Publication:PRLDTSPCSP1976

Post-Apollo Preface
This edition contains an essay on pages v to x titled "Post-Apollo Preface".

This note is because I found these title records.
 * Post-Apollo Preface (Prelude to Space) Used in this publication.
 * Post-Apollo Preface to Prelude to Space Used in an unverified 0000-00-00.
 * Post-Apollo Preface Used in an unverified 1970-00-00.

I don't know if any of these can be merged. The second title is transient verified and it may well state "Post-Apollo Preface to Prelude to Space". With the third, either the essay has been revised or the date for that publication is wrong. To help with verification here's an extract from the essay. It starts with:
 * On July 20, 1969, all the countless science-fiction stories of the first landing on the Moon became frozen in time, like flies in amber. We can look back on them now with a new perspective, and indeed with a new interest-for we know how it was really done, and can judge the accuracy of the predictions.

and ends with:
 * The hiatus does not disappoint me, for I have already seen achievements beyond my wildest dreams. I have shaken the hands of the first man to orbit the earth, the first man to step out into space, and the first to walk upon the Moon.


 * In the long perspectives of history, it will not matter that two of them were Russian and one was American.


 * Arthur C. Clarke, September 1975

Though it bylined "September 1975" the copyright in the July 1976 Ballantine edition is "preface copyright &copy; 1976 by Arthur C. Clarke". Per the current bibliography for Prelude to Space there are no publications between a 1972 Lancer edition and the July 1976 Ballantine edition. The implication is that the Ballantine edition is the first publication for the essay. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:07, 15 December 2010 (UTC)