Empty World, by John Christopher

Islands In The Sky is the first science-fiction book I can remember reading. It was published in 1954, in the middle of the space race, and this shows through in the optimism of the author and of the characters.

Roy Malcom is absolutely mad about space, is a member of the local astronomy club and gazes at the stars through his telescope from his bedroom window. When there is a chance to win a trip to space on a quiz-show, he leaps at it. And wins.

Roy is put through a battery of tests and eventually gets the all-clear to travel to space. He learns to move around in zero-gravity and explores the space station which orbits the Earth. It his dream come true.

The book is written in the first-person, which makes the reader feel a part of the story. I too was mad about space when I got this book. I had several other space books. One was about the Apollo missions, which I made my Mac Plus read to me, by typing it all in and using Macintalk, for no particular reason. Another was about the constellations, galaxies and other bodies of the night sky. I wondered if I could be an astronaut, and what the career path would be for this.

This brings me to my final point. This book is essentially about dream-fulfillment. Roy gets to do what he always wanted to do. The book is, at heart, optimistic, promising a friendly world in space, accessible to ordinary people, at least in a limited sense, without all the divisions of Earth. The Space Race was not to bear out Clarke's vision.

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