I trust that my old friend Dr Luis Alvarez will enjoy my wild extrapolation of his researches, and thank him for much help and inspiration over the past thirty-five years.
Special thanks to NASA's Gentry Lee - my coauthor on Cradle - for hand-carrying from Los Angeles to Colombo the Kaypro 2000 lap-portable which allowed me to write this book in various exotic and - even more important - secluded locations.
Chapters 5, 58 and 59 are partly based on material adapted from 2010: Odyssey Two. (If an author cannot plagiarize himself, who can he plagiarize?)
Finally, I hope that Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov has now forgiven me for linking him with Dr Andrei Sakharov (still exiled in Gorky when 2010 was jointly dedicated to them). And I express my sincere regrets to my genial Moscow host and editor Vasili Zharchenko for getting him into deep trouble by borrowing the names of various dissidents - most of them, I am happy to say, no longer imprisoned. One day, I hope, the subscribers to Tekhnika Molodezhy can read the installments of 2010 which so mysteriously disappeared...
Arthur C. Clarke
Colombo, Sri Lanka
25 April 1987
Addendum
Since this manuscript was completed, something strange has happened: I was under the impression that I was writing fiction, but I may have been wrong. For consider the following sequence of events:
1. In 2010: Odyssey Two the spaceship Leonov was powered by the Sakharov Drive.
2. Now, half a century later (Chapter 8), spaceships are powered by the muon-catalysed, "cold fusion" reaction discovered by Luis Alvarez et al in the 1950s. (See the autobiography Alvarez: Basic Books, NY, 1987.)
3. According to the London Times, 17 August 1987, Dr Sakharov is now working on nuclear power production based on... "muon-catalysed, or 'cold' fusion, which exploits the properties of an exotic, short-lived elementary particle related to the electron... Advocates of 'cold fusion' point out that all the key reactions work best at just 900 degrees centigrade..."
I now await, with great interest, comments from Nobel Laureates Sakharov and Alvarez on the roles I have given them.
Arthur C. Clarke
30 September 1987
Table of Contents
Author's Note
I: The Magic Mountain
1: The Frozen Years
2: First Sight
3: Reentry
4: Tycoon
5: Out of the Ice
7: Transit
8: Starfleet
9: Mount Zeus
10: Ship of Fools
11: The Lie
12: Oom Paul
13: "No One Told Us To Bring Swimsuits..."
14: Search
II: The Valley Of The Black Snow
15: Rendezvous
16: Touchdown
17: The Valley of Black Snow
18: Old Faithful
19: At the End of the Tunnel
20: Recall
III: Europan Roulette
21: The Politics of Exile
22: Hazardous Cargo
23: Inferno
24: Shaka the Great
25: The Shrouded World
26: Night Watch
28: Dialogue
29: Descent
30: Galaxy Down
31: The Sea of Galilee
IV: At The Water Hole
32: Diversion
33: Pit Stop
34: Car Wash
35: Adrift
36: The Alien Shore
V: Through The Asteroids
37: Star
38: Icebergs of Space
39: The Captain's Table
40: Monsters from Earth
41: Memoirs of a Centenarian
42: Minilith
VI: HAVEN
43: Salvage
44: Endurance
45: Mission
46: Shuttle
48: Lucy
VII: THE GREAT WALL
49: Shrine
50: Open City
51: Phantom
52: On the Couch
53: Pressure Cooker
54: Reunion
55: Magma
56: Perturbation Theory>
57: Interlude on Ganymede
VIII: The Kingdom Of Sulfur
58: Fire and Ice
59: Trinity
3001
60: Midnight in the Plaza
Acknowledgments
Addendum