The City and the Stars

The short story tells about a future of aquaculture.

Writer, lecturer, skin diver, travel expert, and interpreter of science for the lay audience, Arthur Clarke is not quite all things to all men but he is giving it a good try. He helped British pilots outwit thein the Battle of Britain. He was one of the founders of the British rocket society. He has had no fewer than six sightings of UFOs (all of which he explains in non-saucerian terms). And, in general, he has shown a remarkable capacity for being where the excitement is, and coming back to tell the rest of us about it. He is also a science fiction writer at the very rarefied level of general excellence shared by only a few. You already know this, of course; but if you didn't you would soon learn in reading—

When 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...

This sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey" answers the questions left by its predecessor. Captain Chandler investigates the lapse in HAL's sanity and the disappearance of Dave Bowman...

In 2061, Heywood Floyd must once again confront Dave Bowman, a newly independent HAL, and the limitless power of an unseen alien race that has decided that Mankind is to play a role in the evolution of the galaxy--whether it wants to or not. Continuing the spellbinding excitement begun in "2001: A Space Odyssey"...

One thousand years after the Jupiter mission to explore the mysterious Monolith had been destroyed, after Dave Bowman was transformed into the Star Child, Frank Poole drifted in space, frozen and forgotten, leaving the supercomputer HAL inoperable. But now Poole has returned to life, awakening in a world far different from the one he left behind--and just as the Monolith may be stirring once again...