There are no criteria by which [the eighteen stories in The Best of Arthur Clarke] can be considered their author's best work. The first four are the rawest juvenilia…. No stories have been included from Tales from the White Hart and only a single vignette from Reach for Tomorrow, collections that represent Clarke's maturity. Further, too many of the stories chosen have not worn well and can only be read as period pieces.
On the whole, however, Clarke suffers less than most equally prolific writers would by having such a random sample served up as his best. Aside from the few undeniable classics, such as "The Star" and "A Meeting with Medusa" (both included), his work is more notable for its reliable evenness than for peaks of excellence and troughs of failed ambition. He writes to a formula—but he does it well. The pleasure of reading his shorter fictions is like that afforded by watching good billiards players. Clarke is an expert at inventing scenarios that illustrate Newton's laws of motion, at deploying vector quantities with human names in the ideal frictionless environment, not of green baize, but of outer space.
Thomas M. Disch, "The Earthbound Exegete," in The Times Educational Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1978; reproduced from The Times Educational Supplement by permission), No. 3976, June 16, 1978, p. 662.
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