| "Jupiter Five" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Arthur C. Clarke | |
 | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Published in | If |
| Publication date | May 1953 |
"Jupiter Five" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in the magazine If in 1953. [1] It appeared again in Clarke's collection of short stories Reach for Tomorrow , in 1956, [1] and deals with the detection and exploration of an old spaceship from outside the Solar System.
Professor Forster is a distinguished scientist on an expedition with the spacecraft Arnold Toynbee . He determines that the innermost satellite of Jupiter, Jupiter V, is a parked spacecraft from "Culture X", an ancient race of reptiles from outside the Solar System. Culture X coexisted with insectoid Martians, and settled the smaller rocky planets and moons throughout the Solar System apart from the Moon of the Earth. Jupiter V is discovered to be a spherical metal vehicle with a diameter of 30 kilometers. It contains an art gallery with millions of exhibits. One of the art objects is a depiction of a member of Culture X, which Forster dubs "The Ambassador".
It becomes clear that "The Ambassador" was intended explicitly for Mankind. Culture X predicted that intelligent life would develop on Earth and eventually achieve space flight; the statue is a message of greeting and goodwill spanning the gulf of time between its creators' ancient extinction and the arrival of the space travelers from Earth.
A science writer, Randolph Mays, arrives with his pilot and his secretary. Forster takes advantage of a loophole in space law and claims salvage rights to Jupiter V in the name of the World Science Organization. Mays tries to steal "The Ambassador" and other art objects, but Forster turns Mays' companions against him, forcing him to return the stolen items. [2]
"Jupiter Five" belongs among Clarke's "few attempts at melodrama", together with his short stories "Breaking Strain" (1949) and "Guardian Angel" (1950), according to David N. Samuelson. [3] Thus, it represents one of few cases in which Clarke overcame his "reluctance to tell traditional action-adventure story in the pulp tradition" due to "his literary allegiances and a desire to downplay the thoughtless romanticism evident in such tales of derring-do" (Samuelson). [3] Critic David Samuelson, describes the work as not having significant literary importance. [3]
The idea of an artifact left behind by a spacefaring alien race for humans to discover after they achieved space flight also showed up in "The Sentinel", a 1948 (published 1951) Clarke short story about the discovery of an ancient artifact on the Moon and the major basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1968 novel and film Clarke developed in partnership with director Stanley Kubrick. However, the artifacts in "Sentinel" and "Odyssey" are speculated on in-story (in "Sentinel") or explicitly stated (in the novel version of "Odyssey") as being set as a warning to the alien race that humans were in space.
Early drafts of the 2001 novel did include the moon Jupiter V as the location where the Star Gate was located, instead of on Iapetus as in the final version of the novel, with revelation that Jupiter V had been artificially sculpted and placed into its precise orbit by the builders of the Star Gate. [4]
"Jupiter Five" was the inspiration for The Diamond Moon, the fifth novel in the Venus Prime series by Paul Preuss.
"The Sentinel" is a science fiction short story by British author Arthur C. Clarke, written in 1948 and first published in 1951. Its plot and ideas influenced the development of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and its corresponding novel.
2010: Odyssey Two is a 1982 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It is the sequel to his 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, though Clarke changed some elements of the story to align with the film version of 2001.
Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
The Space Odyssey series is a series of science fiction novels by the writer Arthur C. Clarke. The first novel was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. The second was made into a feature film, released in 1984, respectively. Two of Clarke's early short stories have ties to the series.
2061: Odyssey Three is a science-fiction novel by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1987. It is the third book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. It returns to one of the lead characters of the previous novels, Heywood Floyd, and his adventures from the 2061 return of Halley's Comet to Jupiter's moon Europa.
The concept of self-replicating spacecraft, as envisioned by mathematician John von Neumann, has been described by futurists including physicist Michio Kaku and has been discussed across a wide breadth of hard science fiction novels and stories. Self-replicating probes are sometimes referred to as von Neumann probes. Self-replicating spacecraft would in some ways either mimic or echo the features of living organisms or viruses.
Earthlight is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1955. It is an expansion to novel length of a novella of the same name that he had published four years earlier.
Xenoarchaeology, a branch of xenology dealing with extraterrestrial cultures, is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of the material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilizations. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.
In Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, Monoliths are machines in black cuboids whose sides extend in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9 (12 : 22 : 32) built by an unseen extraterrestrial species whom Clarke dubbed the Firstborn and who he suggests are the earliest highly intelligent species to evolve in the Milky Way. In the series of novels (and the films based on these), three Monoliths are discovered in the Solar System by australopithecines and their human descendants. The response of the characters to their discovery drives the plot of the series. It also influences the fictional history of the series, particularly by encouraging humanity to progress with technological development.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, but eventually only Clarke ended up as the official author. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel". By 1992, the novel had sold three million copies worldwide. An elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project was made in the 1972 book The Lost Worlds of 2001.
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 2001, is a collection of almost all science fiction short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke. It includes 114 stories, arranged in order of publication, from "Travel by Wire!" in 1937 through to "Improving the Neighbourhood" in 1999. The story "Improving The Neighbourhood" has the distinction of being the first fiction published in the journal Nature. The titles "Venture to the Moon" and "The Other Side of the Sky" are not stories, but the titles of groups of six interconnected stories, each story with its own title. This collection is only missing a very few stories, for example "When the Twerms Came", which appears in his other collections More Than One Universe and The View from Serendip. This edition contains a foreword by Clarke written in 2000, where he speculates on the science fiction genre in relation to the concept of short stories. Furthermore, many of the stories have a short introduction about their publication history or literary nature.
A Bracewell probe is a hypothetical concept for an autonomous interstellar space probe dispatched for the express purpose of communication with one or more alien civilizations. It was proposed by Ronald N. Bracewell in a 1960 paper, as an alternative to interstellar radio communication between widely separated civilizations.
Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has appeared in works of fiction across several centuries. The way the planet has been depicted has evolved as more has become known about its composition; it was initially portrayed as being entirely solid, later as having a high-pressure atmosphere with a solid surface underneath, and finally as being entirely gaseous. It was a popular setting during the pulp era of science fiction. Life on the planet has variously been depicted as identical to humans, larger versions of humans, and non-human. Non-human life on Jupiter has been portrayed as primitive in some works and more advanced than humans in others.
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel Micromégas by Voltaire. In the earliest depictions, it was portrayed as having a solid surface rather than its actual gaseous composition. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. In modern science fiction, the Saturnian atmosphere sometimes hosts floating settlements. The planet is occasionally visited by humans and its rings are sometimes mined for resources.
The United States Spacecraft Discovery One is a fictional spaceship featured in the first two novels of the Space Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke and in the films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) directed by Stanley Kubrick and 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) directed by Peter Hyams. The ship is a nuclear-powered interplanetary spaceship, crewed by two men and controlled by the AI on-board computer HAL 9000. The ship is destroyed in the second novel and makes no further appearances.
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
The following is a list of works by Arthur C. Clarke.
Ancient astronauts have been addressed frequently in science fiction and horror fiction. Occurrences in the genres include:
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) wrote a considerable number of short stories in the science fiction genre.