The other side of the sky
The other side of the sky (Engl. Title The Other Side of the Sky ) is a collection of science fiction short stories already by British author Arthur C. Clarke from 1958. The individual stories are in the years 1949 to 1958 in various newspapers and magazines appeared. A German translation by Heinz Bingenheimer appeared in 1961 and was last reprinted in 1986. Three short stories from the English original edition are not included in the German collection, but were each published in different anthologies. The stories are the following: The Nine Billion Names of God, His Majesty the King (Refugee) and The Star (The Star).
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The Other Side of the Sky
The following six short stories form a loosely linked series of articles from 1957.
Special delivery
The crew of a geostationary TV satellite awaits a supply rocket. This should bring more comfortable equipment. But the rocket misses its target due to a technical defect.
The Feathered Friends
A crew member smuggles a canary onto the space station. Suddenly he feels bad. Just in time, the astronauts noticed that something was wrong with the oxygen supply. The bird indicated this as a living sensor, like miners used to do underground.
Take a Deep Breath
A sleeping capsule detaches itself from the rotating space station. The oxygen supply deteriorates. As the escape pod approaches, the wrecked astronauts have to take a deep breath and transfer to the escape pod in a few seconds without a space suit.
Freedom of Space
The inauguration of three geostationary TV satellites will be celebrated through a worldwide broadcast. After the broadcast, the moderator remains on the station. He no longer wants to return to earth with all its constraints.
A visitor passes by (passer-by)
Two lovers are separated by 900 miles of space. He on the space station, she in the solar observatory. Now and then he visits her on a date. On one of the trips he thinks he sees an alien spaceship scurry past. He does not make a report because nobody would believe him.
The Call of the Stars
Contrary to his father's wishes, his son is drawn to the stars. With the first expedition he sets off for Mars.
The Wall of Darkness
Shervane lives on his home planet, which is illuminated by the Trilorne sun from the north, i.e. from the direction of its axis of rotation. It's too hot to live high up in the north, too cold in the south and a fertile strip of land in between. Far in the cold south, a huge black wall delimits the further land of Shervane's home. Having grown rich over time, Shervane decides to build a ramp to the top of the wall with the help of his friend Brayldon, a renowned architect. After seven years the time has come: Shervane is the only one to step on the wall. Everything is dark and unstructured there. He goes ahead and immediately loses the light of his sun. But there seems to be another sun in front of him. He walks up to it and sees his friend Brayldon, the ramp and his familiar land. The scholar Grayle later explains what happened: the wall is the three-dimensional analogue of a paper surface shaped like a Möbius strip. There is no other side of the wall. Whoever crosses it comes back to where he started.
Espionage of the future (security check)
In the age of industrialization and automation, there are only a few capable craftsmen left. Hans Muller is one of the few. He has mastered his art so well that he is soon hired as a prop maker for a science fiction TV series. One evening two security officers called on him and showed him pictures of his props and works of art. For the officials, however, these are the blueprints of real things, such as spaceships, Martian cities or proton cannons. They take Muller with them in their spaceship to investigate the matter more closely.
There is no fourth morning (No Morning After)
The earth is about to set because the sun is about to explode. An extragalactic civilization tries to warn people via telepathy. Only one person, William Cross, military missile researcher, is susceptible to telepathy. But he thinks everything is a hallucination and does not respond to the escape route.
The Invasion (Publicity Campaign)
Just at the moment when a blockbuster from the cinema with an invasion of hairy, spider-like aliens is getting people excited, an alien civilization is trying to establish peaceful contact with humanity. The ambassadors are immediately lynched. Then the commander of the extraterrestrial space fleet bursts the collar: he has the earth disinfected by the people and returns to his home star, irritated.
Venture to the Moon
The following six short stories form a loosely linked series of articles for the London Evening Standard from 1956. Clarke initially declined the assignment to write the 1,500-word stories for the daily newspaper, but then took up the challenge.
Company Luna (The Starting Line)
British, Americans and Russians are preparing for the first manned moon landing together. Each nation prepares its spaceship on a space station circling in the earth's orbit. The agreement is that all three take off and land on the moon at the same time. But every nation tricks and starts earlier to be the first. However, this in turn means that all three nations can still reach the moon at the same time.
Robin Hood (Robin Hood, FRS)
The lunar camp is set up and around 15 astronauts are setting up. However, a supply missile lands on an inaccessible cliff. A scientist is now developing a special bow and arrow technique to shoot a climbing rope into the rock wall. An astronaut dares to go upstairs and brings the supplies to the base camp. The astronauts are now renaming the area of this arching action to Sherwood Forest, the name of the wooded area in which Robin Hood in England once lived.
The Green Fingers
The Russian moon landing is accompanied by the botanist Vladimir Surov. On earth he had grown hardy plants in the Arctic. He tries that on the moon too. Since his colleagues don't take him seriously, he does it secretly. One day he disappears and is found dead before his first attempts at planting on the moon. The plant, later called Surov's cactus, smashed his helmet when a seed shot away. Clarke suggests that this plant was the starting point for the later food supply on the moon, and further that traces of life were found on the moon in later years.
All That Glitters
The American geophysicist Paynter comes across diamonds on a moon volcano. He brings the second largest gemstone to date to the moon base. But then he received the message from his laboratory on earth that the synthesis of artificial diamonds had been successful there. His find becomes worthless.
