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Electronic edition published 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.
e-Pub edition: 9780795325427
To the still-unfading memory
of
LESLIE EKANAYAKE
(13 July 1947–4 July 1977)
only a perfect friend of a lifetime,
in whom were uniquely combined
Loyalty, Intelligence and Compassion.
When your radiant and loving spirit
vanished from this world
the light went out of many lives.
Nirvana Prapto Bhuyat
“Politics and religion are obsolete; the time has come for science and spirituality”.
Sri Jawaharlal Nehru
To the Ceylon Association for the
Advancement of Science
Colombo, 15 October 1962
CONTENTS
Introduction
Preface
I. The Palace
1. Kalidasa
2. The Engineer
3. The Fountains
4. Demon Rock
5. Through the Telescope
6. The Artist
7. The God-King’s Palace
8. Malgara
9. Filament
10. The Ultimate Bridge
11. The Silent Princess
II. The Temple
12. Starglider
13. Shadow at Dawn
14. The Education of Starglider
15. Bodhidharma
16. Conversations with Starglider
17. Parakarma
18. The Golden Butterflies
19. By the Shores of Lake Saladin
20. The Bridge That Danced
21. Judgment
III. The Bell
22. Apostate
23. Moondozer
24. The Finger of God
25. Orbital Roulette
26. The Night before Vesak
27. Ashoka Station
28. The First Lowering
29. Final Approach
30. The Legions of the King
31. Exodus
IV. The Tower
32. Space Express
33. CORA
34. Vertigo
35. Starglider Plus Eighty
36. The Cruel Sky
37. The Billion-Ton Diamond
V. Ascension
38. A Place of Silent Storms
39. The Wounded Sun
40. The End of the Line
41. Meteor
42. Death in Orbit
43. Fail-Safe
44. A Cave in the Sky
45. The Man for the Job
46. Spider
47. Beyond the Aurora
48. Night at the Villa
49. A Bumpy Ride
50. The Falling Fireflies
51. On the Porch
52. The Other Passenger
53. Fade-Out
54. Theory of Relativity
55. Hard Dock
56. View from the Balcony
57. The Last Dawn
Epilogue: Kalidasa’s Triumph
Sources and Acknowledgments
Introduction
In the two decades since the 1978 Sources and Acknowledgments (pages 325–330) was written, there have been some astonishing developments in this particular field of space engineering. The literature is now so extensive that I can no longer keep up with it; I contributed to it myself at the Thirtieth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation at Munich in 1979 (see “The Space Elevator: Thought Experiment or Key to the Universe?” reprinted in Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography, John Wiley & Sons, 1984).
Perhaps most amazing is the discovery of the material that will make the elevator possible. As I suggested in this novel, it is indeed carbon—but not, fortunately, diamond. The unexpected and Nobel Prize–winning discovery of the C60 molecule, Buckminsterfullerene, has opened up the prospect of materials hundreds of times stronger than steel. Indeed, one of the first statements made by Smalley and Kroto when they discovered this material was that it could be used to make a space elevator.
In 1979 I recorded much of the novel on a twelve-inch record (Caedmon, TC 1606). The record sleeve had a long essay about the space elevator, together with a drawing of it reaching from Sri Lanka to geostationary orbit—and by a truly incredible coincidence, these were kindly provided by my old friend Buckminster Fuller! What a tragedy that he never lived to see the discovery of the material bearing his name.
The space elevator does indeed seem to be an idea whose time has (almost) come. At a recent workshop at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, NASA engineers concluded that “this is no longer science fiction.” (For details, explore their Web site: nasa.gov. And that was science fiction when I wrote the novel!)
One of my most valued possessions is a photograph taken aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis during the first mission (STS 75) to lower a payload on a tether—one small step toward the space elevator. It shows astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman with a copy of this book floating in space beside him. When they returned to Earth, the shuttle crew autographed it and mailed it to me.
Finally, I’d like to record that I had the great pleasure of meeting the charming inventor of the space elevator, Yuri Artsutanov, in Leningrad during my visit to Russia in 1982 (see my collection of essays 1984: Spring a Choice of Futures), and I am glad that Yuri has now received recognition for his brilliant and daring concept.
Colombo, Sri Lanka
21 September 2000
Preface
“From Paradise to Taprobane is forty leagues; there may be heard the sound of the Fountains of Paradise.”