At the break of dawn, an astronaut and engineer is stranded on an asteroid too close to the sun.

It's a race against time for Colin Sherrard. After an accident, he wakes up on the asteroid, Icarus, which orbits close to the sun. Dawn is only moments away and it's set to get very hot.

With nowhere to hide and his communication is down, can Colin escape before the first rays of the sun find him..?

Read by Tim Pigott-Smith

Arthur C Clarke is one of the world's best-known and most celebrated Sci-Fi writers. His short story "The Sentinel" was the inspiration for Kubrick's seminal film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since he began publishing in the 1940s, Clarke displayed an uncanny ability to predict the future. Alongside his literary achievements, he's recognised as the inventor of the communication satellite, a theory he first expounded in a 1945 article, "Extraterrestrial Relays".

Arthur C Clarke: 1917 - 2008

Producer: Gemma Jenkins

Made for BBC 7 and first broadcast in 2005. Show less