It's Arthur C Clarke's greatest novel and a classic of "hard" science fiction. The Fountains of Paradise is a brilliantly realized story of humankind's ascent to the stars, not on rockets, but by building the first space elevator. Clarke predicted the discovery of carbon super materials with the "diamond hyperfilament" that is strong enough to stretch 36,000km from Earth to geosynchronous orbit.

But it's not the science that makes Arthur C Clarke's novel so great.

It's the symbolism.

00:00 The Fountains of Paradise
03:50 Science Fiction Q & A
06:49 The forgotten masterpiece of Arthur C Clarke
09:49 The three stages of Clarke's career
14:07 Was Clarke a good writer?
17:04 The competent engineer
19:30 Hyperfilament
24:50 The Clarkoverse of Low Orbit SF
27:04 Symbolism and the poetic beauty of hard SF
37:57 Could we...and should we...build a space elevator?
43:51 The Wealth Transfer Frontier we need

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