About book The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (2002)
LATEST STORY REVIEW UPDATE: Story # 15: "Transience".15. Transience (1949) [5 pages] 4.5 Stars: A story that expresses that mankind is here for only a short span of time, temporarily! Man has come, and shall be gone, in the grand scheme of things. ~ June 16, 2015 ~14. History Lesson (1949) [7 pages] 5 Stars: Five Thousand years after the Third Planet has lost its civilization due to an Ice Age, the now-progressed Venusians venture forth towards it, to learn the past of an advanced species. The story teaches us a lesson, on the limits of learning the truth from historical research! ~ June 15, 2015 ~13. Nightfall (1947) [3 pages] 4 Stars: The last nuclear weapon explodes, mankind is annihilated, as 'the river takes its own new course'. ~ June 14, 2015 ~12. Inheritance (1947) [7 pages] 3 Stars: When a dream that drives one man's destiny forward. (CNC-RR) ~ June 14, 2015 ~11. The Fires Within (1947) [7 pages] 4 Stars: When sonar research is being developed as a means of geological surveying, what the researchers find is beyond our capabilities to understand as to how ... ...! ~ Nov 8, 2014 ~10. Castaway (1947) [6 pages] 5 Stars: When an unusual ionised life-form from the photosphere of the sun drops into the Atlantic ocean on a planet now called as the Earth, it is aeons later when it is faced with a radiation so 'powerful' indeed which gives rise to its threat of annihilation. ~ Oct 4, 2014 ~9. Technical Error (1946) [13 pages] 4.5 Stars: When the world's first superconductive generator goes awry, a man is found subjected to the 'yet-unknown' rules of lateral inversion. Superb use of the idea of stereo-isomerism in a short-story that I could have never thought of so easily. ~ July 17, 2014 ~8. Rescue Party (1946) [21 pages] 4.5 Stars: Alveron and his kind, the lords of the Universe, approach Earth to rescue any survivors due to their sun about to become Nova in a few hours. The Paladorian, possessing no self-identity but still connected with an unknown link to its fellow-kinds who are scattered around the galaxy, is my personal favourite :) This story involves some good mystery. ~ May 21, 2014 ~7. Loophole (1946) [6 pages] 5 Stars: In an epistolary form, Clarke describes Martians trying to suppress Mankind from achieving a technology and how that leads to an eventually much powerful expression of man's potential to harness the laws of physics, displaying a certainty of loopholes in any system. The causes of the end of WW2 are reflected at the beginning of this story. ~ Mar 27, 2014 ~6. Whacky (1942) [2 pages] 4 Stars: This one took four rounds of reading in order for me to comprehend as much. Highly speculative, the story (I can say) can be interpreted in various ways while including elements of Dreams, a 'Creator' and Pre-Birth, Astral Travel, or even Death. Horror takes its own form when the reader's thinking mind is much into the ideas behind the writing of this story. ~ Mar 26, 2014~5. The Awakening (1942) [3 pages] 5 Stars: For a man waiting to be awakened from a tomb after hundred years for a treatment to cure his heart, the repercussions of what he sees upon his awakening, remains a terrorizing idea by itself!. The story is food for further science fictional thinking. ~ Mar 26, 2014 ~4. Reverie (1939) [2 pages] 3 Stars: A short essay on "All the ideas in Science Fiction have been used up!". ~ Mar 26, 2014 ~3. Retreat from Earth (1938) [9 pages] 5 Stars: Earth-like Martians plan on occupying the mankind-inhabited 'Third' planet, which has already been occupied by extra-terrestrial creatures from millions of years ago that live amongst us in real life even to this day. Terrific detailing of the 'alien' form and its social structure. ~ Mar 25, 2014 ~2. How We Went to Mars (1938) [8 pages] 3.5 Stars: A group of people build a rocket-based spaceship in the relative future, towards the late 1940's, to be amongst the first ones to blast off into further space. The group ends up travelling to Mars, and their adventures are described in the story. Contains more humour than the preceding story. ~ Mar 11, 2014 ~1. Travel By Wire (1937) [4 pages] 4.0 Stars: In which they engage in the creation of a wired transporter (teleporter), and explain in short the various difficulties and mishaps that follow its invention and wide use. Contains a bit of humour. ~ Mar 10, 2014 ~**CNC = Could Not Comprehend at all.**CNC-RR = Could Not Comprehend well. A Re-Reading is required.
