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From This is True for 16 March 2008 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Arthur C. Clarke List Price: $14.00 Amazon Price: $11.20 Editorial Review: The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city--intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began. But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race. To those who resist, it becomes evident that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. As civilization approaches the crossroads, will the Overlords spell the end for humankind . . . or the beginning?  By: Arthur C. Clarke List Price: $7.99 Amazon Price: $7.99 Editorial Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey is the classic science fiction novel that changed the way we looked at the stars and ourselves.... 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired what is perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made- brilliantly imagined by the late Stanley Kubrick.... 2001 is finally here.... "Dazzling...wrenching, eerie, a mind-bender."-Time "Full of poetry, scientific imagination and typically wry Clarke wit. By standing the universe on its head, he makes us see the ordinary universe in a different light...a complex allegory about the history of the world."-The New Yorker "Brain-boggling." -Life "Clark has constructed an effective work of fiction...with the meticulous creation of an extraterrestrial environment...Mr. Clark is a master."--Library Journal "Breathtaking."-Saturday ReviewWhen an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization. Clarke wrote this novel while Stanley Kubrick created the film, the two collaborating on both projects. The novel is much more detailed and intimate, and definitely easier to comprehend. Even though history has disproved its "predictions," it's still loaded with exciting and awe-inspiring science fiction. --Brooks Peck  By: H. G. Wells List Price: $7.00 Amazon Price: $7.00 Editorial Review: ?No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man?s and yet as mortal as his own.? Thus begins one of the most terrifying and morally prescient science fiction novels ever penned. Beginning with a series of strange flashes in the distant night sky, the Martian attack initially causes little concern on Earth. Then the destruction erupts?ten massive aliens roam England and destroy with heat rays everything in their path. Very soon mankind finds itself on the brink of extinction. Wells raises questions of mortality, man?s place in nature, and the evil lurking in the technological future?questions that remain urgently relevant in the twenty-first century.This is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories, first published by H.G. Wells in 1898. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator tells readers that "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's..." Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat. With horror his narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance, and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much a corralled. --Craig E. Engler  By: Andre Norton List Price: $1.00 Amazon Price: $0.80 Editorial Review: Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed--for humans at any rate.  By: Arthur C. Clarke List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $10.17 Editorial Review: "A daring romp through the solar system and a worthy successor to 2001." *Carl Sagan Nine years after the disastrous Discovery mission to Jupiter in 2001, a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition sets out to rendezvous with the derelict spacecraft *to search the memory banks of the mutinous computer HAL 9000 for clues to what went wrong . . . and what became of Commander Dave Bowman. Without warning, a Chinese expedition targets the same objective, turning the recovery mission into a frenzied race for the precious information Discovery may hold about the enigmatic monolith that orbits Jupiter. Meanwhile, the being that was once Dave Bowman *the only human to unlock the mystery of the monolith *streaks toward Earth on a vital mission of its own . . . "Clarke deftly blends discovery, philosophy, and a newly acquired sense of play." *Time "2010 is easily Clarkes' best book in over a decade." *The San Diego Tribune |
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