Arthur C. Clarke’s "The Worlds of Arthur C. Clarke:
Beyond Heaven" Summary

This book is a voluminous collection of the writer’s short fiction. The text is held together by a paradoxical fusion of the everyday irony of London pub regulars with the cold drama of interstellar space. The work was continuous. From 1953 to 1958, the author created the short stories while constantly traveling between London, New York, Miami, and Colombo, publishing them as separate collections in 1957 and 1958.

The novella "Star" earned its author a Hugo Award in 1956. It was volume twenty-one in the "Worlds of Arthur C. Clarke" series, sharing the shelf space with "2000: A Space Odyssey" and "The City and the Stars."

Stories of the Fleet Street Tavern

Scientists and literary figures gather at the White Hart pub in London on Wednesdays. Stories are told. The tireless Harry Purvis, a metal pipe in his teeth, regales the company with tales of daring inventors, absurd disasters, and astonishing mechanisms created in basement laboratories by eccentric enthusiasts for the sake of quick enrichment or pure scientific curiosity. The Fenton device dampens sound. A disgruntled student, Kendall, disrupts his flighty lover’s opera premiere with the help of this decibel-absorbing box. The device explodes from the excess acoustic energy accumulated.

Professor Hinkelberg recounts an attempt to train a giant deep-sea squid using electrical signals directly in the ocean waves. A fuse suddenly blows. French assistant Georges Dupin creates an electronic device for magnetically recording human sensations, captures the exquisite dinner of an old gourmet coupled with the passionate passion of a hired model, and is subsequently killed by a gunshot from his jealous fiancée, Yvonne. Set decorator Blumberg flees. A Hollywood prop cannon used for the filming of an interplanetary sci-fi action movie accidentally generates a real death ray and demolishes the studio wall. Panic surrounding a wrecked truck culminates in a call to an experienced beekeeper.

Physiologist Lister finds the perfect melody for his brain and freezes in an incurable trance before the humming equipment. His brain has locked forever. The military computer of Project Clausewitz, under the influence of the secret electronic circuits of the disgruntled mathematician Shy, categorically refuses to solve the tactical problems of Pentagon generals, showering his shrill superiors with choice typewritten curses, demanding pure equations and abstract formulas. Biologist Takato retreats into seclusion. On a remote Pacific atoll, a Japanese scientist patiently trains termites to use tiny tools, intending to gift the ant civilization with a destructive fire. Uncle Homer cleverly passes off an exploded moonshine still as a secret osmotic bomb.

Dr. Romano extracts uranium from seawater using molecular sieves and trades his floating plant for a wealthy Texas businessman’s luxury yacht. The deal is sealed instantly. Timid clerk Hercules Keating feeds a predatory Amazonian orchid raw meat to eliminate his domineering Aunt Henrietta, causing the shy plant to panic and tremble before the deep-voiced guest in a tweed suit, obsequiously fawning over her fingers.

Captain Dawson builds an iceberg. A hollow iceberg on the submarine’s deck conceals the interception of a secret missile off the coast of Florida. Australian physicist Cavor stumbles at the entrance to the zero-gravity zone and falls from a potential altitude of six thousand kilometers at escape velocity, bursting into flames as a blinding fireball.

Young Sigmund Snoring takes his uncle’s insomnia serum and falls asleep for five years to protect a substantial inheritance. His marriage is saved by calculation. Jealous astronomer Edgar Burton mounts a heavy army searchlight mirror on a hill, blinding a car speeding around a sharp bend at night and accidentally pushing his young rival, Rupert, off a 30-meter drop as he rushes for a heart-to-heart talk. Sound engineer Osbert Inch counts the words. The family instrument is destroyed after his talkative wife falls from the fourth floor of a London apartment building. Ermintrude takes Parvis away.

Orbital Watch and Earth Limits

In a Tibetan monastery, American engineers are configuring the Model 5 computer to continuously generate nine billion names of the Creator. The lamas await the finale. Hired specialists George and Chuck hurriedly descend on sturdy mountain horses to a distant valley, watching in the icy air above the snow-capped Himalayan ranges the sudden, silent fading of star constellations, flaring up for the last time. Prince Henry chooses space. An escape on the cargo ship Centaur frees the crowned youth from the stifling ceremonies of court for a free flight to the Martian plains.

