Science Fiction – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Nine Billion Names of God’ is a short story by the British-born science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008). It was first published in the 1953 anthology Star Science Fiction Stories #1, before being collected in Clarke’s The Other Side of the Sky.

A short tale about religion, computers, and the end of the world, ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’ deserves a few words of analysis in order to illuminate its meaning. First, though, let’s briefly summarise the story’s plot.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Fog Horn’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Fog Horn’ is a 1951 short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), republished in 1953 as the opening story in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. The story, which is about a lighthouse whose foghorn emits a noise which attracts the attention of a primeval dinosaur living miles below the ocean, contains a number of key themes of Bradbury’s work, especially in its depiction of technology and the need for connection and companionship.

A Summary and Analysis of William Gibson’s ‘Johnny Mnemonic’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Johnny Mnemonic’ is a 1981 short story by the Canadian-American author and cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson. Although many people, when they hear the name ‘Johnny Mnemonic’, will probably think of the 1995 film starring Keanu Reeves, Gibson’s story is somewhat different from the film which it inspired, and so some words of analysis may be illuminating.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Pedestrian’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Pedestrian’ is a 1951 short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), which is included in his 1953 collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. In some ways a precursor to Bradbury’s more famous novel Fahrenheit 451, ‘The Pedestrian’ is set in a future world in which people sit mindlessly and passively in front of their television sets every evening.

The ‘pedestrian’ of the story’s title is the one man in the city who refuses to do so, and doesn’t even own a television.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ is, like many stories Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) wrote in the early 1950s, haunted by the fear of nuclear war. Sometimes known by the slightly longer title, ‘August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains’, the story appeared in Bradbury’s 1951 collection The Martian Chronicles and remains one of his best-known and most widely studied short stories.

The story is set in a house in 2026, when nuclear war has annihilated human life. However, the technological devices in the house, such as the mechanical clock and dishwasher, continue to perform their daily automated duties, until they, too, are overwhelmed and destroyed by the forces of nature.