In pursuing what I call the "Odyssey pattern," I seek to define a central organizing structure in Clarke's fiction, one which bears interesting and precise analogies to the writer's cultural and social situation and hence to ours. If all literature possesses such significant structures, Clarke's work is of particular interest for its angle of vision—here is a scientist writing about the quandary of modern scientific man, drawing on deep and persistent currents of We...

Arthur C. Clarke's extensive corpus of science fiction writing is an expression of his varied interests in the limits of man's knowledge as it is approached through the scientific method. Three principal types of work can be traced in his writing…. Clarke's best known approach is precise scientific extrapolation that depends upon detailed scientific knowledge carefully explained to the reader to communicate Clarke's fascination with the possibilities at the frontiers of sc...

Mr Clarke has specialised in the exploration of space, and so enjoys an edge when he comes to write fiction concerned with it. A story set in the future is not thereby a prophecy, and he is too good a novelist to make the confusion; but an intimate knowledge of the possible and the plausible greatly assists in that naturalising of the marvellous which is the characteristic achievement of the best science fiction. With the heavy stuff out of the way, let it be said at once that Mr Clarke's new novel [...

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 prol...