Thanks Terry for making this story available. Although Sir Clark
provides a cute tale, it resets on the hubris of the human belief that
God cares what we do and has any more or less interest than for the
billions of other aware life forms in the universe. In fact, the
salvation of our life form rests on accepting that we are only a very
small part of the total intelligence of the universe. Once this idea is
accepted, we would have less incentive to war on each other. Instead, we
could start to accept what we need to understand from our situation
rather than make up beliefs that we fight over.
Ed
Terry Blanton wrote:
One of my favs. Here's the whole short story:
http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html
Terry
On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Author-Authur wrote a short story 55 years ago - "The Nine Billion Names of God" which
has not received as much comment in the various obits which have come out -- as the more famous
"Childhood's End" ... which curiously, was written at almost the exact same time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God
... in which story, computer programmers were sent to a remotemonastery in Tibet to help
the monks compile alist of all the names of God. The story offers more surprising insight
into the kind of "spiritual atheism" which Clarke is suspected of harboring.
His was a kind of Buddhist outlook, more so than atheistic.
Never mind that in a rewrite of the tale in 2008, any old X-boxes could do the job of figuring our
all the permutations of the possible names in about 10 microseconds. That is part of the quaint
naiveté of many Sci-Fi stories from the fifties, when looked back in retrospect. Anyway, ACC's
story came around long before the X-box was available; and to make the plot work, it was said that
once the list was complete the monksbelieved that the pre-ordained cosmic destiny of our planet
would be fulfilled; and the "worldwould end." This is somewhat reminiscent of the
denouement of "Childhood's End" ... at least in transactional relevance. Take the two
plots together, and you have the insight into Clarke's kind of Zen.
The reason this came to mind just now, was not only the recnet changes in the night sky -
but also a song playing on internet radio as I was stargazing last night, The song was
titled "9 million bicycles in Beijing." Isn't the human mind a very strange
kind of information processor ?
BTW the short story ends with the programmers fleeing the monastery to
escape the monks' disfavor -- since the program finished the task, and the
world was
still there, but oops... one of them looks up:
"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."
Come to think of it.... without Authur around, the night sky does seem to
twinkle less that before.
Jones
