Islands in the Sky
When young Roy Malcolm won the Aviation Quiz Contest, the sponsor, World Airways, never dreamed he could legally claim a trip to the Inner Space Station as his prize. Set in the middle of the twenty-first century, this is an amazing yarn about a teen-ager's adventures and conflicts five hundred miles up on a strange, artificial outpost that circles our planet.

What promised to be merely a sightseeing jaunt into space soon shaped up into the most thrilling weeks in Roy's life. For shortly after his arrival at the outpost a mysterious and untalkative spaceship "anchored" ten miles off the station - and its suspicious behavior fitted in perfectly with the space crew's ideas on interplanetary crime. The surprising outcome of this uninvited visit, a race-for-life mission aboard a long-abandoned ship, a weird mishap that necessitates a trip around the moon spark this story with thrills and suspense.

Bristling with excitement, this is a tale that can't be matched in science fiction, for the author, Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, knows how to translate his vast knowledge of the universe into an ingenious novel. Told by an acclaimed expert in the field, ISLANDS IN THE SKY is unique not only as entertainment but as the most lucid, most accurate picture of man's proposed conquest of space.
English Science fiction, Fiction, Interplanetary voyages, Space stations, Science fiction
Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Carroll
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.

He is famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, which appeared in various popular magazines. In 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularising science. These along with his science fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age". His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership made him one of the towering figures of science fiction. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.

Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system using geostationary orbits. He was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–1947 and again in 1951–1953.

Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of several television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death.

Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989 "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka". He was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.

---From Wikipedia