Episode: 4560
Title: Arthur C. Clarke: Other Works, Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4560/hpr4560.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:56 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4560, for 2026-01-23
Today's show is entitled, "Arthur C. Clarke: Other Works, Part 2"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:14:19
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "A look at some of Arthur C. Clarke's other works."
Hello, this is a hookah welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our science fiction and fantasy series, and
This time what we're gonna do is we're gonna wrap up our look at Arthur C. Clark and
You know, we spent some time on this because he's a very important author in the history of science fiction
And there's a lot of good stuff there to take a look at
And so what we're gonna do now is sort of get some of the other miscellaneous works
That are perhaps worthy of a little attention and
Bring some attention to them and then at the end we're gonna cover
Arthur C. Clark's three laws
That should be fun
So the first story we're gonna talk about is a time Odyssey now
This is a collaboration
between
two of
science fiction's best authors
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, something went wrong.
This series is not bad, but I hesitate to describe it as good
This series was described by Clark as neither a prequel nor a sequel, but an Arthur quail
A name quaint from orthogonal which means something roughly like at right angles
Though it is also used in statistics to denote events that are independent and do not influence each other
And the relativity theory time is orthogonal to space
And in multi-dimensional geometry we can talk about axes in each dimension is orthogonal to all of the others
It's something I can't picture being pretty much limited to three dimensions, but it can be described mathematically
Anyway back to time Odyssey. It's
Has a small resemblance to the 2001 series, but not really
It has globes instead of monoliths
And the spheres have a circumference and volume that is related to their radius not by the usual
Pi but by exactly three
Just what this means I am not sure
Other than they are not spheres in any usual sense of the word
In this story the spheres seem to be gathering people from various eras and bringing them to some other planet which gets
Kristened mere
Though not in any way to the Russian space station
It is a Russian word that can mean peace, world or village
I've seen it used a lot to refer to a village in my studies of Russian history
Anyway the inhabitants include two hominids
Mother and a daughter a group of British red coats
Mongols from the Genghis Khan era a UN peacekeeper helicopter a Russian space capsule an
Unknown rigid kipling the army of Alexander the Great
Well at least they have a lot of characters to throw around
They end up taking sides and fighting each other in the end several of the people are returned to earth in their own time
But the joke is on them
The beings behind the spheres call themselves the firstborn because they were the first to achieve sentience
They figure that the best way for them to remain safe is to wipe out any other race to achieve sentience
It kind of makes them the polar opposite of the beings behind the monoliths in 2001 for whom the mind is sacred
Anyway the firstborn have arranged for a massive solar flare that will wipe out all life on earth and completely
Sterilize the planet but conveniently it will happen in five years leaving plenty of time for plot development
Of course the people of earth will try to protect themselves
Then in the third book of the series an ominous object enters the solar system
This is of course they call back to the Rama object
It's like they wanted to take stuff from the Rama series and twist it
So I love a lot of Arthur C. Clark's worth works
I like a lot of Stephen Baxter's work
But somehow I think this is eminently skippable
Now the two of them also collaborated on the final white heart story which isn't bad
And that brings us to tales from the white heart
Okay white heart in this case heart is H.A.R.T. so they're talking about a type of deer
So it's the name of a pub and in this pub there you know
There's a character who tells outrageous stories
Now other characters are thinly disguised science fiction authors including Clark himself
A Clark mentions he was inspired to do this by the Jorkins series of Lord Dunceney
Which are also outrageous tall tales but lacking the science fiction aspects of Clark stories
Of course this type of story has a long history in which we could do well to mention
For instance the stories of Baron Munchausen
And of course the stories that El Sprig de Camp and Fletcher Pratt has found entails from Gavigan's bar
And spider Robinson would take this basic idea and turn it into a series of books about
Callahan's place also known as Callahan's cross time saloon
The stories of this type are at least as much fantasy as anything but quite enjoyable
And I think I can recommend all of these as worth the time to while away and a cold winter's evening
while sitting by a warm fire with a beverage of choice
Now some of these are short stories such as the nine billion names of God
Now this was written in 1954
In 2004 it got a retro-spective Hugo as the best short story of 54
The idea is that a group of Tibetan monks believe that the purpose of the
Universes to identify the nine billion names of God
And once that has been done the universe will no longer have a purpose and will cease to exist
They have been identifying candidates and writing them down but the work is very slow
