Name: Islands in the Sky
ISBN: 9780451017697

Islands in the Sky

When young Roy Malcolm won the Aviation Quiz Contest, the sponsor, World Airways, never dreamed he could legally claim a trip to the Inner Space Station as his prize. Set in the middle of the twenty-first century, this is an amazing yarn about a teen-ager's adventures and conflicts five hundred miles up on a strange, artificial outpost that circles our planet. What promised to be merely a sightseeing jaunt into space soon shaped up into the most thrilling weeks in Roy's life. For shortly after his arrival at the outpost a mysterious and untalkative spaceship "anchored" ten miles off the station - and its suspicious behavior fitted in perfectly with the space crew's ideas on interplanetary crime. The surprising outcome of this uninvited visit, a race-for-life mission aboard a long-abandoned ship, a weird mishap that necessitates a trip around the moon spark this story with thrills and suspense. Bristling with excitement, this is a tale that can't be matched in science fiction, for the author, Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, knows how to translate his vast knowledge of the universe into an ingenious novel. Told by an acclaimed expert in the field, ISLANDS IN THE SKY is unique not only as entertainment but as the most lucid, most accurate picture of man's proposed conquest of space.

What Hacker News says

matthewdgreenOct 2021

The Arthur C. Clarke novel "Islands in the Sky" covers something similar, including a reckless actor who decides to do his own stunts. Things don't go well. Still a fun book, though probably more aimed at kids.

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everyoneFeb 2015

I have strong opinions about this. My criteria for a book being science fiction and not fantasy is that is must be based on scientific thinking. The author must have done some work to determine whether whats happening in his book is at least plausible according to real science, and then work out the details of how it would actually function. So I regard most "science fiction" books and almost all "science fiction" films as really being fantasy. Essentially they are works of fantasy or dramatic fiction re-skinned with lasers and aliens instead of magic and goblins (to a great or lesser extent).

So dune is a great book but it is 90% fantasy, there is only a little bit of research done by the author on desert ecosystems.

My favourite real science fiction author is Arthur C clarke. some good books by him...

earthlight

the fountains of paradise

islands in the sky

the sands of mars

rama

songs of distant earth

Also would recommend accelerando by Charles Stross and the mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson

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everyoneOct 2014

So dune is a great book but it is 90% fantasy, there is only a little bit of research done by the author on desert ecosystems.

My favourite real science fiction author is Arthur C clarke. some good books by him...

earthlight

the fountains of paradise

islands in the sky

the sands of mars

rama

songs of distant earth

Also would recommend accelerando by Charles Stross and the mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson

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rsynnottOct 2020

> The Cold Equations

I never liked this very much, because the whole "we can only take exactly this mass, and an extra 60kg or whatever will doom us" thing is such an obvious design and/or process flaw. If you really are dependent on that (though I don't think the author made the case that they were, convincingly), you need to ensure it (by, for instance, weighing the craft); it's ridiculously optimistic to think that someone never accidentally leaves a piece of equipment lying around, say.

And even if you accept the absurd premise, it still doesn't work; the stowaway would presumably have used consumables (oxygen, if nothing else), and if you're that weight constrained you won't be carrying excess consumables anyway, so you're still doomed even if you lose the stowaway.

If anything, it's the same thing that bothers me about some 'softer' sci-fi; take a story you want to tell, and construct some completely implausible rules to make it work. To add insult to injury here, it's... not a very good story, IMO. Also, I believe Clarke hinted at a similar scenario in Islands in the Sky, published two years previously, though it didn't actually _happen_ there.

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