Arthur C. Clarke
In the near future, enormous silver spaceships appear without warning over mankind’s largest cities. They belong to the Overlords, an alien race far superior to humanity in technological development. Their purpose...
2) Glide Path
One of the most influential science fiction writers of the twentieth century, Arthur C. Clarke has consistently anticipated the actual achievements of science and technology. In Glide Path, he turns back the clock to tell a thrilling story about the groundbreaking...
Expanding the Moon’s population hinges on building a thriving tourist industry. But when a prototype tourist craft called the Selene encounters a moonquake, the ship plummets under a vast body of liquid-fine moondust...
Roy Malcolm has always been fascinated by space travel. And when he wins a voyage to the Inner Space Station as a game show prize, he’s sure it’s the trip of a lifetime. Before long, Roy is taken in by the young crew—and shares their adventures and lives.
...
In the near future, a cargo hovership makes an emergency landing in a rural part of the Midwest. An adventurous teenager, Johnny Clinton sneaks on board—only to survive a second crash a few hours later, this time into the Pacific Ocean . . .
The crew escapes, but Johnny is left on...
Renowned structural engineer Dr. Vannevar Morgan seeks to link Earth to the stars by constructing a space elevator that will connect to an orbiting satellite 22,300 miles from the planet’s surface. The elevator would lift interstellar spaceships...
In the very near future, humanity has fully harnessed the sea’s immense potential, employing advanced sonar technology to control and harvest untold resources for human consumption. It is a world where gigantic whale herds are tended by submariners...
8) Earthlight
Two hundred years after landing on the Moon, mankind has moved further out into the solar system. With permanent settlements now established on the Moon, Venus, and Mars, the inhabitants of these colonies have formed a political alliance called...
Living in the ten-billion-year-old city of Diaspar, Alvin is the last child born of humanity, and he is intensely curious about the outside world. But according to the oldest histories kept by the city fathers, there is no outside world—it was destroyed by the Invaders...
11) Rama II
Years ago, the enormous, enigmatic alien spacecraft Rama sailed through our solar system as mind-boggling proof that life existed—or had existed—elsewhere in the universe. Now, at the dawn of...
In Against the Fall of Night, a young man named Alvin ventures beyond the domed city of Diaspar to explore a planet Earth left nearly barren by a centuries-old cataclysm. What he discovers is the thriving rural civilization of Lys and an insane non-corporeal...
13) Rama Revealed
Two thousand humans have been trapped on the enormous spaceship Rama III, bound for the Raman Node orbiting Sirius. As they hurtle through interstellar space, the human population has formed a violent authoritarian society—one that has imprisoned...
Continuing from the end of Rama II, three astronauts—Nicole, Richard, and Michael—remain trapped in a labyrinthine alien spaceship bound for deep space. Creating the best semblance of a life they can, Nicole bears five children and they spend...
15) The Trigger
In the near future, a team of scientists who intend to create an anti-gravity device inadvertently develop something far more powerful—a mechanism that can render guns and bombs virtually harmless. Their creation, “The...
16) 2001
The year is 2001, and cosmonauts uncover a mysterious monolith that has been buried on the Moon for at least three million years. To their astonishment, the monolith releases an equally mysterious pulse—a kind of signal—in the direction of Saturn after it is unearthed. Whether alarm or communication, the human race must know what the signal is—and who it was intended for.
The Discovery and its crew, assisted by the highly
...Two years before the centennial anniversary of the Titanic’s demise, two powerful corporations compete to recover the legendary vessel from the floor of the North Atlantic. With the wreckage split in two, each company—one British and one Japanese—plans...
Originally published in 1983, this collection represents some of the greatest short fiction from one of the genre's most renowned authors. These collected works were written throughout Clarke's career, from 1946 to 1981—originally appearing in science fiction magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, and OMNI.
Between these pages you'll find some of Clarke's most groundbreaking early stories—many
...In the title story of this outstanding collection, a group of cosmonauts discovers the remains of an advanced civilization in a remote star system—destroyed when their sun went supernova. They find that the civilization was very similar to Earth's—and that its people knew of their coming doom centuries before it occurred. What they find leads their chief astrophysicist—also a Jesuit priest—into a deep crisis of faith, sparked
...