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Purchased almost as a goof years ago for $1.99 at a used book shop. The cover you see in this pic is the cover on my edition. I thought it would be fun to read predictions of the “world of tomorrow” from the POV post-Sputnik/pre-Apollo. What is so amazing is just how much of this book is relevant – and how a few of the predictions (communications, mostly) have come true. But when Clarke gets into hardcore science you’ll see that the early 60s and now are, iPhones aside, quite similar.

This is a dazzling book. If you’ve ever read a reference to Clarke’s laws this is where they come from. Each chapter takes, basically, a tenant of fantasy or sci-fi (invisibility, time travel, AI) and presents a solid case as to how these things could actually happen. But there are nice, smart twists. Clarke’s inquiries never quite go where you expect them to go. And the dude’s funny. You don’t think of the author of 2001 as being funny, but he is.

There’s a lot of real science in here, but this is more readable than any textbook I remember. I hope this book is taught in schools.

Oh – and the edition I have, btw, was from the 80s, so there are some “from the present” footnotes. I’ve learned that there was an even more recent “millennium” edition which, had I known, I would have preferred to read.