At an altitude of thirty-five thousand kilometers, three habitable satellites form a closed relay network above the equator. Astronauts settle into orbit. A smuggled canary, Cleribel, saves the station’s duty shift from certain asphyxiation when the air filters fail; four fitters survive a desperate twenty-second jump through the void without protective spacesuits, returning to life in an escape hatch. A date reveals a secret. The chief of transport, during a secret flight on a jet scooter to visit his beloved at a nearby observatory, spots an ancient alien starship speeding past. The ships of the first Mars expedition leave the near-Earth base forever on the eve of the year 2000.

Mysteries of space and lunar paths

In a world with a single sun, Trilorn, the young man Shervan builds a gigantic stone staircase to the top of the impenetrable black Wall at the southern edge of the inhabited lands. The barrier conceals a paradox. A long journey along the barrier’s ridge, through darkness and cold, leads the brave man to the foot of his own staircase, confirming his old mentor Grail’s hunch about the one-sided topology of enclosed space, like a twisted strip of paper.

Set decorator Müller is arrested by aliens. Alien counterintelligence mistakes a strikingly accurate prop from a children’s television series for a leak of genuine military secrets from a galactic civilization. In an Earth laboratory, drunken rocket engineer Cross mistakes the life-saving mental call of telepaths from a dying star system for alcoholic delirium, ruining humanity’s chance of evacuation before a solar flare.

The first joint lunar expedition of British, Soviet, and American spacecraft begins with a cunning simultaneous launch of all three crews. Explorers explore the Sea of Thirst. Astronomer Williams shoots arrows from a homemade bow onto a nylon rope on a steep cliff to free stuck containers, while Soviet biologist Surov dies from a shot from a hard seed of the vacuum cactus he developed. A sodium flash causes a scandal. A scientific launch of a glowing cloud in the lunar sky turns into a gigantic commercial advertisement for a fizzy drink due to a secret Earth template inserted into the rocket nozzle. The British extend their watch for two weeks to legally exempt book royalties from extortionate taxes.

Clashes of civilizations and the abyss of time

Aggressive advertising for a sci-fi film about terrifying spiders drives humanity into a collective frenzy. Panic destroys the planet. Peaceful furry ambassadors from a distant galactic empire are torn to pieces by a terrified New York crowd right outside a city park, forcing the alien star fleet to painlessly sterilize the entire population of the distraught globe within twenty minutes.

Thief Ashton robs a museum. A mysterious visitor from the future provides a London burglar with a time-acceleration bracelet to steal cultural rarities before the planetary core explodes, condemning the greedy thief to eternal solitude in a frozen world. On the planet Arcadia, spy Joe discovers a beautiful, three-meter-tall translator.

A Jesuit astrophysicist explores the remnants of a supernova in the Phoenix Nebula and experiences a devastating crisis of faith. The crypt preserves masterpieces. A vanished, beautiful civilization left behind a treasure trove of its genius on a distant outer planet, and ruthless mathematical calculations prove to the learned priest that the funeral pyre of this innocent world shone over earthly Bethlehem at the dawn of the Christian era. Mercury’s radar detects life.

A plasma giant ejected by a prominence perishes from a deadly impact with the icy, dense matter of a rocky planet. On a gently sloping ocean shore, a primordial cub gives way to a modern boy with sandcastles, and the last spaceship carries humans into eternal exile before the arrival of the devouring star of the Dark Nebula.

Magellan’s Ocean Shelter

The interstellar ark Magellan makes an emergency landing on the ocean planet Thalassa to restore its ice shield against cosmic dust. The sleeping colonists are motionless. Assistant ship’s engineer Leon Carell steps onto the sandy shore and meets islander Laura, disrupting her tranquil engagement to local fisherman Clyde and awakening in her young heart a yearning for unknown Earth cities. Music overwhelms the islanders. A broadcast of ancient Earth recordings in the Palm Bay auditorium reveals the bitterness of interstellar exile and unites the lovers in the embrace of a night forest.

A colossal waterspout, generated by antigravity, lifts a million tons of ocean moisture into orbit around the planet to freeze the protective cone. The ship is ready for launch. Leon lifts Laura into the starship’s zero-gravity environment and leads her to the crystal cell of his sleeping wife, who is awaiting her first child in a three-century slumber. This forces the girl to realize the unbridgeable chasm between the world of eternal wanderers and the tranquil life under the palm trees of Thalassa. Laura returns to Clyde. The blinding flash of the Magellan’s sublight engines fades beyond the horizon, carrying the travelers through the cold abyss to a distant, unknown planet.