Aaron's Book of the Week :: Tales of the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

Completing our tribute to the late Arthur C. Clarke, the Book of the Week is Tales of the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke. This is a paperback original, published in 1957, cover art by Richard Powers.

Tales of the White Hart reflects Sir Arthur's lighter side, a collection of tall tales related by the patrons of the White Hart tavern. It is one of the most successful examples of the "space bar" subgenre, bizarre science fiction or fantasy stories swapped by the regulars of a particular pub, almost always to comic effect. (As Tales of the White Hart demonstrates, this subgenre long predates the space bar scene in the original Star Wars film.) My personal favorite space bar collections will appear in future BOTW's, but first we will pay tribute to an outstanding science fiction artist who passed away last week.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Ten Story Fantasy, Spring 1951

Continuing our tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, the Magazine of the Week is the first and only issue of Ten Story Fantasy, published in the Spring of 1951. The artist who drew the absurd and misogynistic cover is uncredited.

Ten Story Fantasy is what we call a one-shot, a magazine that only lasted for a single issue. The magazine died quickly despite having an accomplished editor, Donald A. Wollheim, the creator of DAW books, which continues to publish to this day. What's more, unlike most one-shots, this issue actually contains an impressive list of contributing authors, including John Wyndham (writing under the pseudonym John Beynon, apparently in no hurry to claim credit for writing the cover story "Tyrant and Slave Girl on Planet Venus"), A.E. Van Vogt, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, C.M. Kornbluth, Lester Del Rey, and August Derleth.

But by far the magazine's greatest claim to fame is that it contains the very first appearance of the Arthur C. Clarke story "Sentinel of Eternity" (later renamed "The Sentinel"), which eventually became the basis for the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. While 2001 is typical of the type of science fiction for which Arthur C. Clarke is best remembered, SF with big ideas and profound speculations on the destiny of mankind, he also had a lighter side. We will complete our Clarke tribute next week with his best humorous book.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Reach for Tomorrow by Arthur C. Clarke

Continuing our tribute to the late Arthur C. Clarke, the Book of the Week is Reach for Tomorrow, a collection of early Clarke short stories.

This is a first printing, paperback original, published in 1956. The book is notable for its very unusual cover art by legendary SF illustrator Richard Powers. The cover is horizontally, not vertically, oriented, so you have to turn the book sideways to view it correctly. For next week's BOTW, we will have the pulp magazine that contains the first appearance of the Arthur C. Clarke short story that was later expanded into 2001: A Space Odyssey. You will see that the cover of that magazine has far less artistic merit than the cover of this week's BOTW.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Infinity Science Fiction November 1955

Continuing our tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, the Magazine of the Week is the very first issue of digest magazine Infinity Science Fiction, dated November 1955, cover art by Robert Engle. This magazine contains the first appearance of my personal favorite Arthur C. Clarke story, "The Star." It follows a Jesuit priest having a crisis of faith after studying the artifacts of an entire race of aliens wiped out when their sun went nova. "The Star" won Arthur C. Clarke the first of his three Hugo Awards (although he may have won more if the Hugos had been created a few years earlier).

Infinity, edited by Larry T. Shaw, was one of a bumper crop of digest science fiction magazines that appeared in the mid-1950's. This inaugural issue contains stories by some of the best writers of the day, including Robert Bloch, James Blish, and William Tenn. At the same time, publishers were beginning to print collections of short stories all by a single popular author. Next week's Book of the Week will be an early collection of Arthur C. Clarke short fiction, notable for the unusual orientation of the book's cover.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke

Science fiction lost a legend last week when Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away at the age of 90. To begin our tribute, the Book of the Week is the 1954 first paperback printing of Sir Arthur's first book, Against the Fall of Night, cover art by Richard Powers.

Set far in the future on an Earth mired in decay, Against the Fall of Night tells of a young man named Alvin, who sets out to recapture past glories. The novel was first published in shorter form in the pulp magazine Startling Stories in 1948. Even though the book was well received when republished in the early 50's, Sir Arthur was dissatisfied with it, and entirely rewrote it as The City and the Stars, which first appeared in 1956. Such is the power of Clarke's imagination that both versions remained in print for many years.

As discussed in a prior BOTW about Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke is best remembered outside the science fiction genre as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, while his most influential book within the genre was Childhood's End. But perhaps his greatest contribution to humanity was originating the concept of placing communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits -- to this day often called "Clarke orbits" in his honor.

An underappreciated aspect of Clarke's career is his outstanding short fiction. You will see the first appearance of my personal favorite Arthur C. Clarke short story next week.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

The Book of the Week is the first paperback printing of Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1953, simultaneously with the first hardcover edition, cover art by Richard Powers. This is the third in our sequence of all-time classic science fiction novels first published in 1953, a year the fans at the World Science Fiction Convention neglected to present Hugo Awards.

Arthur C. Clarke is a living legend of science fiction. (Still living at 89, no doubt, because he has never signed any books for me - he has had to hole up in Sri Lanka to avoid me.) He will probably always be best known to non-SF insiders as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but most SF fans regard Childhood's End as his greatest novel. Childhood's End tells of the arrival of an alien race, here to assist humanity in its transition to a more advanced state of being, assistance not everyone is excited about.

Incidentally, in 1945, Clarke was the first person to propose the use of satellites in geosynchronous orbits to facilitate telecommunications. To this day, geosynchronous orbits are often called "Clarke orbits" in his honor. If he had thought to patent his idea, he might well have become the richest person in the world.

We will return to Arthur C. Clarke in future BOTWs, but first we will see another classic of the field from 1953, by another of the legends of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.