Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York, Harcourt, Brace & World [1967]
Description
This volume is of special interest -- included are a wide range of classic stories, including the title story, "Jupiter Five," "The Deep Range," "Second Dawn," and the earliest of the splendidly comic narratives told by Harry Purvis for the benefit of the denizens of the White Hart.
User reviews
LibraryThing member StormRaven
In the introduction to The Nine Billion Names of God, Clarke writes that the thread that ties this collection together is that it is comprised of his favorite stories from his repertroire. Interestingly, it turns out that Clarke's favorite stories also turn out to include pretty much all of his
The highlights of the book are, unsurprisingly, among Clarke's best pieces: the title story The Nine Billion Names of God, Rescue Party, Hide and Seek, The Wall of Darkness, Superiority, "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth . . . ", and The Sentinel. (For those who do not know, the movie and book 2001: A Space Odyssey is an expanded treatment of The Sentinel. While these are the high points, pretty much every story in this volume is good - there is a reason that Clarke was considered one of the giants of the genre for the bulk of his career.
This is not to say that there are no missteps in the stories. Some of the story elements seem quaint now - the result of the stories having been written many decades ago. So, for example, the scene in The Sentinel in which the protagonist makes himself and his fellow lunar explorers breakfast by frying up some sausages seems, in retrospect, quite silly. The story Hide and Seek only works because the "seeker" doesn't have something as simple as a landing shuttle, which seems to me to be pretty weak engineering. And so on. Even still, most of the stories seem to have aged fairly well, with only a few elements here and there that have been invalidated by age.
The stories are mostly quite short, which should be easy enough to figure out when one realizes that twenty-five stories are packed into a volume that is a mere 240 pages long. Clarke's style is pretty straightforward and direct - each story had a main idea, and one or two central characters. Many of the stories, such as Hide and Seek or Sumemrtime on Icarus, are what I call 'engineering puzzle" stories in which the protagonist confronts a problem that threatens his life and uses basic science and engineering to solve it. Many others are "wonder" stories, such as Transcience, The Nine Billion Names of God, or The Star, in which the reader is presented with the awesome majesty of the universe and invited to gaze in wonder. There are silly, humorous stories, such as Superiority and The Reluctant Orchid (although Superiority has a serious message hidden in its humor), and "shaggy god" stories such as Encoutner at Dawn. And there are stories about both man's reach for greatness, such as The Call of the Stars, and man's foolish self-destructiveness, such as I Remember Babylon. In short, this collection is a huge grab bag that touches on almost every popular science fiction story type of the mid-Twentieth century.
Clarke is a practitioner and serial abuser of the "deep and meaningful last sentence" method of storytelling, as this device is used in several of the stories in this volume. To a certain extent, this probably stems from the era that the stories were written insofar as they first appeared in pulp magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, and this sort of "big reveal" moment was probably what the market demanded. Even still, the repeated used of this literary device gets a little wearying.
One story that I found particularly prescient was Death and the Senator. The science fiction of the story - the idea that an orbital hospital could be constructed and that patients would experience great benefits from being treated and recovering in zero-gravity conditions - appears to be somewhat optimistic. However, Clarke's narrative is dead-on when it comes to the short sightedness of polititicans deciding whether or not to fund long-term scientific projects, and how this is likely to turn around and have substantial negative consequences as a result of our limited vision. Every time someone says "establishing a base on the moon will take a decade, so we can't start now", I think of this story and get a ltitle bit angry.
Despite the various quibbles, the stories in the book are almost all good, with several rightly considered "great". The only stories I though were average at best were A Walk in the Dark, The Possessed, and Patent Pending and given that there are twenty-two other stories in the volume, all of superior quality, this is a minor point. Simply put, this is an excellent collection of stories from one of the top writers in the field of science fiction, and well worth reading for anyone who is a fan of the genre.
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best and most famous stories that were published between 1953 and 1966, which makes this an excellent collection. Whether one is unfamiliar with Clarke and trying to get a high-quality sampling of his work, or a long-time fan who wants to read through some of Clarke's best stories, this is a great collection to pick up.The highlights of the book are, unsurprisingly, among Clarke's best pieces: the title story The Nine Billion Names of God, Rescue Party, Hide and Seek, The Wall of Darkness, Superiority, "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth . . . ", and The Sentinel. (For those who do not know, the movie and book 2001: A Space Odyssey is an expanded treatment of The Sentinel. While these are the high points, pretty much every story in this volume is good - there is a reason that Clarke was considered one of the giants of the genre for the bulk of his career.
