Arthur C. Clark, creator of one of the world's best-loved science fiction tales, revisits the most famous future ever imagined in this NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, as two expeditions into space become inextricably tangled. Heywood Floyd, survivor of two previous encounters with the mysterious monloiths, must again confront Dave Bowman, HAL, and an alien race that has decided that Mankind is to play a part in the evolution of the galaxy whether it wishes to or not. From the Paperback edition.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke was born at Minehead, Somerset, England, in 1917 and is a graduate of Kings College, London, where he obtained First Class Honors in Physics and Mathematics. He is past Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, a member of the Academy of Astronautics, the Royal Astronomical Society, and many other scientific organizations. During World War II, as an RAF officer, he was in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment during its experimental trials. His only non-science-fiction novel, Glide Path, is based on this work. Author of over sixty books, some twenty million-plus copies of which have been printed in over thirty languages, his numerous awards include the 1961 Kalinga prize, the AAAS-Westinghouse science-writing prize, the Bradford Washburn Award, and the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Awards-all three of which were won by his novel Rendezvous with Rama. In 1968 he shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and his thirteen-part TV series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World has now been screened in many countries. He joined Walter Cronkite during CBS's coverage of the Apollo missions. His invention of the communications satellite in 1945 has brought him numerous honors, such as the 1982 Marconi International Fellowship, a gold medal of the Franklin Institute, the Vikram Sarabhai Professorship of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, the Lindbergh Award, and a Fellowship of King's College, London. The President of Sri Lanka nominated him Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa, near Colombo. Sir Arthur was presented the Award of Knight Bachelor on May 26, 2000 at a ceremony in Sri Lanka, where he has lived since 1956.