Search Results for: planet-probability

The Frames were only a realization of the ultimate form of escape. Books, films, sensors, complete total experience – and finally the Frames. The saviors of civilization had shown the way: move the tribes of Americans to Europe, the tribes of the Germans to Spain, the tribes of the English to Switzerland and permutate the combinations endlessly. Use trains, then aircraft, then spaceships.

The Frames of the Thirtieth Century were a logical extension of the Mechanical Age’s exploitation of the means of mass travel. Now, whole populations moved to new areas of experience. New worlds – new re-created worlds – were manufactured for them. And it had all begun on Talisker. But whatever had left the monstrous scenery on Talisker’s desert had not begun anywhere in our universe.

He had forgotten his real name, so they called him “Spingarn” after the last role he had played. He was the man the directors of the Frames regarded as their major headache – for he was guilty of two unforgivable arrogances. He had programmed himself into every one of the vast world-staged dramas he had directed – and he had reactivated the forbidden Frames of the pre-human planet of Talisker.

In those days of an overcrowded colonized cosmos, a thousand years from now, the Frames were the major means of diversion. Historical re-creations and fictional dramas played out with planets as stages and while populations as actors – the Frame directors and their robot assistants had become the masters of all life.

They could not destroy Spingarn, THE PROBABILITY MAN, but they could sentence him to undo the damage he had done. So he was sent to the mad Frames of Talisker to unravel the secret of their origin a billion years before the universe

BARWORLD! For all the years that BILL had served in the Troopers, with all the hard beds, hard heads and no creds, any booze on offer was probably embalming fluid, or worse.



BARWORLD! An assignment there promised bubbly, brandy and beer galore – enough to give BILL’s right arms (both of them) at last some idea of just what they were for.



But that was before Uncle Nancy’s Cross-Dressing Emporium. And the Time/Space Resonation Nexus. And the Hippy from Hell.



They were enough to completely alter a person’s perceptions of reality.



And, like, totally bum him out.

Can it be that of all the billions of probably planets, revolving around strange suns, in far corners of the Universe, ours is the only home of intelligent life?
If life has managed to come into being elsewhere on some bizarre, grotesque world, just how strange and alien will that life be?
What if its own planet is dying?
It would need a new environment, and the questing ships of its explorers would traverse the void. What if they find Earth and decide that it suits their purpose perfectly… except for man? How would the battle be fought and who would win?

General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars – under forged orders and in defiance of Presidential commands. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity. And with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the uncharted regions of space ahead.

Thus began Man’s first mission to the unexplored universe. Shore knew that before him lay danger, probable disillusion – maybe even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would face on the planet of the Grey-furs for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Centre or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home.

By Space Possessed brings together Clarke’s essays on travel to the planets and beyond in a form where they can be read individually or as a continuing narrative. It describes the history of an enthusiasm that took a Somerset farm boy to international fame, starting with the delightful, self-deprecating humour of the early days of British Interplanetary Society and proceeding to deeper concerns when at last the early daydreams, mocked by so many, began to come radiantly true. Along the way there are delights of Clarke’s prediction of the Moon landing, the lecture which prompted Bernard Shaw to join the British Interplanetary Society and the birthpangs of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Humanity’s future lies in space. These ever-topical essays, covering crucial years of interplanetary speculation and exploration show that one man, Arthur C. Clarke, has always been capable of foreseeing possibilities and probabilities, and opening up magnificent vistas to those willing to look with unblinkered eyes and minds. This is a testament to his vision.