946 Astounding) has Earth evacuated in the face of a coming nova, the evacuees heading confidently towards the stars in a giant fleet of primitive generation rocketships. Brian M Stableford‘s Promised Land (1974) tells of a society of colonists whose social structure is based on that developed over generations in the starship on which they arrived.(Encyclopedia of SF)

The May 1946 issue of Astounding published “Rescue Party,” an energetic romp through a doomed solar system written by Arthur C. Clarke, who five years later would contribute to raising public awareness of space flight through the publication of The Exploration of Space, a non-fiction work in a significantly different spirit from its near namesake The Conquest of Space. In “Rescue Party,” after picking up signs of tidal stresses in the Sun, a multi-racial, highly technological alien civilization enters the solar system and approaches the third planet, now wracked by worldwide volcanic eruptions. Our star is about to go nova, so the crew of the survey vessel above the Earth use the little time they have left to explore the burning cities of mankind, now deserted, in order to find survivors they can relocate to another planet. At great risk to themselves, the rescue party remains on Earth for as long as they can, but eventually they have to leave the system empty handed. Their disappointment turns to wonder when their screens light up with multiple contact icons: “That is the greatest fleet of which there has ever been a record. Each of those points of light represents a ship larger than our own…. Yes, they dared to use rockets to bridge interstellar space! You realize what that means. It would take them centuries to reach the nearest star. The whole race must have embarked on this journey in the hope that its descendants would complete it, generations later” [54]. The tale ends with the survey ship speeding to meet the human fleet, initiate first contact, and spoil all the fun of generational space travel by giving humans warp drive technology. Clarke’s narrative does not afford us a glimpse inside the generation starships themselves, and the promised speedy development of FTL capabilities on the part of the humans would have made the point moot in any case. From our point of view, perhaps the most relevant feature of this brief story is the momentary glimpse we receive of the two stages of space exploration in Wollheim’s consensus history of the future together in the same passage, as the warp drive-equipped alien survey vessel approaches the human fleet slogging its centuries long way to deep space in search of a home.

 

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Relevance to the GS Project Focus Questions

The focus questions for the GS Project are:

  1. What is worth holding onto over the generations?
  2. What should be discarded for the voyage? and
  3. Can life be sustained in the GS …or on Earth?

Only a few comments are made here related to the three questions, above, mostly because the narrative itself will be interpreted differently by different readers. But what might be noted here are:

  • This is a different kind of GS short story that does not follow the humans in their GS craft but instead finds a human GS fleet in space after seeking life on a destroyed Earth. The tentacled, alien Captain of the rescue ship makes several observations about human technological development over a very short time, and also about the human character or nature. What does the Captain believe of human technology and nature?
  • As this is a narrative starting with the Earth’s destruction, what does the story say about a possible future for humanity after the loss of the Earth’s Sun? How would this future be achieved?

 

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Resource List

Clarke, A.C. (1946). Rescue Party. In Astounding Science Fiction. May, 1946. Accessed 11 May, 2016 at <http://www.baen.com/Chapters/0743498747/0743498747___1.htm>

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