The Songs Of Distant Earth Arthur C Clarke

The story is centred on a rendezvous between human beings far in the future, after the destruction of the Earth, on the oceanic planet of Thalassa.

Unlike Clarke’s other works, this piece focuses on characterisation and emotional development, instead of technological change. In some sense, it was written as a response to critics who attacked his writings as cold and impersonal.

In the story, humans respond to the prospect of unavoidable doom by launching a series of robot colony ships into space, to continue Earth life after the destruction of the homeworld (caused by the Sun becoming a nova). Thalassa is colonised by one such ship, but loses contact due to a natural disaster. Meanwhile, just as the predicted time of cataclysm is due to elapse, vacuum energy technology is invented to allow the construction of one near-light-speed vessel, the Magellan, which is launched to build the last colony of mankind.