Of Time and Stars
Arthur C. Clarke
208 pages
published in 1972

This is a collection of classic Clarke short stories, culled from earlier collections, with an introduction by J. B. Priestly. Most of the stories in this book will be more then familiar to most people, including as they do such classics as "The Nine Billion Names of God" and "All the Time in the World".

For me personally, none of the stories in this book were unknown to me, having read them years ago. In fact, some of them were amongst the first proper science fiction I've ever read. Together with Asimov, Clarke was the first "real" sf author I read, owning to the fact that they both occur pretty early in the alphabet and I was working my way through the local library's children department... These stories have helped shape my expectations of what science fiction is. Even now, years and countless other stories later, they still give me that vicarious thrill of reading real sf, in a way that the latest Stephenson or Vinge epic cannot.

The stories in this volume can be divided into two groups. The first group of stories is about the early days of spacetravel and the Conquest of Space. (Remember, most of these stories were written long before Sputnik.) Most of them revolve around a specific problem occurring during a mission and its resolution.

SPOILERS

In "Robin Hood, F.R.S" frex, a supply rocket for the moon expedition lands on an inaccessible mountain, the solution of how to get up there lies within the title.

Another story, "Feathered Friend" a smuggled from Earth canary alerts the crew of a space station to the fact that their air is getting foul.

"Into the Comet" in its turn tells about how an expedition to a newly discovered comet gets themselves out of trouble after their computer conks out.

Some of them are hardly more then small vignettes about life in space: "Who's there?" frex, where the hero is disturbed by a ghost in his spacesuit -which turns out to be kittens of the station's pet cat.

What's noticeable about these stories is how little conflict there is in them: no wars, no rivalry between crewmembers, just calm resolute (British) engineers and scientists working logically towards a solution for the problem. There's just one story about a spacewar and even that is more like a game of "Hide and Seek".

The second category of stories is less gentle, but more interesting. These are stand alone stories, setting up a situation either seriously or humourously and seeing what happens. The classic sort of "what if?" sf story, in other words.

Like everybody in the fifties, Clarke wrote his share of "end of the world" stories, often done humourously. "No Morning After" has the sun going nova in a week and the mentally highly developed alien race who've discovered this can only contact one person on Earth -- and he is drunk.

"The Nine Billion Names of God": "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

The Forgotten Enemy", where the last person living in a London ravaged by the new Ice Age witnesses the return of the glaciers.

"All the Time in the World", where a burglar gets handed a device to stop time and is ordered to steal valuable treasures from the British Museum -and then he learns why.

Not often regarded has a humour writer, Clarke des have a high ratio of comedic stories in this volume:

"Trouble with the Natives", about the first alien contact with Earth, which is slightly vexed by the alien's reliance on what they've learned from the BBC radio broadcasts. This story suprised me with its very British setting, something that's rare with Clarke.

"Security Check" about a designer for a tv sci-fi show, whose imagination ia slightly too good.

All in all, while this collection offered no suprises for me, I was suprised with how good Clarke was when writing short stories and how much I enjoyed them. Considering I read most of this collection whilst waiting in hospital while my girlfriend was checked in and examined, this is quite an achievement.

By today's standards Clarke lacks a lot as a writer: he has no good grip on his characters, his use of language is straight forward, his plots are not the most convincing, but it's overcome in his short stories at least by the way of how he presents the future: as a a place where decent people of all nations work together to fulfil mankind's dreams of conquering space. There is a basic decency about his stories, which even penetrates his more sober tales and he has a gift of sketching compelling visions in very little space. Who can forget some of the stories mentioned above?

All of the stories in this volume are also available in the just released collection of his complete short work: go and buy it.