My brilliantly aptly distractingly named new series continues. Where I randomly select two books from my shelves and attempt to find a link. I do not promise it will be a good link, only that it will be a link. It might be anything at all. One thing I do promise is that the link will not be due to the books both containing words such as ‘and’ or ‘the’, although having said that it’d be really awesome to now find two books totally missing both of those words.
The books I chose last week were The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke and Tron by Brian Daley. Stay tuned to find out if I’ve actually got a link.
The Books
The Fountains of Paradise is about potential. The story is about a lift. Not just any lift but a space lift, one that goes up into space to the machines orbitting the world. It means they can just put all the repairing equipment in the lift and zoom it upstairs. Or they can put in the bits and pieces needed to extend to space station or to build a new one. They no longer need to launch rockets.
Tron is the book of the iconic movie from 1982. It’s the story of being sucked into the digital world and having to fight gladiatorial games to survive.
The Link
You’d expect the link today to be about science fiction and you’re right…in part. Yes, they’re both science fiction. They’re both ground breaking and they’re both about conflict. The Fountains of Paradise is about conflict in the making of the space lift (elevator) and Tron is about conflict within the digital world.
Next Week!
Next week we have two books which look very similar in the first instance. Literary Trivia: over 300 curious lists for bookworms by Audrey Malone and Uncorrected Proof: The True History of the Australian Book Scene by Nikki Gemmell. I am now one more week closer to have done this series for a year. I’m very tempted to give up at week 52 (I think that’s next week) and find something else to write about. Sometimes links just hit me in the brain cells, other times I’m drawing them out of absolutely nothing.