[H]ere\’s another book of excellent short fiction, this time it\’s a single-author collection, THE BEST OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE 1937-71.
TITLE: THE BEST OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE 1937-71
AUTHOR: Arthur C. Clarke
EDITED BY: Angus Wells
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Collection
FORMAT: Hardback – Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1973, ISBN: 0 283 97979 8); Paperback – Sphere Books, London, 1973, ISBN: 0 7221 2426 0)
I have both the above hardback and paperback editions. The paperback was initially released as one volume, but later reissues were split into two volumes. Here is a listing of the contents:
- 1937: Travel by Wire
- 1938: Retreat from Earth
- 1942: The Awakening
- 1942: Whacky
- 1947: Castaway
- 1949: History Lesson
- 1949: Hide and Seek
- 1951: Second Dawn
- 1954: The Sentinel*
- 1955: The Star
- 1955: Refugee
- 1956: Venture to the Moon
- 1960: Into the Comet
- 1960: Summertime on Icarus
- 1961: Death and the Senator
- 1961: Hate
- 1965: Sunjammer
- 1972: A Meeting with Medusa**
This is an interesting one, although there are certainly some stories missing from it that you might expect to appear in any self-respecting Arthur C. Clarke Best of…. To name but a few: The Nine Billion Names of God, \”If I Forget Thee, O Earth…\”, The Wind from the Sun, Transit of Earth, I Remember Babylon, and Expedition to Earth, among others.
And there are also quite a few personal favourites that I thought should\’ve definitely been in there – Rescue Party, All the Time in the World, The Forgotten Enemy, The Fires Within, Time\’s Arrow, Out of the Sun, and a few others.
But that\’s the problem with all Best of… collections, isn\’t it? There\’s never enough room for every story that the readers (or editors) think should definitely be in there. And, in the end, it\’s totally up to the personal choice of the editor. Still, even with the omissions, this is still a nice collection of Clarke\’s short fiction.
This was the very first collection of Arthur C. Clarke short stories that I ever read, way back when I was a kid (we\’re talking forty years ago here), so it holds significant sentimental value for me, even though it isn\’t by any means the most comprehensive collection of Clarke\’s best short fiction. For that, read instead the later collection MORE THAN ONE UNIVERSE: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE (US, 1991), which would be much more deserving of the title THE BEST OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE.
* The Sentinel is erroneously dated in the contents listing as being published in 1954. The correct publication date is 1951.
** The collection is dated 1937-1971, but one story in the collection, A Meeting with Medusa, was published in 1972.