Fred Hoyle An observer of the world and a ponderer on its problems ...
With John Elliot
A for Andromeda 1962
Originality, excitement, pace and scientific accuracy - readers who appreciate these elements in science fiction will enjoy thoroughly this outstanding novel of adventure. A for Andromeda is the product of a very successful collaboration between an astrophysicist of world-wide reputation and a talented dramatist whose work for British television has received the highest critical recognition.
The scene is set ten years from now. A new radio telescope picks up from the constellation of Andromeda, 200 light years away, a complex series of signals which prove to be a program for a giant computer. Someone in outer space is trying to communicate using a supremely clever, yet entirely logical method.
When the necessary computer is built and begins to relay the information it receives from Andromeda, the project assumes a vital importance: politically, militarily and commercially. For scientists find themselves possessing knowledge of such a nature that the security of human life itself is threatened.
As a seven part serial on BBC television, this story established popularity records. The last several instalments doubled BBC's audience reaching 80% of the viewing audience of Great Britain.
Originality, excitement, pace and scientific accuracy - readers who appreciate these elements in science fiction will enjoy thoroughly this outstanding novel of adventure. A for Andromeda is the product of a very successful collaboration between an astrophysicist of world-wide reputation and a talented dramatist whose work for British television has received the highest critical recognition.
The scene is set ten years from now. A new radio telescope picks up from the constellation of Andromeda, 200 light years away, a complex series of signals which prove to be a program for a giant computer. Someone in outer space is trying to communicate using a supremely clever, yet entirely logical method.
When the necessary computer is built and begins to relay the information it receives from Andromeda, the project assumes a vital importance: politically, militarily and commercially. For scientists find themselves possessing knowledge of such a nature that the security of human life itself is threatened.
As a seven part serial on BBC television, this story established popularity records. The last several instalments doubled BBC's audience reaching 80% of the viewing audience of Great Britain.
Andromeda Breakthrough 1964
From the dead constellation of Andromeda flashed continuously a long and intensely complicated message. Picked up during the testing of the world's most powerful radio telescope, it proved to be a blueprint of a computer so advanced that it made all earth-built computers seem like children's counting beads and even produced a thinking, living human being to interpret its needs. Could this be part of a fantastic plan to take over the earth?
This brilliantly conceived novel explores what happens when the computer is used to further the world ambitions of the dictator of a tiny desert state and of the unscrupulous commercial organisation INTEL.
The terrible combinations of ignorance of the machine's purpose and insane avarice brings the world to disaster. Huge storms rage across the continents, epidemics break out in cities devastated by floods and everywhere people begin to die from lack of oxygen. The incredible achievements of the computer had masked one small formula, which was changing the oxygen balance of the air. Was this the last step in the plan?
The fast moving action and scientific accuracy interact continuously. If this is science fiction at its best, Andromeda Breakthrough has all the ingredients which made A for Andromeda a best-selling novel in England and America and in all the many European countries where translations were published.
From the dead constellation of Andromeda flashed continuously a long and intensely complicated message. Picked up during the testing of the world's most powerful radio telescope, it proved to be a blueprint of a computer so advanced that it made all earth-built computers seem like children's counting beads and even produced a thinking, living human being to interpret its needs. Could this be part of a fantastic plan to take over the earth?
This brilliantly conceived novel explores what happens when the computer is used to further the world ambitions of the dictator of a tiny desert state and of the unscrupulous commercial organisation INTEL.
The terrible combinations of ignorance of the machine's purpose and insane avarice brings the world to disaster. Huge storms rage across the continents, epidemics break out in cities devastated by floods and everywhere people begin to die from lack of oxygen. The incredible achievements of the computer had masked one small formula, which was changing the oxygen balance of the air. Was this the last step in the plan?
The fast moving action and scientific accuracy interact continuously. If this is science fiction at its best, Andromeda Breakthrough has all the ingredients which made A for Andromeda a best-selling novel in England and America and in all the many European countries where translations were published.