The Secret of the Vault | Arthur C Clarkes Devastating Twist

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1:23 That's betterhelp.com slash quin's ideas. It is three thousand like years to the Vatican. Once I believed that space could have no power over faith. Just as I believed, the heavens declare the glory of God's handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI computer, and for the first time in my life, I wonder if it's no more than an empty symbol.

1:59 Arthur C. Clarke is one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time, but that fact is not debatable. His work is enormously famous and influential, and most people have heard of his stories like 2001 A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, or Rendezvous with Rama. But Clark wrote far more than just a few legendary titles.

2:22 Across decades he produced dozens of novels, short stories, and essays, and all of them helped define what science fiction could be at its best. Vast in scale, scientifically grounded, filled with awe. Arthur C. Clarke's The Star is a good example of a writer taking one idea and pushing it as far as it can go.

2:45 It's a very short story, but the impact is significant. A while ago I covered Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Nine Billion Names of God. It dealt with a cosmic horror concept related to the effect that naming God would have on reality. Arthur C. Clarke often wrote about humanity confronting something far larger than itself, whether that was the universe or truths that shatter the way we understand our place in existence.

3:11 The star works in a similar way. Using the idea of a discovery out in deep space, Arthur C. Clarke explores something spiritual and devastating. The story is told from the perspective of a Jesuit astrophysicist on an interstellar research vessel returning to Earth. He is part of a crew of scientists, and he is the only religious member aboard.

3:34 He often found himself in arguments with the other crew members, debating the supposed contradictions of his position and his beliefs. He had always held strong to his faith, but now as they returned to Earth, he contemplates what they had discovered. For the first time, his faith has been shaken by the cold, uncaring hand of the universe.

3:56 The mission was routine. They visited nebulae and analyzed dead stars, identifying what caused them to go supernova. Occasionally, they had found the remnants of dead civilizations, civilizations that had played the game and died out at their own hands. But there was something very different about one particular nebula, called the Phoenix Nebula.

4:20 Firstly, it could hardly be called a nebula. It was a massive cloud of gas surrounding a single dwarf star, tiny compared to the macroscopic clouds of gas typically referred to as nebulae found throughout the Milky Way. We came slowly in through the concentric shells of gas that had been blasted out six thousand years before, yet were expanding still.

4:44 They were immensely hot, even now with the fierce violet light, but were far too tenuous to do any damage. When the star had exploded, its outer layers had been driven upward with such speed that they had escaped completely from its gravitational field. Now they formed a hollow shell large enough to engulf a thousand solar systems, and at its center burned the tiny, fantastic object which the star had now become: a white dwarf, smaller than Earth, yet weighing a million times as much.

5:19 Now, even if this star had orbiting planets, it would have been highly unlikely for any of them to survive the supernova. So when they passed the cloud, they did not expect to find a planet still orbiting the dwarf star at a great distance. It had to have been one of the outer planets of the star system because of its distance.

5:39 It avoided being incinerated when the star system went supernova. But what really mattered is what they found on the outer planet. Something that could only have been the remains of an intelligent civilization. A massive vault stretching into the sky a mile high. The passing fires had seared its rocks and burned away the mantle of frozen gas that must have covered it in the days before the disaster.

6:07 We landed and we found the vault its builders had made, sure that we should. The monolithic marker that stood above the entrance was now a fused stump, but even the first long-range photographs told us that here was the work of intelligence. A little later we detected the continent-wide pattern of radioactivity that had been buried into the rock.

6:31 Even if the pylon above the vault had been destroyed, this would have remained an immovable and all but eternal beacon calling to the stars. The massive monolith resembled a melted candle because it had melted down into the surrounding rock. They spend an entire week drilling into it, even though they were astronomers and not trained for that kind of excavation, because they realize this place is far more important than the mission they originally came for.

7:02 The civilization that built the structure clearly knew its sun was going to destroy them. Before their world ended, they gathered everything they wanted to preserve their knowledge, their achievements, their culture, and they placed it there in the hope that some future race would find it. The thing is, this species clearly did not have the ability to travel to other star systems.

7:27 They had no real way to escape. But in reality, even if they had the technology, only a small number could have been saved. So they leave behind the vault. Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculptures show, we could not have helped admiring and grieving for them, for their fate.

7:50 They left thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn their written language. We have examined many of these records and brought to life for the first time in 6,000 years the warmth and beauty of a civilization that in many ways must have been superior to our own.

8:15 But the fact that there was a civilization there that was destroyed is not the twist of this story. It is sad because, unlike the other civilizations they had encountered, this one was destroyed by no fault of its own, by an act of nature, by an act of God. But the big moment comes at the end of the short story.

8:37 By studying the evidence, the Jesuit astrophysicist is able to work out exactly when the star exploded and when its light would have been seen from Earth. We could not tell before we reached the nebula. How long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly.

9:05 I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova, whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn. There can be no reasonable doubt.

9:31 The ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, O God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem? If you don't know, the Star of Bethlehem is the star in the Gospel of Matthew that appeared at the birth of Jesus and guided wise men to him.

9:59 In Christianity, it is usually understood as a sign from God announcing that Jesus was not an ordinary child, but the promised Messiah and King, someone whose coming mattered to the whole world, not just Israel. So the star represents divine guidance, revelation, hope, and the idea that God was making Christ known to humanity.

10:23 And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Matthew 2, 9 through 10. The ending is devastating because the story connects this dead civilization to one of the most famous and supposedly hopeful images in all of Christianity, the Star of Bethlehem.

10:54 Up to that point, the tragedy was already awful, a whole civilization, a whole world and its people destroyed by a star going supernova. But Clark makes it even worse by revealing that their destruction was, yes, a distant disaster, but also a sacred symbol on Earth. This is what affects the Jesuits so profoundly.

11:17 The species was peaceful, beautiful, intelligent, and in some ways better than us. They had children, art, cities, ordinary life. So when the narrator realizes that all of this was wiped out just so its light could shine over Bethlehem, the idea feels unbearable. Why would an omnipotent, all-knowing, benevolent God destroy an entire civilization just as a symbol to another?

11:48 I think this is an amazing short story, and I really appreciate the philosophical questions being brought up about faith and God and the universe. In a universe so destructive and so cold, is the idea of the existence of God actually a comfort? Or does it imply something twisted about the nature of that God?

12:12 Thanks so much for watching, guys. Make sure you like and subscribe for more science fiction literature videos.