Name: The Nine Billion Names of God
Rating: 3.595238095238095 (21 reviews)
ISBN: 9780451147554

Arthur Charles Clarke

A selection of what he considers to be his best short stories is presented by this leading science fiction writer

The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

The Nine Billion Names of God

Arthur C. Clarke

Introduces readers to the author's shorter works, spanning his entire writing career, including "The Nine Billion Names of God," "Nemesis," "The Sentinel," and "The Songs of Distant Earth."

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

Tim Pendry

There are over 100 stories in this impressive collection ranging from 1937 (aged 20) to 1999 (aged 82) but the golden age of Clarke (as a short story writer) starts in the second half of the 1940s and ends in the early 1960s. The falling off is not a matter of ability (since he could pull off some excellent work when he wanted to later in life) but lack of will in this medium. By the mid-1960s, he had made his name, was living well, basking in adulation and could concentrate on enjoying life and consulting. Of course, the classic novels are of equal importance and these did continue well into the 1990s so, to some extent, what we see is as much about the decline of the short story-based science fiction magazine as anything else. In the 1970s, he is writing more for Playboy than the fans. Fortunately, the vast bulk of stories in this collection come from this long Golden Age and only 11 or so stories are from after 1970 and some of those are good. The stories of the late-1940s, 1950s and early 1960s are, however, fascinating, partly because what comes across is both Clarke the Briton and Clarke the Humanist. And, of course, he remained busy on books and influencing popular culture - there was certainly no falling off of the intellect. There is material here for a major study of the relationship between scientific aspiration, a declining Britain and a rising America but this is not the place - suffice it to say that Clarke's slightly outsider status (as genre writer, perhaps as gay, as creative) provides major insights here. There are themes, of course. There are surprisingly few references to aliens or alien perspectives (though there are some). The corpus concentrates above all on human aspirations and human reactions, human follies and human courage. Of course, he cannot write well about women though he adapts well to changing mores in his last years (Clarke is nothing if not open-minded) but he can write brilliantly about the heroic engineer in ways that would do credit to the Soviet tradition. Indeed, it is clear that he refuses to demonise Sovietism throughout while remaining someone who clearly loves America. His stance seems to be one of continuous humanistic scientific optimism and that there is no reason why capitalists and communists cannot share equally in what is to come. One repeated theme is the scientist-engineer or the practical pilot or worker, faced with mortality (there are as likely as not to be no last minute rescues) and choosing existentially just to finish the job to provide that extra bit of knowledge for the species in its flight to the stars. We should also note that Clarke is always a hard science writer. The fact that the predictions may not always come true (he often gets the idea right but not the timing) is irrelevant - most of what he proposes is not (at the time of writing) impossible or truly fantastic. His attitude to the paranormal was famously open-minded: that possibility in science fiction can permit strange things if it can be rationally drawn from what is known - the classic 'magic as undiscovered science' meme - but there is very little of that in these stories. All is science. It is no accident that the penultimate collaboration is with Stephen Baxter, another fine British hard science fiction writer, in a superb piece of alternate history that plays brilliantly with Clarke's 'pseudo-weaknesses' and shows them to be imaginative strengths. In The Wire Continuum Baxter (since one suspects he is driving the narrative here) pays tribute to Clarke by taking the latter's first ever story about teleportation and creating from it a structured alternate history as if Clarke's mentality had been true to actual history. In this case, Baxter has used something that is impossible or fantastic (teleportation) but the way it is 'played' acts as beautiful counterpoint to the hard science, shining a light on Clarke's themes in a way that can only be understood if you had read the preceding 948 pages. Perhaps (roughly) a quarter of the stories are to be regarded as humorous in a rather 'jolly jape' English academic sort of way, exemplified by those collected as Tales from the White Hart' centred around its engineer-scientist Harry Purvis whose tall tales all seem to be based on hard science. These Tales are early stuff but very well crafted with a distinctive style, including at one point a classic of the 'perfect murder' genre. They reflect the clubbability and conviviality of the early science fiction community in London. Later humour may often be more heavy-handed. There are too many stories here to comment on any in particular. There are very few duds. Some are undoubted literary masterpieces. Most will stand the test of time and give insights not just into the man but his time. Some became the basis of books and, famously, films. The abiding images he leaves are two-fold - the word painting of other worlds (mostly in our own solar system) so that you feel, rightly or wrongly, that 'you have been there' and of a sense of the heroic, of men for whom knowledge and discovery are greater than life itself. Personally, I am less simpatico with this progressive heroism in reality but only a philistine would not see its beauty aesthetically much as even an atheist can see the beauty in a Baroque martyrdom or hear the beauty in a seventeenth century religious cantata. The age of heroes is probably now dead even though the space travel exponents (who I tend to support for practical reasons related to the asteroid problem rather than out of ideological sentiment) would like it to be otherwise. The Baxter story links the Clarkian universe - the travel to the stars in a world changed forever by hive minds and quantum technology - back to its roots: an older heroism of gallant spitfire pilots defending a soil that no longer has much meaning but where past heroism stands on the record. Clarke, despite his adoption by American progressives and technologists, starts off as a quintessentially British writer and transforms himself - you can trace it in the trajectory of the stories - stage by stage into a cosmic universalist. Tracing that trajectory is fascinating in itself. In Hegelian terms, British wartime heroism and scientific prowess is the thesis, the universal destiny of mankind is the antithesis and the synthesis is a heroic humanistic progressivism. I remind the reader that the motto of the Royal Air force was and is Per Ardua Ad Astra. As a British reader of a certain age reading Clarke from 1937 to the end of the last century is a bitter-sweet experience. On the one hand, it reminds us of the death of an England which scarcely exists now and, on the other, offers an amazing world of possibilities on its funeral pyre. Finally, you realise in reading these stories that Clarke was unusual in another respect - high intelligence capable of understanding and expanding imaginatively on extremely complex contemporary science and a humane understanding of human (or rather male) motivation. Yes, his women are generally ciphers. His is a male universe and one suspects he knew that this was not the whole story from the hints in the later tales. Perhaps he knew that he could only think like a male but in every respect he was decent - anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-militarist. The bottom line is that the collection shows that Arthur C. Clarke deserves his place as one of the great writers in the science fiction genre. The book is highly recommended albeit requiring considerable patience to get through its 966 relatively small print pages.