So they decide that maybe with a little automation they can speed it up
So they get a computer
Now this is 1954 so you should be picturing a room-sized mainframe
And then they hire some Western programmers to develop the program to do this
Now the programmers don't believe the monks are on to anything here, but you know a paycheck is a paycheck
They finish the program and start at running but decide they don't want to be there when the monks
Discovered their theory doesn't work
So they take off early without telling you and it had down the mountain
But on the way they see the stars go out one by one
The next classic short story
Is called the star and this one the Hugo for best short story in 1956
The story opens with the return of an interstellar expedition that has been studying a system
Where the star went Nova millennia ago
But the expeditions astrophysicist who is a Jesuit priest seems to be in a crisis of faith
And if you think it implausible that a Jesuit priest could be an astrophysicist
I would suggest you look into the case of the Belgian priest George Lenneth
Who first developed the theory in the big bang
Anyway, in the story they learned that this system had a planet much like earth
It had intelligent beings much like earth who were peaceful
But in a tragic turn of events they knew their star was going to explode and they had no capability of interstellar travel
So they created a repository on the uttermost planet of the system that was survived the explosion and left records of their civilization
And when the Jesuit astrophysicist calculated the time of the explosion and the travel time for life
He has shaken and says oh God
There were so many stars you could have used
What was the need to give these people to the fire that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem
And
Now the often island
The often island is a young adult novel is
I think what we would say today
Probably what a call to the juvenile back then
So the people of the sea are dolphins
They save a young boy who had stowed away on a hover ship that subsequently had crashed
And because no one knew about him he was a stow away
He was left among the wreckage when the crew takes off in the light boats
Now from here it is the typical
Buildings robin you find in most young adult novels
The dolphins bring him to an island where he becomes involved with a research community led by a professor
Who's trying to communicate with dolphins?
He learns various skills there survives dangers
And in the end has to risk his life to save the people of the island
Now if you have a 13 year old in your house, this is worth looking for
It's a very good young adult novel and
You know 13 is probably just about perfect for this
Now we're going to discuss a novella it's called a meeting with Medusa
And this one the 1972 Nebula award for best novella now remember the Hugo awards are voted by the fans
The Nebula awards are voted by other writers so it's the science fiction writers
Association
So meeting with Medusa Nebula award in 1972
It concerns one Howard Falton who early in the story has an accident involving a helium-filled airship
Is badly injured and requires time and prosthetics to heal
But then he promotes an expedition to Jupiter that uses similar technology a hot
Hydrogen balloon supported aircraft
This is to explore the upper reaches of Jupiter's atmosphere
Which is the only feasible way to explore given the immense gravity of this giant planet
Attempting to land on the solid surface would mean being crushed by gravity and air pressure so that is not possible
The expedition finds there is life in the upper clouds of Jupiter
Some of it is microscopic
Like a kind of air plankton which is bioluminescent
But there are large creatures as well one of which is like a jellyfish
But about a mile across
This is the Medusa of the title
Another is a mantle like creature about a hundred yards across that praise on the Medusa
But when the Medusa starts to take an interest in Falton's craft
He decides to get out quick for safety safe and we learned that because of the various prosthetics
Implanted after the airship accident Falton is really a cyborg
Which must faster reactions than ordinary humans
As we discussed previously Clark loved the sea
And in this novella he is using what he knows in that realm to imagine a
Possible ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter of course when he wrote this novella
No one knew about the truly frightening level of radiation around Jupiter
But then a clever science fiction writer probably could come up with a way to work around that
So that concludes our look at Clark's fiction
But we couldn't look at Clark without also
Bringing up his famous three laws
I don't know why laws always have to come in threes as a mob had his three laws of robotics
And Arthur Clark had three laws of technology and they are number one
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible
He is almost certainly right
What he states that something is impossible
He is very probably wrong
Number two
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible
The number three
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
So this concludes our look at Arthur C. Clark the second of the big three of the golden age of science fiction
We first looked at Isaac Azamov
Now we've covered Arthur C. Clark and you know what that means
We are ready to tackle the dean of science fiction
Robert A. Heinlein and boy do we have a lot to talk about there
So this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off and as always
Encouraging you to support free software
Bye bye
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