Hyperion ​(angol)

Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Egy ​pap, egy katona, egy költő, egy tudós, egy nyomozó, egy templomos kapitány és egy diplomata. Hét ember, hét teljesen eltérő életút. S ami közös bennük: a Hyperion. A 29. században az emberiség uralma galaxisokra terjed ki, polgárai gyarmatbolygók százait népesítik be. A Hegemóniát azonban külső és belső veszélyek is fenyegetik: küszöbön áll a háború a barbár számkivetettekkel, miközben az emberi civilizáció életét segítő, kiismerhetetlen MI-k rejtélyes terveket kovácsolnak. A pattanásig feszült helyzetben hét zarándok indul útnak egy peremvidéki bolygó, a Hyperion felé. Úticéljuk a téridő törvényeinek fittyet hányó, legendás Időkripták, és a félistenként tisztelt, rettegett gyilkológép, a Shrike. Heten vágnak neki az útnak, ám közülük csak egy élheti túl a zarándoklatot. Annak az egynek viszont teljesülhet leghőbb kívánsága.

Kurt Vonnegut - Az ​ötös számú vágóhíd / Slaughterhouse-Five
6., ​kétnyelvű ünnepi kiadás Van okunk ünnepelni. Kerek negyven esztendeje, 1969-ben jelent meg első ízben ez a méretében szerény, irodalomtörténeti jelentőségét illetően azonban korszakos mű. A szerző, ez a "tisztavérű" német, 1944-ben, alig huszonkét évesen az amerikai hadsereg felderítőjeként német hadifogságba esett a belga hadszintéren. Drezdába vitték. Az ékszerdoboz-szépségű barokk kórházvárost a brit légierő nem sokkal a második világháború befejezése előtt porig égette. Bosszúból. Coventryért, Londonért. Néhány óra alatt százharmincötezer ember, csupa öreg, gyermek, asszony és hadirokkant égett szénné. Katona egy sem akadt köztük. Vonnegutnak és társainak jutott a feladat, hogy a közparkokban hatalmas piramisokat építsenek a hullákból, és elhamvasszák őket. Tömegmészárlásról alighanem teljes képtelenség katartikus, ráadásul mulatságos könyvet írni. A szerző maga huszonöt éven át kísérletezett vele, mire végül megszületett a nevezetes "Dezda-kötet", s általa a világméretű Vonnegut-kultusz. 1969 óta millió és millió példány fogyott el a könyvből. Az írót nemcsak a hazájában, de az egész bolygón afféle prófétaként tisztelik. A groteszk, az abszurd, a fekete humor apostola ő. Meghalt, mégis elevenebben hat, mint valaha. E kétnyelvű kötet főhajtás a megrendítő erejű alkotás és Kurt Vonnegut géniusza előtt.

Philip K. Dick - Do ​Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
World ​War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal -- the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit -- and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted...

Philip K. Dick - Do ​Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
World ​War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal -- the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit -- and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted...

Dan Simmons - Endymion ​(angol)
Two ​hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in _Fall of Hyperion,_ Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning. With help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The Shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances, and while many questions were raised in _Hyperion_ and _Fall of Hyperion,_ still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue.

Dan Simmons - Endymion ​(angol)
Two ​hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in _Fall of Hyperion,_ Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning. With help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The Shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances, and while many questions were raised in _Hyperion_ and _Fall of Hyperion,_ still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue.

Orson Scott Card - Ender's ​Game
The ​human race faces annihilation. An alien threat is on the horizon, ready to strike. And if humanity is to be defended, the government must create the greatest military commander in history. The brilliant young Ender Wiggin is their last hope. But first he must survive the rigours of a brutal military training program - to prove that he can be the leader of all leaders. A saviour for mankind must be produced, through whatever means possible. But are they creating a hero or a monster? This is the multiple award-winning classic ENDER'S GAME - a groundbreaking tale of war, strategy and survival.

