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Clarke, Arthur C.
EARTHLIGHT {Ellis cvr}
book-date: 1955
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GRADING:
Ballantine
1973
11th
Paperback
Dean Ellis
.75
VG+ to near-Fine
Earthlight (1955) details the confrontation between Earth and her colonies: The Federation. This is a fairly quiet novel, that includes one of the best space battles I've encountered - carefully crafted and believable.

A shorter version (same title) appeared in Thrillng Wonder Stories August 1951. Here's the flap-copy from an early Seventies hardcover, for a better summary/set-up:

Some two hundred years after his first landings on the Moon, man is permanently established not only there, but also on Mars and Venus and certain satellites of the big planets. The pioneers in outer space have formed a new political entity, and between the Federation and Earth an increasingly acrimonious rivalry has developed. Upon this premise Arthur C. Clarke bases Earthlight, a novel first published in 1955 and now made available for the first time in a separate hard-bound edition.

A young man named Sadler, "a minor pawn in a game of interplanetary chess," is dispatched from Earth to Moon by Central Intelligence to discover who, among a group of respectable scientists representing Earth, has been passing secrets to the Federation. But Sadler's mission is interrupted by the outbreak of war. It is a war as extraordinary as it is brief...

Earthlight presents, in fascinating and convincing detail, a picture of what life on the Moon is going to be like. It tells a story of mounting excitement. And, at the end, it points a sound moral and affirms profound hope for the future of mankind.