Customer Reviews

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It was about time somebody collected all of Clarke's short stories into one volume. I looked forward eagerly to re-reading them (I wore out my '50s and '60s paperbacks of Clarke's stories long ago). Sadly, the poor copyediting ruined this book for me. Tor must have hired some minimum-wage illiterate to keypunch the stories, then neglected to proofread any of them. There are mispellings on every page ("BEWARD OF LIONS"), and whole lines (or worse) are completely missing from many of the stories! (A whole *series* of paragraphs was missing from one of my favorite stories, "Superiority".)

I'm almost sorry I bought this book. You can buy it for its historical significance, but expect to be disappointed by its quality.

This book is heavy and inconvenient to carry around. The spellings are all British. "The Curse" is inexplicably renamed as "Nightfall". "At The Mountains of Murkiness" is missing.--But none of these gripes matter at all. The fact is, this is a (nearly-)comprehensive collection of all the short fiction of one of the three greatest authors to write Science Fiction. It includes the stories that made the Science Fiction Hall of Fame ("The Nine Billion Names of God" and "The Star"), stories that grew to more famous works ("The Sentinel," which formed part of the basis for Clarke & Kubrick's _2001: A Space Odyssey_ [both the novel and film]; "Guardian Angel," which grew to become Clarke's best novel, _Childhood's End_; and "The Songs of Distant Earth" and "The Hammer of God," which grew to the novels of the same name), light-hearted works (including all the classic _Tales of the White Hart_ and the more recent "Steam-Powered Word Processor"), and serious works (such as "Breaking Strain" and the aforementioned "Star"). This is surely the greatest single volume of short Science Fiction ever published. Recommended unreservedly.

"Many and strange are the Universes that drift like bubbles in the foam upon the River of time. Some - a very few - move against or athwart its current; and fewer still are those that lie forever beyond its reach, knowing nothing of the future or the past. Shervane's tiny cosmos was not one of these; its strangeness was of a different order." Thus begins the "Wall of darkness" the 16th of the stories in this collection of 104 Science Fiction short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke.

Briefly; the Wall of darkness is a story about a wealthy young man who lives on a world always turning the same face towards its star, the great sun of Trilorne. On this world there was a region too hot for life called the Fire lands, a narrow belt that was inhabitable, and also the cold shadow lands surrounding the equator. Located at the equator was "The wall of darkness" a gigantic tall black impenetrable wall. It was not known whether it was created by the maker of stars or by some ancient civilization, but Shervane set out to explore it. What he found was almost beyond comprehension and still it elegantly explained the time and space structure of our own Universe, and maybe the time and space structure of any possible material Universe. As is stated; "Shervane's world was the last and the strangest jest of the Maker of the Stars". I always found this short story to be the most fascinating short story I have ever read, and one of the best manifestations of the Genius of Arthur C. Clarke.

This is a nearly complete collection of all of A. Clarke's short stories collected into one book. Naturally it contains some awesome gems like; The lion of Comarre, The Sentinel, The Wall of darkness, The Nine Billion Names of God, The Man Who Ploughed the Sea, The Songs of Distant Earth, A Meeting With Medusa, The Hammer of God, etc. Some of these stories were later turned into novels. There were some editorial mistakes in the book but they did not ruin my reading experiences.

Unlike the typical run of the mill space ship, star trek, star wars, sort of Science Fiction stories, these stories cover a lot of ground. From Tibetan monks trying to find God's real name using computers, to the discovery of 2 billion years old machines, encounters with gigantic jellyfish/balloon like creatures in Jupiters atmosphere, to quirky and humor filled space walk accidents.

What I like about Arthur C. Clarke is that he does not waste his great imagination on the impossible or highly implausible. For example, time travel stories (back in time) are as boring as they are implausible (or impossible). In the comment section I will list all the stories in this collection. Perhaps you will recognize your favorite.

The number of typos and other errors in this book is astounding. I love all of these stories and am happy to have them all in one volume, but the incredibly bad editing is unforgivable -- Clarke deserves better.