Orson Scott Card - Ender's ​Game
The ​human race faces annihilation. An alien threat is on the horizon, ready to strike. And if humanity is to be defended, the government must create the greatest military commander in history. The brilliant young Ender Wiggin is their last hope. But first he must survive the rigours of a brutal military training program - to prove that he can be the leader of all leaders. A saviour for mankind must be produced, through whatever means possible. But are they creating a hero or a monster? This is the multiple award-winning classic ENDER'S GAME - a groundbreaking tale of war, strategy and survival.

Daniel Keyes - Flowers ​for Algernon
Charlie ​Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental tranformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.

Daniel Keyes - Flowers ​for Algernon
Charlie ​Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental tranformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.

Dan Simmons - The ​Hyperion Omnibus
The ​Hyperion books are credited with single-handedly reinventing and reinvigorating SF in the 1990s. A broad canvased, hugely imaginative and exciting SF epic, the books draw on the works of Keats and provide a uniquely intelligent and literary approach with cutting edge science, compelling characterisation and edge-of-your-seat excitement. The story is continued in ENDYMION and THE RISE OF ENDYMION, which Gollancz will also be publishing in an omnibus volume.

Dan Simmons - The ​Hyperion Omnibus
The ​Hyperion books are credited with single-handedly reinventing and reinvigorating SF in the 1990s. A broad canvased, hugely imaginative and exciting SF epic, the books draw on the works of Keats and provide a uniquely intelligent and literary approach with cutting edge science, compelling characterisation and edge-of-your-seat excitement. The story is continued in ENDYMION and THE RISE OF ENDYMION, which Gollancz will also be publishing in an omnibus volume.

Iain M. Banks - The ​Player of Games
The ​Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

Iain M. Banks - The ​Player of Games
The ​Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

Kurt Vonnegut - The ​Sirens of Titan
When ​Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan - one of Saturn's moons - is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft...

Kurt Vonnegut - The ​Sirens of Titan
When ​Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan - one of Saturn's moons - is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft...

Cormac McCarthy - The ​Road
Cormac ​McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

Cormac McCarthy - The ​Road
Cormac ​McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit ​451 (angol)
The ​hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwells 1984 and Huxleys Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilizations enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradburys powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit ​451 (angol)
The ​hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwells 1984 and Huxleys Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilizations enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradburys powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

Paul McAuley - The ​Quiet War
Twenty-third ​century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems. On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition. The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards.Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war . ..

Paul McAuley - The ​Quiet War
Twenty-third ​century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems. On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition. The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards.Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war . ..

Walter Jon Williams - Aristoi
Williams ​evokes a future reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, in which the promises of science and technology are fulfilled. In the far-distant future, only a specially adapted group of people--the Aristoi--can operate the ultra-advanced computer system that controls their vast interstellar empire.

Walter Jon Williams - Aristoi
Williams ​evokes a future reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, in which the promises of science and technology are fulfilled. In the far-distant future, only a specially adapted group of people--the Aristoi--can operate the ultra-advanced computer system that controls their vast interstellar empire.

Kim Stanley Robinson - 2312 ​(angol)
The ​year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

Kim Stanley Robinson - 2312 ​(angol)
The ​year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

Paul J. McAuley - Eternal ​Light
In ​the aftermath of an interstellar war an enigmatic star is discovered, travelling towards the Solar System from the galactic core. Its appearance adds a new and dangerous factor in the turbulent politics of the inhabited worlds as the rival factions - the power-holders of the ReUnited Nations, the rebels who secretly oppose their power, and the Religious Witnesses - all see advantages to be gained. But what awesome technology started the star on its journey half a million years ago - and why?

Paul J. McAuley - Eternal ​Light
In ​the aftermath of an interstellar war an enigmatic star is discovered, travelling towards the Solar System from the galactic core. Its appearance adds a new and dangerous factor in the turbulent politics of the inhabited worlds as the rival factions - the power-holders of the ReUnited Nations, the rebels who secretly oppose their power, and the Religious Witnesses - all see advantages to be gained. But what awesome technology started the star on its journey half a million years ago - and why?

