Divided into three sections, Voices from the Sky delivers a series of enjoyable essays–some prescient, others less so–on topics ranging from spaceflight and communication satellites to the future of human culture as shaped by technological advancement.

While many of Clarke’s predictions have come to pass, others miss the mark including the elimination of business travel and the obsolescence of cities as a result of video conferencing and a global communications network. So enthusiastic was he about the U.S.A.’s burgeoning space program of the 1960s, that Clarke predicted mankind’s expansion to the moon, Mars, and beyond. He could not have known that budget cuts would curtail our space program by the 1990s.

Still, Clarke’s considerable talents as a science fiction writer and science communicator, combined with his cosmopolitan viewpoint, provide fascinating insights from a time when humanity was just entering the space age.