The Songs Of Distant Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke

As a person of faith, a former atheist myself, I don’t have much beef with atheists. For me, atheism was a rational reaction to flawed theologies espoused by minds that should not be entrusted with a pulpit. My tolerance frays, however, when the atheist’s open mind becomes no less open than any other believer, becoming trapped in their own convictions and pride.

And thus, I come to reluctantly review The Songs of Distant Earth.

I wanted to like the book, I really did. I’ve read many atheists before, and respect their contempt of religion. After all, they do have many reasonable points. However, the central conceit of TSODE is that with all references to religion erased within the human culture of a colonized world, an unprecedented peace and prosperity has broken out on that planet, Thalassia.

I’ve heard this idea before, in high school and social media. It’s usually apparent that the proponents of this idea are teenage social justice warriors, blathering over the inhumanity of teaching religion to vulnerable minds. It’s the youth who espouse such ideas, of course, who don’t understand that superstition will erupt in any place it is allowed to fester. That bad things done in the name of religion don’t make the prophets guilty of what others have done in their names millennia later. That human nature can't be shaped by creation myths, and we can be nasty to one another even without using religion to justify it.

There are some interesting ideas in TSODE, such as colonization seed spaceships, the nature of human culture when our home star is set to implode, and making life on a water world. But these all play second fiddle, in Clarke’s mind, to the utopian notion that we’d all be living in paradise if all humans stopped believing in God.

It's hard to take Clarke's world-building seriously when you fundamentally alter the very fabric of human behaviour and replace it with universal angelic benevolence and lack of human personality. One native man’s wife has an affair with a visiting Earth officer and doesn’t get angry, and instead leaves blissfully for another island, leaving them to it. When she gets pregnant with the officer's child he happily comes back like a kicked puppy dog, once the officer leaves the planet. No trace of anger, no expectation that his life partner should be able to control herself around other men. And happily raises some other guy's child. Someone his wife loved more than him.

If this is Clarke's utopian vision of the future of relationships, no thank you.

It’s hard to take seriously. Clarke had a chance to ask harder questions, but fixated with Dawkins-like fervour on his dislike of religion. A better novel could have asked questions about the true nature of humanity. Such as, if we can only survive on a new planet, our DNA much change, and our behaviour becomes utterly foreign and incomprehensible to the Earthen visitors, whilst being impossibly attractive. As well as all being atheists. The visiting Earth survivors could then marvel at these new humans, which would in turn ask more compelling questions than the adolescent fantasy Clarke has so keenly promulgated.

Our jealousies and passions are what make us human. To deny them, to blame circumstances or birth for our flaws is naieve and shallow utopianism. Humanity wants hope as well as realism. To offer them The Songs of Distant Earth is to offer the same simplicity which has turned people away from 'the big three'. Let us hope that since 1985, the world has become more complex and demanding.

Despite all this, I heartily recommend the album of the same name that Mike Oldfield composed upon reading the novel.

To conclude. A talented author got side-tracked by a very simplistic and shallow idea, and ruined an interesting premise. The end result is still a good read, though irritating as it strains the bounds of intellectual credibility.