This is not to say that there are no missteps in the stories. Some of the story elements seem quaint now - the result of the stories having been written many decades ago. So, for example, the scene in The Sentinel in which the protagonist makes himself and his fellow lunar explorers breakfast by frying up some sausages seems, in retrospect, quite silly. The story Hide and Seek only works because the "seeker" doesn't have something as simple as a landing shuttle, which seems to me to be pretty weak engineering. And so on. Even still, most of the stories seem to have aged fairly well, with only a few elements here and there that have been invalidated by age.
The stories are mostly quite short, which should be easy enough to figure out when one realizes that twenty-five stories are packed into a volume that is a mere 240 pages long. Clarke's style is pretty straightforward and direct - each story had a main idea, and one or two central characters. Many of the stories, such as Hide and Seek or Sumemrtime on Icarus, are what I call 'engineering puzzle" stories in which the protagonist confronts a problem that threatens his life and uses basic science and engineering to solve it. Many others are "wonder" stories, such as Transcience, The Nine Billion Names of God, or The Star, in which the reader is presented with the awesome majesty of the universe and invited to gaze in wonder. There are silly, humorous stories, such as Superiority and The Reluctant Orchid (although Superiority has a serious message hidden in its humor), and "shaggy god" stories such as Encoutner at Dawn. And there are stories about both man's reach for greatness, such as The Call of the Stars, and man's foolish self-destructiveness, such as I Remember Babylon. In short, this collection is a huge grab bag that touches on almost every popular science fiction story type of the mid-Twentieth century.
Clarke is a practitioner and serial abuser of the "deep and meaningful last sentence" method of storytelling, as this device is used in several of the stories in this volume. To a certain extent, this probably stems from the era that the stories were written insofar as they first appeared in pulp magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, and this sort of "big reveal" moment was probably what the market demanded. Even still, the repeated used of this literary device gets a little wearying.
One story that I found particularly prescient was Death and the Senator. The science fiction of the story - the idea that an orbital hospital could be constructed and that patients would experience great benefits from being treated and recovering in zero-gravity conditions - appears to be somewhat optimistic. However, Clarke's narrative is dead-on when it comes to the short sightedness of polititicans deciding whether or not to fund long-term scientific projects, and how this is likely to turn around and have substantial negative consequences as a result of our limited vision. Every time someone says "establishing a base on the moon will take a decade, so we can't start now", I think of this story and get a ltitle bit angry.
Despite the various quibbles, the stories in the book are almost all good, with several rightly considered "great". The only stories I though were average at best were A Walk in the Dark, The Possessed, and Patent Pending and given that there are twenty-two other stories in the volume, all of superior quality, this is a minor point. Simply put, this is an excellent collection of stories from one of the top writers in the field of science fiction, and well worth reading for anyone who is a fan of the genre.
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LibraryThing member andyray
Thank heavens for anthologies that keep the diamonds in the public view! These stories are all from 1946 through 1967.
LibraryThing member clong
This 1967 collection of the author's favorite short stories was a bit of a mixed bag. Twenty-one of the twenty-five stories were new to me. The style tends towards dry and humorless, with little or no character development. Many of these are short "gimmick" stories. Several of them are efforts to
For me the better stories were those where Clarke built a bit of emotional connection to the characters, stories like "The Call of the Stars," "'If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth'," "Rescue Party," and "A Walk in the Dark." I was moderately disappointed by the famous title story, which shows up near the top of numerous all time best scifi story lists; it features an intriguing concept but not much else.
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deal with the newly minted horror of the atomic bomb. And several of them are blatant space program propaganda (some of these were amongst the better stories in the book).For me the better stories were those where Clarke built a bit of emotional connection to the characters, stories like "The Call of the Stars," "'If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth'," "Rescue Party," and "A Walk in the Dark." I was moderately disappointed by the famous title story, which shows up near the top of numerous all time best scifi story lists; it features an intriguing concept but not much else.
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LibraryThing member TJCams
A solid collection of hard sci fi stories with commentary by the author on some of them
LibraryThing member lavaturtle
This is a selection of some of Clarke's short stories. Most of the stories are quite short, only a few pages. I find it difficult to read short story collections straight through, so this took me a while.
I liked some of the stories a lot (e.g. "Superiority"), while others didn't age so well (e.g.
I liked some of the stories a lot (e.g. "Superiority"), while others didn't age so well (e.g.
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the gender stereotypes in "Reluctant Orchid"). Many end with a clever twist (also making them stand better on their own than in a collection where there's a clever twist ending every 3 pages). Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1974
Physical description
277 p.; 21 cm