4thace reviewed A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke
Review of 'A Meeting With Medusa' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
After a quick introduction to introduce the protagonist this novelette shifts to a hard science fiction story set in the cloudtops of Jupiter. We see the action through the viewpoint of a solo pioneer sent to observe and measure the planet up close in a place where automated probes are felt to be too inflexible to respond to danger. What they were were expecting were atmospheric vortices bubbling up from the hot lower layers of the atmosphere that could tear a craft apart, which only an intelligent and quick-reflexed individual could respond to adequately. What he finds, instead, is something more awe-inspiring and mysterious. Not everything on the mission goes to plan at the tense climax.
I often listen to science fiction set either on distant exoplanets or in a futuristic Earth or near-Earth setting, so this was a nice reminder that our neighborhood still has plenty of capacity to …
After a quick introduction to introduce the protagonist this novelette shifts to a hard science fiction story set in the cloudtops of Jupiter. We see the action through the viewpoint of a solo pioneer sent to observe and measure the planet up close in a place where automated probes are felt to be too inflexible to respond to danger. What they were were expecting were atmospheric vortices bubbling up from the hot lower layers of the atmosphere that could tear a craft apart, which only an intelligent and quick-reflexed individual could respond to adequately. What he finds, instead, is something more awe-inspiring and mysterious. Not everything on the mission goes to plan at the tense climax.
I often listen to science fiction set either on distant exoplanets or in a futuristic Earth or near-Earth setting, so this was a nice reminder that our neighborhood still has plenty of capacity to blow one's mind. This audiobook story played like a Golden Age tale with a narrator who keeps something about himself and his abilities secret until the last few minutes which I did not see coming. It was first published in Playboy Magazine in the early 1970s, and I would say that the scientific understanding has changed less in those fifty years than the culture, but it has aged pretty well.