Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Clarke's short stories

Arthur C Clarke has left. Coincidentally, after making the 2001: A Space Odyssey reference in my last post, I flipped through some of my favourite Clarke stories, including "The Sentinel", which was the seed of the 2001 script. I haven't read any of his longer works but I'm a big fan of his short stories - when I first encountered them many years ago, they opened my eyes to the ways in which good science fiction can engage with our world more closely than laboured, fact-obsessed non-fiction (this sounds paradoxical, but anyone who's opened themselves to the genre will understand). Also, its incomparable ability to put our lives in perspective and to hold up a large cosmic mirror in which we can see the pettiness of some of the concepts we've created (patriotism, for instance). None of this means that Clarke is insensitive to the minutiae of human lives, or to our deepest feelings: his beautiful, sentimental "Dog Star", about an astronaut having to part with his beloved dog when he goes to live on a lunar observatory, is about the closest any short story has come to moistening my ever-dry eyes. (It's also one of a few examples in Clarke's work of a rational mind struggling with an experience that borders on the supernatural, and never coming completely to terms with the scientific explanation.)

Here are some of my other favourite Clarke stories, all of which are good starting points for a reader new to SF. Among the more serious ones: "The Wall of Darkness", "Out of the Sun", "The Forgotten Enemy", "The Star" (one of his most acclaimed pieces, with a genuinely frisson-creating twist), "The Shining Ones" (a nice riff on the "Squid" chapter in Moby Dick) and "Dial F for Frankenstein". Among the humorous stories, "History Lesson" (minor spoiler: you'll never look at Donald Duck the same way again), "A Slight Case of Sunstroke", "Let there be Light", and "Reunion". There are dozens of others - you'll find them all in this book.

7 comments:

  1. interestin, shud make a pt. to chk these out...was always more an asimov fan....the only clarke book i read was 'rendezvous with rama'....liked that.....

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  2. Thanks for the recommendations. Never been disappointed with them - Sangeetha

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  3. "History Lesson" is amazing. Minor quibble, Mickey, not Donald.

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  4. Anon: you sure? From the descriptions provided (the violent temper, the protrusion from the mouth region), I thought it was Donald.

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  5. Yes amazing is his oeuvre. Last of the Trinity of SF with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov long gone. I am deep into SF thanks to Clarke's stories. Here is a link to his "History Lesson"
    http://web.math.hr/~veky/T/T1/historylesson.txt
    SF is multifacted. You would have definitely read Ray Bradbury. For those who think SF is all high tech gizmo et al, they are yet to discover Bradbury.

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  6. Jab,
    I am the anon in comment 3. Actually, no, I am not sure. When I read it, I had assumed it was mickey. From memory, it described violent chases punctuated by crashes. And to be honest, when you think of the symbol iconically attached to "A Walt Disney Production", you would think M rather than D. But this is a minor quibble really. For everyone else, if you haven;t read it, please do go and read it first. Even my non-SF fan wife loves it.

    BTW, another, not short story in that collection is "Lions of Comarre" (sp?) which I also rather liked. Plus there is another story, also set in a "History Lesson" type of situation, but with a rather different ending. I will have to thumb thru the tome to see if I can find the name, though. My story name memory, what little I had of it, is completely gone.

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  7. "they opened my eyes to the ways in which good science fiction can engage with our world more closely than laboured, fact-obsessed non-fiction"

    Well said, Jabberwock, well said!

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