Dimitris Papastergiou

My last read for 2020.

I liked it, a fine story and a great-written one by a master of his craft.

Would recommend to anyone who likes staring at the night sky!


Happy New Year!


PS. I hope 2020 doesn't end the same way the book does!

PS2. Or maybe I do!

Six decades of fascinating stories from the legendary “colossus of science fiction” and creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey gathered in one compendium (The New Yorker). Arthur C. Clarke, along with H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein, was a definitive voice in twentieth century science fiction. A prophetic thinker, undersea explorer, and “one of the true geniuses of our time,” Clarke not only won the highest science fiction honors, the Nebula and Hugo Awards, but also received nominations for an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize, and was knighted for his services to literature (Ray Bradbury). Now, more than one hundred works of the sci-fi master’s short fiction are available in the “single-author collection of the decade” (Booklist, starred review). This definitive edition includes early work such as “Rescue Party” and “The Lion of Comarre,” classics like “The Nine Billion Names of God” and “The Sentinel” (which was the kernel of the later novel and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey), and later works including “A Meeting with Medusa” and “The Hammer of God.” Encapsulating one of the great science fiction careers of all time, this immense volume “displays the author’s fertile imagination and irrepressible enthusiasm for both good storytelling and impeccable science” (Library Journal). “One of the most astounding imaginations ever encountered in print.” —The New York Times “As his Collected Stories helps to demonstrate, there has been no popular writer since the days of C S Lewis and Charles Williams whose disposition is more nakedly apocalyptic, who takes greater pleasure in cradling eternity in the palm of his hand.” —The Guardian

Dave | Storyphoria

Full Review up on the AIC Stories Website at:
https://aicpod.com/2022/01/31/arthur-...


It’s a wonderful collection from a master of his craft, full of not only great stories, but terrific insight from the author himself on his thought process and feelings on each of the individual stories. 

I highly recommend this for any fan of science fiction, but with the caveat that I don’t recommend tackling it like you would a standard novel. Instead, take the stories just one or two at a time and allow yourself the joy of really thinking about them before moving on to the next story or two.

These stories deserve our full attention, so to be able to crack it open at random to a story, read it and then allow myself to really think about what I just enjoyed in that one or two short stories as I go about my day, is really the ideal way to enjoy this book.

lala

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.

The Nine Billion Names of God The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

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