
Prelude to Space
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Derek Perkins
-
By:
-
Arthur C. Clarke
About this listen
Here is the compelling story of the launching of Prometheus - Earth's first true spaceship - and of the men who made it happen.
Dirk Alexson, chronicler of the greatest space adventure of all time: He was chosen to immortalize the incredible story of the men and their heroic mission.
Sir Robert Derwent, Direct-General of Interplanetary-London Headquarters for the International Space-Flight Project: He was the man who got the mission off the ground and into the pages of history.
Professor Maxton, the world's leading atomic engineer: He designed the huge ship's drive units and he waited with the rest of the world to see if the project would be a success.
©1954 Arthur C. Clarke (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Earthlight
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time: 200 years after man's first landing on the Moon. There are permanent populations established on the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Outer space inhabitants have formed a new political entity, the Federation, and between the Federation and Earth a growing rivalry has developed. Earthlight is the story of this emerging conflict.
-
-
A brilliant science fiction spy work
- By Daniel Davis on 06-13-16
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
Islands in the Sky
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Charles Carroll
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of Island in the Sky centers around a young man, who, after brilliantly winning a space-related competition, requests a vacation on a space station as his prize. It is written with Arthur C. Clark's obvious knowledge of science, but moves at a page turning rate throughout the entire narrative. The short novel gives a realistic possibility of work and play in future space, heightened with constant excitement and action.
-
-
Fun early novel, aimed perhaps at teens
- By Darryl on 10-28-12
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
Childhood's End
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.
-
-
Food for Thought
- By Kindle Customer on 11-17-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
2001
- A Space Odyssey
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.
-
-
The Movie Makes More Sense Now
- By Douglas on 12-10-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
A Fall of Moondust
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment. A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival, A Fall of Moondust is a tour-de-force of psychological suspense and sustained dramatic tension by the field's foremost author.
-
-
Old Fashioned Science Fiction
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-03-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
The Fountains of Paradise
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vannemar Morgan's dream is to link Earth to the stars with the greatest engineering feat of all time: a 24,000-mile-high space elevator. But first he must solve a million technical, political, and economic problems while allaying the wrath of God. For the only possible site on the planet for Morgans Orbital Tower is the monastery atop the Sacred Mountain of Sri Kanda.
-
-
Hard
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-30-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
Earthlight
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time: 200 years after man's first landing on the Moon. There are permanent populations established on the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Outer space inhabitants have formed a new political entity, the Federation, and between the Federation and Earth a growing rivalry has developed. Earthlight is the story of this emerging conflict.
-
-
A brilliant science fiction spy work
- By Daniel Davis on 06-13-16
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
Islands in the Sky
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Charles Carroll
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of Island in the Sky centers around a young man, who, after brilliantly winning a space-related competition, requests a vacation on a space station as his prize. It is written with Arthur C. Clark's obvious knowledge of science, but moves at a page turning rate throughout the entire narrative. The short novel gives a realistic possibility of work and play in future space, heightened with constant excitement and action.
-
-
Fun early novel, aimed perhaps at teens
- By Darryl on 10-28-12
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
Childhood's End
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.
-
-
Food for Thought
- By Kindle Customer on 11-17-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
2001
- A Space Odyssey
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.
-
-
The Movie Makes More Sense Now
- By Douglas on 12-10-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
A Fall of Moondust
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment. A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival, A Fall of Moondust is a tour-de-force of psychological suspense and sustained dramatic tension by the field's foremost author.
-
-
Old Fashioned Science Fiction
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-03-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
The Fountains of Paradise
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vannemar Morgan's dream is to link Earth to the stars with the greatest engineering feat of all time: a 24,000-mile-high space elevator. But first he must solve a million technical, political, and economic problems while allaying the wrath of God. For the only possible site on the planet for Morgans Orbital Tower is the monastery atop the Sacred Mountain of Sri Kanda.
-
-
Hard
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-30-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
The City and the Stars
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Geoffrey T. Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Diaspar is Earth's last city - surrounded by deserts, on a world where the oceans have long since dried up. It is a domed, isolated, technological marvel, run by the Central Computer. Diaspar has conquered death. People are called forth; they live for a thousand years and then are recalled, to be born thousands of years later, over and over again. No child has been born for at least 10 million years. Until Alvin....
-
-
A Classic
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-10-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister, Ray Porter, Jonathan Davis
- Length: 51 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From early work like "Rescue Party" and "The Lion of Comarre", through classic stories including "The Star", "Earthlight", "The Nine Billion Names of God", and "The Sentinel" (kernel of the later novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey), all the way to later work like "A Meeting with Medusa" and "The Hammer of God", this comprehensive short story collection encapsulates one of the great science fiction careers of all time.
-
-
List of stories from
- By KW Charlie on 09-15-16
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
Rendezvous with Rama
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence.