For anyone who has no background with Arthur C. Clarke (or Science Fiction in general), this collection is a marvelous introduction.The best part of this being a collection is you can pick and choose the titles that sound interesting to you until you've gotten into the genre. Some of my absolute favorites in here include The Star, The Nine Billion Names of God, and Siseneg.Clarke is best known for penning the screen-play of 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as it's literary adaption (which is significantly different from the movie). But incuded in this collection is the short story which prompted Stanly Kubrik to make 2001. It's a story called The Sentinel. The concept is simple: some unknown technology which survives all of man's descructive attempts to understand it. For how is that mankind learns new things? We take things apart; tear out the insides; use the more violent ways to figure out how it does what it does. And in many of these stories, this destructive tendency comes back to bite us.Some of these stories focus on the super-natural, and the ignorance of mankind to understand it. Say an extremely psychic race managed to contact you, only because you were so drunk you let your unconscious guard down so they could seep into your mind. There they informed you of Earth's soon-to-occur demise. Do you think you'd think of it as more than just a dream or flight of drunken fancy?But through all of them, they remain about humanity as a whole. Be it the future, the past, or a sightly different present, each of these stories deleves deeper into the human character.Thank you for reading my very rambling review. Hope it was helpful!
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Arthur C. Clarke no necesita ningún tipo de presentación para el aficionado a la ciencia ficción, así que ya sabes qué puedes esperar en este libro: ciencia ficción clásica, imaginativa y con una sólida base científica, en una colección de historias de lo mejorcito del género. En ese sentido, este libro es un cofre lleno de tesoros, con todos los relatos publicados por Clarke desde 1937 hasta 1999, más de 60 años de carrera con obras maestras como Time's arrow, The Sentinel que dio origen más tarde a 2001, The songs of distant earth expandida posteriormente en una novela, The nine billion names of God o mis favoritas The wind from the Sun y A meeting with Medusa. Estos relatos, junto o otros muchos de esta colección, han definido lo que hoy conocemos como ciencia ficción y son de lectura obligada para todos los aficionados al género. Solo por ellos ya merece la pena que leas este libro.
—Miguel Pulido
Included stories:Travel by Wire!How We Went to MarsRetreat From EarthReverieThe AwakeningWhackyLoopholeRescue PartyTechnical ErrorCastawayThe Fires WithinInheritanceNightfallHistory LessonTransienceThe Wall of DarknessThe Lion of ComarreThe Forgotten EnemyHide-and-SeekBreaking StrainNemesisGuardian AngelTime's ArrowA Walk in the DarkSilence PleaseTrouble With the NativesThe Road to the SeaThe SentinelHoliday on the MoonEarthlightSecond DawnSuperiority'If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...'All the Time in the WorldThe Nine Billion Names of GodThe PossessedThe ParasiteJupiter FiveEncounter In the DawnThe Other TigerPublicity CampaignArmaments RaceThe Deep RangeNo Morning AfterBig Game HuntPatent PendingRefugeeThe StarWhat Goes UpVenture to the MoonThe PacifistThe Reluctant OrchidMoving SpiritThe Defenestration of Ermintrude InchThe Ultimate MelodyThe Next TenantsCold WarSleeping BeautySecurity CheckThe Man Who Ploughed the SeaCritical MassThe Other Side of the SkyLet There Be LightOut of the SunCosmic CasanovaThe Songs of Distant EarthA Slight Case of SunstrokeWho's There?Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting...I Remember BabylonTrouble With TimeInto the CometSummertime on IcarusSaturn RisingDeath and the SenatorBefore EdenHateLove that UniverseDog StarMaelstrom IIAn Ape About the HouseThe Shining OnesThe SecretDial F For FrankensteinThe Wind from the SunThe Food of the GodsThe Last CommandLight of DarknessThe Longest Science-fiction Story Ever ToldPlaybackThe Cruel SkyHerbert George Morley Roberts Wells, Esq. CrusadeNeutron TideReunionsTransit of EarthA Meeting With MedusaQuarantine'siseneG'The Steam-powered Word ProcessorOn Golden SeasThe Hammer of GodThe Wire ContinuumImproving the Neighbourhood
—Kolya Matteo
When I first purchased this book, I did it because I have a tendency to not be able to put a good read down (I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in three days - I would even read while cooking, literally holding the book in one hand and stirring a pot with the other). I figured, "Hey, it's short stories, how involved can I get."Apparently a lot. This collection really gives you a sense of Clarke's maturation as an author over a span of decades, and it also serves as a chronicle of what is considered outlandish or futuristic in a given time. And there's almost a sense of playfulness in many of his shorter stories, as though serious science with a wink. I highly recommend this as a book for light occasional reading, Clarke or early sci-fi fans, and frankly as great bedtime material for little sci-fi readers.
—The Great Brendar
