Travel by wire -- Retreat from Earth -- The awakening -- Whacky -- Castaway -- History lesson -- Hide and seek -- Second dawn -- The sentinel -- The star -- Refugee.

When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect.

A brilliant new collection of Arthur C. Clarke's highest caliber short fiction.

Introduces readers to the author's shorter works, spanning his entire writing career, including "The Nine Billion Names of God," "Nemesis," "The Sentinel," and "The Songs of Distant Earth."

It takes one man, a unique to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the invaders"-- https://www.amazon.com/City-Stars-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/1567231608 (as viewed on February 22, 2018.)

During the twenty-second century, a space probe's investigation of a mysterious, cylindrical asteroid brings man into contact with an extra-galactic civilization