-
-
Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto
- By Fredrik Pettersen on 08-03-09
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
The Songs of Distant Earth
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 1 hr and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
June 1958 issue of If. It was later expanded into the novel of the same name. Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is regarded as one of the most-influential science fiction writers of all time. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
-
-
Not the full book - the original short story
- By Amazon Customer on 06-21-18
By: Arthur C. Clarke
-
The Light of Other Days
- By: Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Light of Other Days tells the tale of what happens when a brilliant, driven industrialist harnesses the cutting edge of quantum physics to enable people everywhere, at trivial cost, to see one another at all times: around every corner, through every wall, into everyone's most private, hidden, and even intimate moments. It amounts to the sudden and complete abolition of human privacy - forever.
-
-
When Seeing All is not Understanding All
- By Lisa Callihan on 11-30-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke, and others
-
The Damned Trilogy
- A Call to Arms, The False Mirror, and The Spoils of War
- By: Alan Dean Foster
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 36 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For millennia, the Weave, an alliance of species, have fought to resist the telepathic Amplitur, who strive to unite all self-aware life-forms in their great "Purpose." The Weave is slowly losing ground, but for both sides, warfare focuses more on outthinking and outmaneuvering your foe than destruction. In fact, most regard violence as hideously barbaric, and even the thought of harming another sentient being is beyond imagining.
-
-
One of my favorites
- By Mike From Mesa on 10-22-19
By: Alan Dean Foster
-
Seveneves
- A Novel
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron
- Length: 31 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
-
-
Odd narrator choice
- By Josh Mitchell on 05-30-15
By: Neal Stephenson
-
Rocket Men
- The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon
- By: Robert Kurson
- Narrated by: Ray Porter, Robert Kurson
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By August 1968, the American space program was in danger of failing in its two most important objectives: to land a man on the moon by President Kennedy's end-of-decade deadline and to triumph over the Soviets in space. With its back against the wall, NASA made an almost unimaginable leap: It would scrap its usual methodical approach and risk everything on a sudden launch, sending the first men in history to the moon - in just four months.
-
-
The Men Who Saved 1968
- By Gillian on 04-04-18
By: Robert Kurson
-
Man Plus
- By: Frederik Pohl
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris, Robert J. Sawyer
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Roger Torraway watched in horror as the monster lurched, toppled over and died. Project Man Plus had gone suddenly and drastically wrong. The race to colonize Mars was too important, too costly, and America was already too committed, for plans to be scrapped. They would have to make a new Martian. And Roger Torraway was it, candidate for the endless surgery, operation after painful operation, that would enable him to survive on that faraway planet.
-
-
More timely now than ever
- By Sandy R on 06-28-10
By: Frederik Pohl
-
I, Robot
- By: Isaac Asimov
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This classic science fiction masterwork by Isaac Asimov weaves stories about robots, humanity, and the deep questions of existence into a novel of shocking intelligence and heart.
-
-
Thank you
- By Fredrik on 06-11-04
By: Isaac Asimov
-
Eon
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but the arrival of the 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lies Thistledown: the remnants of a human society, versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war, but the government and scientists are unable to decide how to use this knowledge.
-
-
Am Epic Original SciFi Read Worth Your Time...
- By Michael on 07-01-12
By: Greg Bear
-
Contact
- By: Carl Sagan
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The future is here...in an adventure of cosmic dimension. In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future - and our own.
-
-
Technical problems with this recording - skips...
- By Matt on 11-28-12
By: Carl Sagan
What listeners say about Prelude to Space
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jim "The Impatient"
- 04-18-14
PRELUDE
Most likely no other novel has been title so accurately. This was written in 1947, published in a magazine in 1951 and hardback in 1953. It is written before the Apollo missions and reads like a How To Manuel. If you are a Clarke fan, you have to read it ,as it his first book to be published. If you are not a fan or you are just getting started this is not the place to start. It is fairly dry science and since it is before actual space travel, it is wrong in a lot of places. It is hard to write Science Fiction of the near future, as you can soon be proved wrong, that is why you find most sci-fi stories take place way in the future,.
The City and The Stars is my favorite. Most people like the Rama books, as I do too. 2001 is what he is most famous for.
The narrator is great and makes the listening better then reading.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kevin J. Bouffard
- 03-15-16
Old time SF
A good story and well written, as one would expect from Clark, with good narration. The novel is more interesting for its view of the future, already our past. References to mimeographs and electronics with vacuum tubes amusing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darryl
- 10-28-12
Another good early Clarke
again a serious novel filled with interesting ideas at the dawn of the "space age". Some ideas are prescient, like the winged vehicle for reentry. Structurally it is similar to Sands of Mars in that there is a writer visiting the site and reporting etc. and getting info explained to him. Early Clarke may be more for his fans, of which I am one, but if you are interested in the early ideas of how all this might be achieved this is good.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- CMT Hogan
- 01-02-23
Interesting view into past thoughts
Besides being a good story as one would expect from Arthur C Clarke, this also provides a fascinating view into what the world was thinking of space exploration a decade and change before it happened. So many false assumptions and expectations. But the assumptions at least were not unreasonable given the science of the 1940s. Highly recommend.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!