Search Results for: voices-from-the-sky

First published in 1965, this brilliant, prescient book is divided into three sections:

The first concerns space travel and other aspects of the new space age: how our concept of time must be modified when we travel long distances, the space seas of tomorrow, uses of the moon, how lower gravity will affect the sports of space colonists and other fascinating ideas.

The second part is about communications satellites, a field in which the author has already played the role of true prophet.

The third section ranges widely over the side implications of the space age – scientific meddling, the lunatic fringe and the moral obligations of scientists.

‘Welcome to Heaven’, said the voice. ‘The acquisition programme is entirely for females; but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us.’

Berry, Chief of his clan, knew his people could survive the dangers of the forest; and when winter came he made them build barricades against raiders from other clans. But no barricades were strong enough to hold against the Night Comers – huge silver beings of horrifying strength who carried away the womenfolk and were drastically lowering the human population.

Were the Night Comers men, monsters or gods? Berry believed they were men; and when the inevitable night came when the women of his clan were seized, he managed to follow. He followed them to a huge tapering column of metal, which took him away from the world he had known to an island in the sky called ‘heaven’.

And there Berry realised that he had to defeat the Lords of Heaven if the people on Earth were to survive.

The man in black picked up something which had been leaning beside him. A ring perhaps two feet wide . . . yet when the man in black laid it down on the floor it was as large as he was tall.

The light went out. A bluish glow now emanated from the ring, revealing Bryda’s face ghastly gray as she leaned forward, and Yarco’s also, set and serious, and the conjurer’s impassive.

And within the ring, where moments before there had been the bare planks of the floor, a shape that moved, and opened eyes glowing like coals, and spoke.

‘What world is this?’ the awful voice inquired.



(First published 1962)