Finally, at long last, we get a (very nearly) complete collection of Arthur C. Clarke's short works all in one volume. This collection is very convenient to the ACC collector, because his short works are scattered across numerous volumes (many of which are out of print) and several are uncollected. 104 stories, nearly 1,000 pages... all classic Clarke works. His first published story Travel By Wire! (1937) is here, as is his most recent Improving The Neighborhood (1999), his only collaboration The Wire Continium (with Stephen Baxter, 1998), and similar novelties. The stories range in length from 33 words to over 18,000. There is also a nice introduction from Clarke. Prefaced to each story are notes on when and where it was first published (very useful information to the Clarke collector), what ACC retrospectives it has since appeared in, and (most of the time) some brief notes on the story from Clarke. The stories collected here are widely varying, from absolute classics of the genre like The Star, The Nine Billion Names of God, The Lion of Comarre, The Wall of Darkness, All The Time In The World, Breaking Strain, etc.; to "seed" shorts like The Sentinel, Guardian Angel, Earthlight, The Songs of Distant Earth, The Hammer of God, etc.; to light-hearted, hilarous SF romps like the numerous "White Hart" tales, Trouble With the Natives, How We Got To Mars (previouly uncollected), and more. With all these extras in mind, along with the fact that it contains several previously uncollected stories, this book is essential not only to the Clarke newbie, but also to the hardcore admirer who already owns most everything he has ever written. This long-awaited omnibus is truly an absolute must-own for any science fiction fan. Period.

This is one of the best single-author collections that I've ever read, and it's great for the Clarke fan. I particularly enjoyed the "White Hart" stories, some of Clarke's earliest works, taking place in a pub and told by engineers and scientists coming in for a pint. The collection in which they were published, Tales From the White Hart, is fairly hard to find.
If there are any problems with it, though, this is it: it's printed on fairly ratty paper and lacks that, I don't know, immutable heft or something. Although the state of the proofreading isn't as bad as is sometimes said, it does contain a few more errors per hundred pages than are usually found.
In conclusion, this is great. I heartily recommend it.

This is a really cool collection of stories. Apparantly, Clarke's older stuff was much better than the newer stories, such as 2061 which was horrible. I can't imagine any sci fi lover not enjoying this book.

They've brought out another edition and they seem to have proofread it this time; I only noticed a small handful of errors in nearly 1000 pages. (At least, the edition I got in the UK was fine.) So don't be put off by tales of dreadful misspellings, the danger has passed.

It's a nice little collection of stories, although not quite as good as I expected from his reputation. This is partly personal preference: I'm not terribly interested in space travel, which is the subject of the majority of stories, I prefer sociologically/philosophically based science fiction, and it's very difficult to write science fiction that doesn't date somewhat (aliens sporting tentacles and names consisting only of consonants, bless them).

His style slightly reminded me of John Wyndham (I find both rather sweet and extraordinarily oblivious of feminism), and shared Wyndham's concern that we're going to do a great job of sending ourselves to a variety of hells if we don't watch out, satirising human prejudices and wars. The humourous stories were a lovely surprise and frequently had a clever sting in the tail, for instance the one about the man who tries to train a giant carnivorous orchid to munch up his irritating aunt, or the chap who designs the sets and equipment for a trashy space opera and ends up being picked up by aliens for accidentally revealing their state secrets. He also provided a new take on old cliches, such as suggesting that if aliens were to try to contact us, it wouldn't be all that straightforward: we'd either not take them seriously, or get the planet demolished by the rudeness of our reception, or they'd take one look and not believe their eyes. Well, he could have a point.

I got this as a present for my kid. I read it more than he does!! Good anthology of Clarke's work.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (December 16, 1917 - March 19, 2008) was one of the masters of Science Fiction. For over 50 years he wrote stories which amazed and delighted readers, and this collection helps bring together his short fiction in one place for fans to enjoy. Early editions of this collection were fraught with error, and so it has developed a poor reputation. From what I can tell, though, these problems have been corrected, and this is now a great collection for those who want to experience not only his greatest works, but also those which are not so great. You can see his development as a writer within these pages.

The quality of Clarke's work varies quite a bit from the earlier fanzine stories to his excellent work later on, which results in the overall collection having variable strength. There also appear to be some stories omitted, which makes this less than a complete collection, though certainly most of his works are here. You will certainly find great works such as "The Nine Billion Names of God", "The Sentinel", "The Star", "A Meeting with Medusa", and others, but for me those works are already easily found elsewhere, and the interest in this work was being able to read some of his rarer works, even if they weren't his greatest stories.

I can easily see why some would give this work less than five stars, especially if they had an earlier edition which had so many spelling errors and other mistakes in it. However, for me, it rates five stars because of the near comprehensive look at the short fiction from one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time.