The Wind from the Sun

The Wind from the Sun (ISBN 0-15-196810-1) is a 1972 collection of science fiction short stories by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Some of the stories originally appeared in a number of different publications. A part of the book was included in CD on board the Planetary Society's solar sail, Cosmos 1.[1]

For the short story that is sometimes published under this title, see Sunjammer.
The Wind from the Sun
Dust-jacket of the first edition.
AuthorArthur C. Clarke
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherHarcourt Brace Jovanovich
Publication date
1972
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pagesviii, 178
ISBN0-15-196810-1
OCLC293152
823/.9/14
LC ClassPZ3.C551205 Wi3 PR6005.L36

Contents

This collection includes:

Back cover teaser: "ON EARTH—In a world where man frowns upon his carnivorous ancestors and thrives upon entirely synthetic food, cannibalism becomes the question of the day."
  • "Maelstrom II"
An astronaut father looks forward to returning home to his family on Earth, but is met by a life-threatening accident.
  • "The Shining Ones"
Sabotage is suspected at a coastal Soviet base, where a revolutionary thermal electric technology is to be announced to the world within a matter of days.
Back cover teaser: "IN SPACE—Space-sailing anyone? Come ride the sun's winds in the interstellar sailing contest of the century!" Problems arise for the competitors during this race to the moon.
Something fishy is going on in a laboratory on the Moon... An inspector presses a scientist for the truth about the Moon and mankind's longevity.
  • "The Last Command"
The supreme commander of a superpower issues his final command via a pre-recorded message after he and the entire nation had been completely annihilated.
  • "Dial F for Frankenstein"
A tech-crew discuss the strange happenings since they have linked the world's telecommunications system with a satellite network.
  • "Reunion"
A message from extra-terrestrials, addressed to the people of Earth, speaking of the origins of mankind and a cure for skin color.
  • "Playback"
A monologue of a man's consciousness which had been preserved on magnetic tape.
  • "The Light of Darkness"
An assassin plots to remove the dictator of his African country.
  • "The Longest Science-Fiction Story Ever Told"
A recursive letter complaining about plagiarism.
  • "Herbert George Morley Roberts Wells, Esq."
Clarke's commentary about why he had confused "The Anticipator" with "The Accelerator". For a period of time Clarke believed that "The Anticipator" had been authored by H. G. Wells, and had even published this false fact, until a fan of Wells pointed out the error.
  • "Love That Universe"
A scientist believes that the Earth is in peril and that the civilization living in the central hub of our galaxy is our only hope. But, how will we contact them?
In a world that does not orbit any star, an intelligent but non-biological being searches for other life in the universe like itself.
  • "The Cruel Sky"
A scientist, who was born crippled, climbs Mount Everest with the aid of his levitation invention and with the guidance of his promising assistant. However, soon after beginning their descent from the summit, gale-strength winds blow them and their levitators off the face of the mountain.
A commander explains, in a letter, how an Earth battleship got destroyed when it passed too close to the gravitational field of a neutron star.
  • "Transit of Earth"
The last surviving astronaut of the first manned landing on Mars works to complete his observations and recordings of Earth's transit across the face of the Sun. He and four others were marooned when permafrost melted underneath the landing craft and it toppled over. The others committed suicide to ensure him surviving to make these observations and he contemplates how he will commit suicide after the transit is over.
Back cover teaser: "AMONG THE PLANETS—Weather the hydrogen storms of Jupiter with Howard Falcon (once a man now a cyborg) as he goes where no man has ever gone before!"
gollark: Speaking specifically about the error handling, it may be "simple", but it's only "simple" in the sense of "the compiler writers do less work". It's very easy to mess it up by forgetting the useless boilerplate line somewhere, or something like that.
gollark: Speaking more generally than the type system, Go is just really... anti-abstraction... with, well, the gimped type system, lack of much metaprogramming support, and weird special cases, and poor error handling.
gollark: - They may be working on them, but they initially claimed that they weren't necessary and they don't exist now. Also, I don't trust them to not do them wrong.- Ooookay then- Well, generics, for one: they *kind of exist* in that you can have generic maps, channels, slices, and arrays, but not anything else. Also this (https://fasterthanli.me/blog/2020/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-ride/), which is mostly about the file handling not being good since it tries to map on concepts which don't fit. Also channels having weird special syntax. Also `for` and `range` and `new` and `make` basically just being magic stuff which do whatever the compiler writers wanted with no consistency- see above- Because there's no generic number/comparable thing type. You would need to use `interface{}` or write a new function (with identical code) for every type you wanted to compare- You can change a signature somewhere and won't be alerted, but something else will break because the interface is no longer implemented- They are byte sequences. https://blog.golang.org/strings.- It's not. You need to put `if err != nil { return err }` everywhere.
gollark: Oh, and the error handling is terrible and it's kind of the type system's fault.
gollark: If I remember right Go strings are just byte sequences with no guarantee of being valid UTF-8, but all the functions working on them just assume they are.

References
  1. Cosmos I: The First Solar Sail
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