[1][2] Sidgwick & Jackson published it in the UK in 1953, followed the next year by a United States hardcover edition from Gnome Press and a paperback from Ballantine Books.

Prelude was written before the Apollo program landed men on the Moon and follows the ideal that space travel is realistic and within the grasp of the population.

Clarke wrote a new preface in 1976 in which he admits that he had some propagandist goals in writing Prelude to Space — he was an influential member of the astronautics community when the idea of rockets leaving Earth's atmosphere was scoffed at by many scientists.

The novel ends with the launching of Prometheus; the entire plot consists of scientists, engineers and administrators showing Dr. Dirk Alexson how the mission was planned and how the technology will work.

[2] Boucher and McComas praised the novel, saying that Clarke handled scientific detail "with so sensitive a poetic understanding that this simple factual narrative is more absorbing than the most elaborately plotted galactic epic.