Sir Arthur C Clarke

Arthur C Clarke

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Arthur C Clarke's
Fiction

The following list covers all published novels and short story collections of Arthur C Clarke. It includes literary collaborations (with co-author names given). All are in the genre of science fiction, except for Glide Path (1963) which is based on Clarke’s wartime service with the Royal Air Force where he worked on a radar-based, ground-controlled approach aircraft landing system.

Most of these titles are still in print, some having run into multiple editions and reprints. Please check online or with book sellers for availability.

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More Than One Universe

Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of our time, winner of Hugo and Nebula awards, bestseller, and favorite of the genre. Clarke is also a Grand Master of Science Fiction, and in this exciting omnibus collection he takes you to worlds where: The approach of dawn means instant death for a man trapped on an airless asteroid. The creativity of a culture is challenged as its planet is covered by a wall of darkness. A brilliant scientist helps a television executive plot the decline of civilization. Solar winds power majestic yachts through space to a finish line at the moon. The members of an ancient sect count the nine billion names of God with a computer. Journey to these and fifty other worlds of wonder with a master visionary as your tour guide.

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Prelude to Mars

The variety and fascination of science fiction in the hands of a master are strikingly apparent in a volume that brings together two full-length novels and sixteen stories by Arthur C. Clarke, whom Holiday has called “the colossus of science fiction.” Prelude to Space, the first of the novels, is a vivid account of the events that culminate in man’s first voyage to the moon. Written when the adventure seemed a remote possibility, and now regarded as a classic in its field, it gains fresh interest from an introduction discussing ways in which the actualities of space travel are overtaking the author’s speculations about it. Actuality has yet to overtake Sands of Mars, a novel in which courageous and visionary men bring off a vast experiment to make permanent colonization of that forbidding planet possible. Among the stories, several include the character Harry Purvis, teller of tall tales and a mouthpiece for the playful and the humorously macabre aspects of Mr. Clarke’s talent. Eight stories in a more serious vein concern matters as diverse as the terrors that may lurk in a remote corner of our galaxy and the drastic climatic changes that result when the earth passes through a great belt of cosmic dust. Here, once again, is a volume to delight Arthur C. Clarke’s admirers.

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Prelude to Space

Divided between the tensions of behind-the-scenes preparations in London and the drama of the launch-pad in Australia, this vintage Arthur C. Clarke novel recounts the events leading up to an epoch-making interplanetary space flight. Precise in his recording of facts, perceptive in his intuitions, Clarke’s historian hero is the ideal narrator of this epic chain of events.

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Rama II (with Gentry Lee)

In 1973 the world was awed by the publication of Rendezvous with Rama. The mesmerizing tale of an alien starship that had entered our solar system, it went on to sell more than a million copies and to sweep the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards. Yet as Rama left our view, we were haunted by the novel’s final statement that “the Ramans do everything in threes”. Now the Ramans have finally returned, in a sequel with a scope and vision even grander than the original… Decades have passed since Commander Norton and his crew met with the enormous alien ship dubbed Rama and declared it an intelligent robot with no interest in the creatures of our solar system. In those years the world has undergone dramatic changes –f rom the wild prosperity immediately following the Raman visit to the cataclysm of the Great Chaos, also spurred by Rama. And then, near the dawn of the twenty-third century, a spacecraft is identified hurtling across our solar system. A crew of a dozen is assembled to rendezvous with the massive ship. And mankind has a second date with destiny. Some of the best and brightest minds on Earth are assembled to intersect with Rama II just inside the orbit of Venus. Among them are the brilliant engineer Richard Wakefield, scientist Shigeru Takagishi (author of The Atlas of Rama), heroic life science officer Nicole des Jardins, stern commander in chief Valeriy Borzov, and the duplicitous video journalist Francesca Sabatini. But even though the crew is equipped with every piece of information that is known about Raman technology and culture, there is nothing that can prepare them for what they will encounter on board. For while Rama II appears to be much like its predecessor, the crew will discover startling - perhaps even deadly -differences.

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Rama Revealed (with Gentry Lee)

On its mysterious voyage through interstellar space, a massive, alien starship carries its passengers to the end of a generations-long odyssey. For the great experiment conceived by the Ramans has failed. Rama III, with its carefully designed Earth habitat, as well as environments to house other intelligent species, has become a battleground. Instead of creating a utopia, the human contingent has brought forth a tyrant who seeks to conquer the other sectors of the vast Raman ark. Cosmonaut Nicole des Jardins, a lone voice for reason who is now jailed and awaiting execution is aided in a daring escape by two tiny robots. On New York Island, the dark, brooding and deserted city in the midst of Rama III’s cylindrical sea, Nicole is reunited with her long-lost husband, Richard Wakefield, whom she’d given up for dead. Joined by their children and other rebels from the Earth sector, Nicole and Richard enter New York’s labyrinthine underground aboard a ghostly subway hoping to find the ship’s secret inner workings. What they find instead is the emerald-domed lair of technologically advanced species that rules this fabulous subraman world: the octospiders. These arachnidlike creatures are luring Nicole and the rebels into their domain, but the Earth group is divided as to whether the octospiders are allies or enemies - and anxious to discover the fate of two of their group abducted by the enigmatic aliens. Yet even as this drama unfolds, Rama III continues its inexorable course to its final destination: the Node. To some, the Node is a vast engineering station; to others, it is a place of wonder and miracles. From here a powerful force has been monitoring all of the lifeforms on Rama III, summoning the survivors to a final judgment. And it is here that the stunning climax of the Rama journey awaits: the shattering revelation of the true identity of the beings behind this strange, glittering trek across the cosmos.

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Reach for Tomorrow

Reach for Tomorrow presents a second collection of Arthur C. Clarke’s stories – the first was the highly successful Expedition to Earth. From “Rescue Party” (his first published story, and still one of his most famous) to “Jupiter Five” the amazing range of Clarke’s ideas is fully represented. The science is authentic, the fiction - beautifully tempered with British understatement - is strikingly effective. The book is Arthur C. Clarke at his best - and what is better in modern science fiction?

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Rendezvous with Rama

Ever since the publication in 1968 of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the enormous impact made by Stanley Kubrick’s film, Arthur Clarke’s admirers have been waiting for him to write a new novel. News of Rendezvous with Rama began to seep out at the end of last year, but there has been no word, until now, of the novel’s plot or how it develops. In fact, the query has been: who or what is Rama? Rama was first picked up by radar as asteroid 31/439 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter; and it was only when it was realised that it had a diameter of some twelve miles and that its course might completely upset the delicate balance of the solar system that scientists became at first intrigued and then worried. A space probe was launched on a high-speed trajectory to intercept the mysterious intruder and to photograph it. Seven weeks after the probe’s launch, the pictures it transmitted brought to a halt the activities of most of mankind…

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Richter 10 (with Mike McQuay)

Lewis Crane was a child when the devastating Los Angeles earthquake of 1994 ripped his life apart, leaving him the sole survivor of his family. Now, thirty years later, Crane is the world’s leading seismologist, with a burning hatred for quakes. Determined to protect people from his parents’ fate, he has developed a unique theory of earthquake prediction - but in a world run by Chinese-controlled corporations and an America split more radically than ever along racist and religious lines, there are plenty of people who don’t want him to succeed. Then it happens: a massive rolling and shaking that promises to register 8.5 on the Richter scale. And only Crane knows an even bigger ‘big one’ is coming: an incredible Richter 10 that will bring unimaginable destruction.

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