Krishna
There are several types of Science Fiction Writers. Most fantasy/science fiction has revolved around invented worlds like ‘Trius, with its two Suns and three Moons, could be spectacular at early dawn’ and populated with fantastic animals and interlligent beings. The most famous movies in this genre are, of course, the Star War series.
Some, like Frank Herbert’s Dune series revolve around a world that is really unusual and different, and yet falls neatly into the science genre.
Even the giants of this series like Asimov and Heinlein resort to the robot and the intergallectic strategms to portray varied and different
worlds.
Now, Arthur C. Clark has done a lot of that too, but in this collection of short stories, he has covered a completely varied
grounds, with results that are mixed. What is impressive is that he has used everyday and uncommon scientific facts to weave stories that are so different from other ‘common’ science fiction effects as chalk to the proverbial cheese.
Take the story Rescue Party, for instance. In this story, an alien species comes to earth, almost too late to save people inhabiting a seemingly empty planet from certain destruction as the star of the galaxy is about to go Nova. One of the most amazing stories is ‘Technical Error‘ where power is given to an experimental reactor (several thousand volts, briefly) when a technician is in there, cleaning. It is switched off immediately, but the technician is found, after a baffling moment, when it looked like he had ‘disappeared’, where he was expeccted, apparently unharmed. Then strange things happen. He seems to confuse his right hand with left, the coins he had in his pockets seem to have the Queen looking the other way and more interestingly, he seems to have lost the ability to digest food and is in danger of starving to death in the middle of all the abundant food being given to him. Why? The explanation is ingenious and scientific!
Amazing stories like this are interspersed with silly and sometimes even incomprehensible stories.
All in all, even if you are not a Science Fiction Buff, it is worth a try. I would give it a 7/10 only because of the varied nature of the stories, some of which are long and boring.
— Krishna