| Acknowledgments | |
| Preface | |
| The 1930s and 1940s: Rockets and Radar | |
| Dunsany, Lord of Fantasy | p. 7 |
| Rockets | p. 13 |
| The Coming Age of Rocket Power | p. 17 |
| Extraterrestrial Relays | p. 19 |
| The Moon and Mr. Farnsworth | p. 26 |
| The Challenge of the Spaceship | p. 30 |
| First Men in the Moon | p. 44 |
| The Problem of Dr. Campbell | p. 48 |
| The Lackeys of Wall Street | p. 54 |
| Voyages to the Moon | p. 58 |
| You're on the Glide Path, I Think | p. 63 |
| Morphological Astronomy | p. 72 |
| The Conquest of Space | p. 75 |
| The 1950s: Beneath the Seas of Ceylon | |
| The Effect of Interplanetary Flight | p. 82 |
| Space Travel in Fact and Fiction | p. 84 |
| Review: Destination Moon | p. 99 |
| Interplanetary Flight | p. 102 |
| The Exploration of Space | p. 105 |
| Review: When Worlds Collide | p. 108 |
| Review: Man on the Moon | p. 111 |
| Flying Saucers | p. 114 |
| Review: Flying Saucers Have Landed | p. 119 |
| Undersea Holiday | p. 123 |
| The Exploration of the Moon | p. 132 |
| Eclipse | p. 136 |
| Astronautical Fallacies | p. 139 |
| The Star of Bethlehem | p. 145 |
| Capricorn to Cancer | p. 153 |
| Keeping House in Colombo | p. 157 |
| The Reefcombers' Derby | p. 161 |
| Rest Houses, Catamarans, and Sharks | p. 165 |
| The First Wreck | p. 168 |
| A Clear Run to the South Pole | p. 173 |
| The Isle of Taprobane | p. 180 |
| The Great Reef | p. 183 |
| Winding Up | p. 189 |
| The 1960s: Kubrick and Cape Kennedy | |
| Failures of Nerve and Imagination | p. 196 |
| We'll Never Conquer Space | p. 204 |
| Rocket to the Renaissance | p. 210 |
| The Obsolescence of Man | p. 217 |
| Space and the Spirit of Man | p. 226 |
| The Uses of the Moon | p. 231 |
| The Playing Fields of Space | p. 240 |
| Kalinga Prize Speech | p. 246 |
| More Than Five Senses | p. 251 |
| Son of Dr. Strangelove | p. 259 |
| Possible, That's All! | p. 264 |
| The Mind of the Machine | p. 268 |
| God and Einstein | p. 277 |
| The 1970s: Tomorrow's Worlds | |
| Satellites and Saris | p. 283 |
| Mars and the Mind of Man | p. 291 |
| The Sea of Sinbad | p. 296 |
| Willy and Chesley | p. 305 |
| The Snows of Olympus | p. 310 |
| Writing to Sell | p. 313 |
| The 1980s: Stay of Execution | |
| The Steam-Powered Word Processor | p. 323 |
| Afterword: "Maelstrom II" | p. 329 |
| Mother Nature Got There First | p. 333 |
| Message to Comsat, February 18, 1988 | p. 337 |
| Graduation Address: International Space University | p. 339 |
| Back to 2001 | p. 342 |
| Coauthors and Other Nuisances | p. 348 |
| The Power of Compression | p. 353 |
| Life in the Fax Lane | p. 355 |
| Credo | p. 358 |
| The Colors of Infinity: Exploring the Fractal Universe | p. 364 |
| Close Encounter with Cosmonauts | p. 368 |
| The Century Syndrome | p. 371 |
| Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf? | p. 374 |
| My Four Feet on the Ground | p. 380 |
| The 1990s: Countdown to 2000 | |
| Marconi Symposium | p. 387 |
| Introduction to Charlie Pellegrino's Unearthing Atlantis | p. 389 |
| Tribute to Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) | p. 392 |
| Satyajit and Stanley | p. 396 |
| Aspects of Science Fiction | p. 398 |
| Save the Giant Squid! | p. 406 |
| A Choice of Futures | p. 410 |
| Gene Roddenberry | p. 416 |
| Introduction to Jack Williamson's Beachhead | p. 418 |
| Scenario for a Civilized Planet | p. 421 |
| NASA Sutra: Eros in Orbit | p. 428 |
| Minehead Made Me | p. 434 |
| Good-bye, Isaac | p. 436 |
| Encyclical | p. 438 |
| Letter from Sri Lanka | p. 440 |
| Message to Mars | p. 448 |
| Preface: The War of the Worlds | p. 450 |
| Preface: The First Men in the Moon | p. 456 |
| The Joy of Maths | p. 460 |
| Tribute to Robert Bloch | p. 465 |
| Spaceguard | p. 468 |
| Foreword: Encyclopedia of Frauds by James Randi | p. 472 |
| Bucky | p. 475 |
| Homage to Frank Paul | p. 477 |
| Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! | p. 479 |
| The Birth of HAL | p. 482 |
| The Coming Cyberclysm | p. 485 |
| Tribute to David Lasser | p. 488 |
| Toilets of the Gods | p. 490 |
| When Will the Real Space Age Begin? | p. 492 |
| Review: Imagined Worlds by Freeman Dyson | p. 496 |
| Eyes on the Universe | p. 501 |
| Walter Alvarez and Gerrit L. Verschuur | p. 504 |
| The Gay Warlords | p. 509 |
| More Last Words on UFOs | p. 512 |
| Carl Sagan | p. 515 |
| For Cherene, Tamara, and Melinda | p. 519 |
| Postscript: 2000 and Beyond | |
| Science and Society | p. 525 |
| Is There Life After Television? | p. 529 |
| The Twenty-First Century: A (Very) Brief History | p. 534 |
| Sources | p. 541 |
| Index | p. 547 |
| About the Author | p. 557 |
| About the Editor | p. 558 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