Frank Herbert - Destination: ​Void
Soon ​after the start, they went mad, the three powerful, disembodied human brains that should have guided them for the 200-year journey to Tau Ceti. Could they manufacture a replacement before emerging from the Solar System into nothingness? Would the circuits reproduce the characteristics they needed, characteristics like conscience, love and guilt? Or would they end up with a zombie? a monster? a power-crazy fanatic? - or a genius? What they did build was fantastic, unguessable. Yet, looking back, it was always on the cards.

Frank Herbert - Destination: ​Void
Soon ​after the start, they went mad, the three powerful, disembodied human brains that should have guided them for the 200-year journey to Tau Ceti. Could they manufacture a replacement before emerging from the Solar System into nothingness? Would the circuits reproduce the characteristics they needed, characteristics like conscience, love and guilt? Or would they end up with a zombie? a monster? a power-crazy fanatic? - or a genius? What they did build was fantastic, unguessable. Yet, looking back, it was always on the cards.

John Wyndham - Meteor ​and Other Stories (Oxford Bookworms)
It ​was just a smooth round metal ball, less than a metre in diameter. Although it was still hot from its journey through the huge nothingness of space, it looked quite harmless. But what was it, exactly? A meteor, perhaps - just one of those pieces of rock from outer space that occasionally fall down on to the planet Earth. But meteors don't usually make strange hissing sounds... In this collection of four of his famous science-fiction stories, John Wyndham creates visions of the future that make us think carefully about the way live now.

John Wyndham - Meteor ​and Other Stories (Oxford Bookworms)
It ​was just a smooth round metal ball, less than a metre in diameter. Although it was still hot from its journey through the huge nothingness of space, it looked quite harmless. But what was it, exactly? A meteor, perhaps - just one of those pieces of rock from outer space that occasionally fall down on to the planet Earth. But meteors don't usually make strange hissing sounds... In this collection of four of his famous science-fiction stories, John Wyndham creates visions of the future that make us think carefully about the way live now.

Joe Haldeman - Peace ​and War
Private ​William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home. . .

Joe Haldeman - Peace ​and War
Private ​William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home. . .

H. G. Wells - The ​Time Machine
When ​the "Time Traveller" courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700 - and everything had changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings - unearth their secret and then return to his own time - until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen. H. G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition, and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction. Wells touches gently on time travel as a notion, but mostly The Time Machine is about the terminal future he sees for mankind: His nameless time traveler ventures to the world that will be 802,701 A.D., And there he finds mankind divided among the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are a gentle, winsome, idle race, who do not labor; the Morlocks, in contrast, are a barbaric race -- who use the Eloi for food. It's a grim vision, and a gripping one. There's a reason that The Time Machine has become a classic.

H. G. Wells - The ​Time Machine
When ​the "Time Traveller" courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700 - and everything had changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings - unearth their secret and then return to his own time - until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen. H. G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition, and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction. Wells touches gently on time travel as a notion, but mostly The Time Machine is about the terminal future he sees for mankind: His nameless time traveler ventures to the world that will be 802,701 A.D., And there he finds mankind divided among the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are a gentle, winsome, idle race, who do not labor; the Morlocks, in contrast, are a barbaric race -- who use the Eloi for food. It's a grim vision, and a gripping one. There's a reason that The Time Machine has become a classic.

Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (Oxford Bookworms)
'High above them, Lora and Clyde heard a sound their world had not heard for centuries - the thin scream of a starship coming in from outer space, leaving a long white tail like smoke across the clear blue sky. They looked at each other in wonder. After three hundred years of silence, Earth had reached out once more to touch Thalassa ...' And with the starship comes knowledge, and love, and pain. In these five science-fiction stories Arthur C. Clarke takes us travelling through the universe into the unknown, but always possible future."

Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (Oxford Bookworms)
'High above them, Lora and Clyde heard a sound their world had not heard for centuries - the thin scream of a starship coming in from outer space, leaving a long white tail like smoke across the clear blue sky. They looked at each other in wonder. After three hundred years of silence, Earth had reached out once more to touch Thalassa ...' And with the starship comes knowledge, and love, and pain. In these five science-fiction stories Arthur C. Clarke takes us travelling through the universe into the unknown, but always possible future."