The Fountains of Paradise is a 1979 Science Fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It tells the story of Dr. Vannevar Morgan, an engineer fresh from building a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar, who embarks on a plan to build a space elevator. However, the only suitable site, a mountain in the fictional country of Taprobane (very closely based on Sri Lanka), happens to be already occupied by a monastery which is quite determined to stay put. The main plot is interspersed with the story of the king Kalidasa, ancient ruler of Taprobane, who ordered the construction of massive pleasure gardens.
This work contains examples of:
- Author Appeal: Given that's it's Arthur C. Clarke, manned communications satellites show up a few times.
- Easy Evangelism: Played with. Scientists discover that the most fanatical believers in a religion — or atheists — can be converted to another religion entirely by application of a small dose of a chemical and a few words. The discovery shatters the foundations of almost all major religions, resulting in humanity having largely Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. The only religion shown to still be going strong is Buddhism.
- Famous, Famous, Fictional: "Having first made his name with a new cosmological theory that had survived almost ten years before being refuted, Goldberg had been widely acclaimed as another Einstein or N'goya."
- First Contact: The past visit of an alien probe is mentioned.
- Future Imperfect: In the Distant Epilogue set fifteen centuries after the main story, a visiting alien muses on the continuum between well-documented historical personages like Einstein and Lenin, clearly fantastical characters like Alice and Gulliver, and accounts that might or might not be distorted descriptions of real people such as Christ and Sherlock Holmes.
- Istanbul (Not Constantinople): The novel renames Sri Lanka "Taprobane" (one of the island's many other names) and moves it 500 miles south to put it on the Equator.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The alien probe contacted by humanity disproved the works of Thomas Aquinas, and possibly Christianity itself — and that's all in the exposition. There is one religion left practicing (Buddhism), but it leaves its monastery when the yellow butterflies reach the top of the hill it's on, simply because they were prophesied to do it. It is mentioned that the Vatican still exists as a center of Catholicism, but it suffers from severe financial troubles, implying that the number of practicing Catholics is minuscule.
- Prophecy Twist: The monks believe in a prophecy that if a particular species of butterfly reaches the top of the mountain, that signifies the end of their monastery. Later on, in order to sabotage a test of Morgan's space elevator technology, one of the monks hacks the weather control satellites to create an unprecedented storm... which also blows a swarm of butterflies all the way up the mountain to the monastery.
- Razor Floss: A Chekhov's Razor Floss appears, made of the carbon filament formulated for the elevator.
- Sharpened to a Single Atom: Construction of a space elevator becomes a realistic possibility after the development of a process to manufacture a "pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystal" a few microns thick in continuous lengths, forming invisible fibres of enormous tensile strength. Its main application is as a tension member (of course), not as a weapon, though much attention is given to the handling difficulties and dangers of such a material. Its sharpness is also reasonably realistic — it is extremely sharp, but not absurdly so. It can easily cause severe wounds through mere inattention to handling, but to deliberately cut down a tree with it takes a couple of minutes, and the length of time it takes to cut through a metal fastening with it is an important element at one point in the story.
- Space Elevator: The construction of the elevator forms the main plot of the book. Dr. Morgan also contributes to building one on Mars.
- Terraform: The Republic of Mars sees their own space elevator as a means to make their terraforming project feasible.
- Tilting Tower of Pisa: There is a passing reference to "that tower they used to have in Pisa, before it fell over".
- Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: A reporter uses this phrase to describe the conflict between Vannevar Morgan, who wants to build a space elevator on a mountain, and the abbot of a Buddhist monastery that has been sitting on top of the mountain for thousands of years.
- Weather-Control Machine: The weather is influenced by a network of orbiting satellites.
