The Space Trilogy
Authors: Arthur C Clarke
'Arthur C. Clarke is awesomely informed about physics and astronomy, and blessed with one of the most astounding imaginations ever encountered in print'
New York Times
'Science-fiction of the fines quality: original, imaginative, disturbing'
Kingsley Amis
'Mr. Clarke skilfully fits his heady fantasies into a human context. First class'
Evening Standard
'His enthusiasm is combined with considerable literary and myth-making skills … the result is something special'
Sunday Telegraph
Also by Arthur C. Clarke
FICTION
Against the Fall of Night
Childhood Ends
Childhood's End
The City and The Stars
The Deep Range
Dolphin Island
Earthlight
A Fall of Moondust
The Fountains of Paradise
The Ghost from the Grand Banks
Glide Path
The Hammer of God
Imperial Earth
Islands in the Sky
The Lion of Comarre
The Lost Worlds of 2001
A Meeting with Medusa
Prelude to Space
Reach for Tomorrow
Rendezvous with Rama
The Sands of Mars
The Songs of Distant Earth
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010: Odyssey Two
2061: Odyssey Three
3001: The Final Odyssey
With Gentry Lee
Cradle
Rama
The Garden of Rama
Rama Revealed
With Mike McQuay
Richter 10
With Mike Kube-McDowell
The Trigger
With Stephen Baxter
The Light of Other Days
SHORT FICTION
Across the Sea of Stars
An Arthur C. Clarke Omnibus
An Arthur C. Clarke 2
nd
Omnibus
The Best of Arthur C. Clarke
The Collected Stories
Expedition to Earth
From the Oceans, From the Stars
More Than One Universe
The Nine Billion Names of God
The Other Side of the Sky
Prelude to Mars
The Sentinel
Tales from Planet Earth
Tales from the White Hart
Tales of Ten Worlds
The Wind from the Sun
NON-FICTION
Ascent to Orbit
Astounding Days
By Space Possessed
The Challenge of the Sea
The Challenge of the Spaceship
The Coast of Coral
The Exploration of the Moon
The Exploration of Space
Going into Space
Greetings, Carbon Based Bipeds!
How the World was One
Interplanetary Flight
The Making of a Moon
Profiles of the Future
The Promise of Space
The Reefs of Taprobane
Report on Planet Three
The Snows of Olympus
The View from Serendip
Voice Across the Sea
Voices from the Sky
The Young Traveller in Space
1984: Spring
With the Astronauts:
First on the Moon
With Mike Wilson:
Boy Beneath the Sea
The First Five Fathoms
Indian Ocean Adventure
Indian Ocean Treasure
The Treasure of the Great Reef
With Peter Hyams:
The Odyssey File
With the Editors of Life:
Man and Space
With Robert Silverberg:
Into Space
With Chesley Bonestell:
Beyond Jupiter
With Simon Welfare and John Fairley:
Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World
Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers
Arthur C. Clarke's Chronicles of the Strange & Mysterious
Arthur C. Clarke's A-Z
AS EDITOR
(Fiction)
Science Fiction Hall of Fame III
Three for Tomorrow
Time Probe
Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime I-VI
(Non-Fiction)
The Coming of the Space Age
Arthur C. Clarke's July 20, 2019
Project Solar Sail
Edited by Keith Daniels:
Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany - A Correspondence
Arthur C. Clarke & C. S. Lewis - A Correspondence
Islands in the Sky
Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke 1954
The Sands of Mars
Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke 1951
Earthlight
Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke 1955, 1973
Foreword to
The Space Trilogy
Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke 2001
Introduction to
The Sands of Mars
Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke 2001
Foreword to
The Sands of Mars
Copyright © Donna Shirley 2001
All rights reserved
The right of Arthur C. Clarke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
This edition published in Great Britain in 2001 by
Gollancz
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1 85798 780 2
Printed in Great Britain
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Contents
Foreword
Jackpot to Space
Goodbye to Gravity
The Morning Star
A Plague of Pirates
Star Turn
Hospital in Space
World of Monsters
Into the Abyss
The Shot from the Moon
Radio Satellite
Starlight Hotel
The Long Fall Home
Introduction
Foreword
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
It is now hard to realise that, as late as the 1950s, to most people the concept of travel beyond the Earth seemed total fantasy. The attitude in those days was well summed up by a statement which Britain's Astronomer Royal was never able to live down: 'Space travel is utter bilge!' The very next year—1957—the Space Age opened with the launch of Sputnik I.
The three novels in this volume were all written well before that event, when I was an active member of the tiny British Interplanetary Society—now, I am happy to say, a large and respected organisation. So these early works were, it must be confessed, partly propaganda, aimed to convince the sceptical public that we premature Space Cadets really knew what we were talking about.
They were preceded by an earlier novel,
Prelude to Space
(1951)—long out of print, and now of no more than historic interest (if that!).
Prelude
was written soon after World War II, when the advent of atomic energy made space travel seem both imminent and practical. Fired by enthusiasm which turned out to be misplaced, I was optimistic enough to imagine that Britain could go it alone, using the newly established Australian launch-site at Woomera. Yet the date I suggested—1978!—was pessimistic; who would have dreamed that men would fly round the Moon exactly a decade earlier?