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2061: Odyssey 3

Page 20

by Arthur C. Clarke


  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

  6: The Greening of Ganymede

  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

  27: Rosie

  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

  47: Shards

  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

 

 

 


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