The Fountains of Paradise is the story of the genesis, construction, and ultimate fate of what Clarke rather prosaicly terms either the Orbital Tower, or the Space Elevator. The novel is a conceptual cornucopia containing scene after scene of real beauty….

Clarke's prose hasn't been this good in years, effortless, stripped to the bone, and clear as mylar. Gone is the monotonous tedium of Imperial Earth, gone is the "gosh-Joe-look-at-that!" comic-book marvelling of Rendezvous with Rama. In its place is a mature appreciation of a wonder that relegates Rama to the status of a toy. The Tower is much more impressive than Rama,… because it seems so real, something that could, and should, actually be done. Clarke grows his concepts in the most austere of technically speculative soil, and strikes directly to the awestricken teenager that lies just beneath the surface of us all. His total control of...