Book dossier

Islands in the Sky

by Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Carroll

When young Roy Malcolm won the Aviation Quiz Contest, the sponsor, World Airways, never dreamed he could legally claim a trip to the Inner Space Station as his prize. Set in the middle of the twenty-first century, this is an amazing yarn about a teen-ager's adventures and conflicts five hundred miles up on a strange, artificial outpost that circles our planet. What promised to be merely a sightseeing jaunt into space soon shaped up into the most thrilling weeks in Roy's life. For shortly after his arrival at the outpost a mysterious and untalkative spaceship "anchored" ten miles off the station - and its suspicious behavior fitted in perfectly with the space crew's ideas on interplanetary crime. The surprising outcome of this uninvited visit, a race-for-life mission aboard a long-abandoned ship, a weird mishap that necessitates a trip around the moon spark this story with thrills and suspense. Bristling with excitement, this is a tale that can't be matched in science fiction, for the author, Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, knows how to translate his vast knowledge of the universe into an ingenious novel. Told by an acclaimed expert in the field, ISLANDS IN THE SKY is unique not only as entertainment but as the most lucid, most accurate picture of man's proposed conquest of space.