The Advertising Trick (Watch This Space)
The researchers on the moon are preparing a gigantic experiment: They want to distribute a large amount of sodium in the higher lunar atmosphere. The sodium should then glow brightly in the sunlight and can be examined. To do this, the researchers are positioning a nozzle on the lunar surface to spray the sodium upwards. All telescopes on the moon and earth are aimed at the lunar fireworks. The fireworks start, but the sodium spreads out in the form of the word mark of a soft drink company, the letters of which include an "O", an "A", a "C" and an "L". The engineer on earth who prepared the gigantic advertising ploy loses his job, but no longer has to worry about his financial future. The duped American commander of the moon base no longer touches a bottle of the brown fizzy drink.
Just a question of residence
After five months, the astronauts prepare for the return trip. A triumphant greeting awaits you on earth. Everyone is frantically writing reports for newspapers and magazines, as well as book manuscripts. The Russian spaceship has collapsed, its six astronauts are distributed among the other two spaceships. But who can go first? The British have a good idea: the Americans can go first. The British stay for a few more weeks. Then they only come back to earth after six months and everything they have created on the moon can then be used tax-free on earth, because the moon is not yet subject to tax legislation.
All the time in the world
Burglar Bob Ashton is hired by a woman to steal a number of valuable art and cultural goods from the British Museum in London. He also receives a special bracelet: if he slips it on, time stops in his environment. Ashton brings out that other crooks are supposed to rob other museums and galleries. After the robbery, he asks his client for the reasons. It comes from the future and wants to secure people's cultural assets because the earth will soon go under. Ashton wants to keep the bracelet and lives on in his accelerated world as a lonely person.
The Cosmic Casanova (Cosmic Casanova)
A spaceman explores remote planetary systems in the galaxy. He is particularly fond of its female residents. Even when heading for a newly discovered, inhabited planet, he flirts with his conversation partner. His imagination runs wild. When the hatch opens, however, he realizes that he has miscalculated: in height, he only reaches Liala's knee.
Out of the sun
A few dozen scientists study the sun from an observation post on the planet Mercury . They should not miss any physical detail. Then a solar flare detaches from the sun's surface and shoots towards Mercury. On the radar images, the amazed astronomers recognize regular structures in the otherwise chaotic ion gas of the eruption: an oval shape with a pulsating network. The researchers see it as an inexplicable form of life and speculate whether a kind of life is possible in the sun to which humans have never been able to establish contact.
The Endless Circle (Transience)
In three episodes from different times in human history, Clarke shows a child on the same sandy beach. 1. A child of a prehistoric horde steps out of the protective forest onto the beach for the first time and observes the water, the waves and the sand. 2. The forest has given way to a city. A child today plays on the beach, builds sandcastles and watches a large ship. 3. The city is destroyed, people are leaving the earth. For the last time a child plays on the beach until his parents call him aboard the last spaceship.
The Songs of Distant Earth
The colonists on the planet Thalassa had no contact with their mother planet Earth for around 300 years . Then they get an unexpected visit from technicians from a spaceship that is stranded nearby. These need water to repair their protective shield against meteorites. The spaceship Magellan is on its way to a distant planetary system with colonists. A romance ensues between Lora von Thalassa and Leon from the spaceship, until Leon shows her the frozen colonists on the spaceship - including Leon's pregnant wife. Both realize that they each have a fixed place in their own world. The spacemen are allowed to use the resources of Thalassa. In return, they tell the inhabitants about the developments on the mother planet in "Songs of the Far Earth".
The Nine Billion Names of God
Tibetan monks turn to a western computer manufacturer: They want a computer installed that prints out all the names of the Most High from the combination of letters. Once this task has been completed, life and the world have served their purpose, so the monks believe. The computer begins its work. When the western experts leave, the light of the stars in the sky goes out just as the last name is presumably printed. The story is one of the best known by Clarke, who received personal feedback from the Dalai Lama after it appeared.
His Majesty the King (Refugee)
The Prince of Wales visits a transport spaceship that is preparing the trip to Mars at the only recently completed space port ("Space Port") in England. Captain Saunders shows him everything. Later on a visit to London, he begins to feel sorry for the Prince of Wales, whose life can only unfold within the framework of the royal ceremony. Space travel is denied to him. Shortly after the spaceship lifts off, the Prince makes himself known as a stowaway. With the trip to Mars he took a bit of freedom.
The Star
A space mission is to investigate the remains of a star explosion 3,000 light years from Earth and to clarify the causes. The chief astronomer, a Jesuit, concludes from his observations that there must have been human-like life there. The inhabitants of the planetary system saw the catastrophe of a supernova coming and saved their cultural assets on the outermost planets (similar to the dwarf planet Pluto in our solar system). Only this outermost planet survived the inferno, and there the Jesuit discovered the remains in an underground vault. Investigating the alien civilization will keep people busy for a long time, but the Jesuit has already found one thing: the time and place in the sky of the explosion coincide with the star of Bethlehem. The Jesuit sees the Christian faith facing its greatest challenge: Can there be a God who extinguished a distant civilization for this heavenly sign? AC Clarke received the 1956 Hugo Award for this 1955 story .
literature
- Arthur C. Clarke: The Other Side of the Sky , Harcourt, 1958 (English original edition)
- Arthur C. Clarke: The Other Side of Heaven , Goldmann, 1961 (German first edition)
- Arthur C. Clarke: The Other Side of Heaven , Goldmann, 1986 ISBN 978-3442230198