"I am the resurrection, and the life."
--John 11:25

Great authors collect intellectual obsessions the way others collect Beanie Babies or Fiestaware. For readers familiar with a particular author, each book is a treasure hunt to find the familiar themes and developing ideas. Fans of Arthur C. Clarke may be familiar with the theme of resurrection that runs through his work:

--In "2001" astronaut Dave Bowman, who should be dead, is "resurrected" as a self-aware subroutine in the Monolith's vast programming.

--The same resurrection awaits HAL in "2010" when the artificial intelligence is pulled into the Monolith to join Bowman, seconds before HAL's ship is incinerated in the blast that transforms Jupiter into the minor star Lucifer.

--And in "3001," Bowman's crewmate Frank Poole is resurrected by 31st-century medical technology when his body is found floating in the outer reaches of the solar system.

The resurrection theme is clearest in "The Light of Other Days," written by Clarke with up-and-coming SF novelist Stephen Baxter. In the near future a "wormcam" technology is invented that exploits quantum wormholes to open viewports to any location in the past or present. Humanity resurrects its past and confronts the horror, lies, and inhumanity it finds there, with even more immediacy than television brought to the Vietnam carnage. All this takes place just as the world learns of an enormous comet on an eventual collision course with Earth. Later, a thoroughly transformed human species embarks on a project to resurrect every person who has ever lived.

Clarke is not a religious man; in "3001" he has a character describe religion as a "psychopathology" and approvingly describes a society where it has been stamped out. So why the obsession with a topic as religiously charged as resurrection? For Clarke, resurrection is not about supernatural miracles or saving souls for heaven. Some type of resurrection, which likely will be a scientific possibility in the not-so-distant future, is the only logical response to what Clarke believes is the rarity of intelligent life in the universe.

Life on Earth is much hardier than we thought. Recent discoveries have found life teeming in layers of rock miles below the surface, in underwater caves filled with hydrogen sulfide, and in the extreme heat and pitch darkness around deep-sea volcanic vents. Life on Earth survives on sunlight and sewage, oxygen and sulfur, in even the most noxious environments.

But intelligent life has only arisen once that we know of -- and it is horribly fragile. All of human civilization, all the knowledge, art, and rare beauty that we have accumulated with pain and blood and sweat over millennia, could be erased tomorrow.

Chapter 28 vividly illustrates this point, and it's more mindblowing than LSD. Here Clarke and Baxter deliver a virtuoso performance: the entire history of life on Earth -- backwards. In a wormcam's-eye view, we race back through the history of a single strand of DNA from the present day through millions of ancestors and billions of years. Again and again, life struggles to higher levels of organization only to be obliterated by a meteor here, a killing ice age there. Again and again, life is reduced to an algal scum or a few random bacteria. In a climax that will leave the reader slackjawed, we learn how the microbial ancestor of all current life managed to survive at all.

Hence Clarke's obsession with resurrection, not to mention with space travel and the colonization of other worlds. To quote a character in "Light":

"... Mind ... life itself -- is precious. Unimaginably so .... The notion that this tiny scrap of life and mind should be smashed -- at this moment of transcendent understanding -- by a random piece of rock is simply unacceptable."

Intelligent life -- Mind -- is too valuable to destroy, too fragile to entrust to a single planetary home, and too rare to lose to death. For a nonreligious man, Clarke delivers a powerful sermon.

"Light of Other Days" is the best of Clarke's recent work. Co-author Baxter's influence is felt in more natural dialogue and more developed characters than in, say, "3001." The plot meanders, but that's not a bad thing. Like a star tugged upon by its planet, the plot bends around philosophical musings and brilliant setpieces. Like a planet teeming with life, those are too important to miss.




Recommended: Yes