"Exile of the Eons" aka "Nemesis" (short story): Socrates meets Hitler!

This is one of the more imaginative stories of Clarke. And well told.

And this story could not have been possible if quartz watches were around when the story was written. That should tell something of the age of the story.

Story summary (spoiler).
First thread of the story, the one involving the war monger ("Master"), begins almost in our time. After bringing a lot of world to ruin, Master is facing definite defeat soon. He is currently hiding somewhere in the Himalayas with with his coterie.

That is when he takes extreme action. Kills his coteries by deceit by assembling them in a gas chamber, & activating it after own escape.

He has already prepared a hibernation chamber for self in a cavity deep inside a Himalayan mountain. Inaccessible with the only entries sealed under massive piles of rock. Explosives are planted to blast himself out after awakening.

Goes to hibernation for 100 years. Any earlier appearance will mean definite trial for war crimes; any later, & world would have changed so much that he won't really be able to dominate.

Only problem is: all the fancy hibernation gadgets depend on a rather rudimentary clock. It is a kind of light sensor outside the mountains. It counts days by watching the sun's rise & fall. While it is triplicated, all three sensors are destroyed by a falling bomb while the war is still in closing stages.

So the dictator sleeps not for 100 years, but through geological ages. His mountains have been under the seas, risen again, & now slowly eroding with winds, rains, & snow.

Second thread of the story begins at this stage. Humans have been occupying the far flung reaches of galaxy for untold eons. And we see a trial of a philosopher for hearsay. The trial is very similar in spirit to Plato's "Apology" (though Apology is a far more readable book).

Philosopher refuses to change his opinions. Three options are presented: kill him (unthinkable - capital punishment has been off bound for eons); modify his mind using a machine (unthinkable - he is one of about a dozen best brains galaxy wide); & send him via a time machine to a future where his opinions can no longer affect human affairs.

Third option is adopted. He is sent, with ample supplies (including a building & a flyer), to earth at a time when earth has become a dead planet. Sun is much colder, earth is mostly a desert, & a day on earth is much longer.

He explores the earth after arrival in new time - a small place in his flyer, almost the sole living being on the planet, though air is still breathable.

That is how he encounters the hibernating Master, & awakens him. Now the philosopher comes from a era where telepathy was common. As Master is awakening, the philosopher learns of his deeds & targedy by probing his mind.

And kills this bad sample of humanity, choosing to live alone on this desolate earth.

See also.

1. Robert Heinlein's "Successful Operation": Another story where a dictator meets an unwelcome end.
   

Fact sheet.
Exile of the Eons, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Rating: A

This story has also been published under the following titles.

1. "Nemesis"

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "Expedition to Earth"
2. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"

Hide-and-Seek (short story): Adventure on Phoboes

Story summary (spoiler).
This is quite an entertaining little account of a chase in exotic surroundings. One very resourceful man, alone on Phobos - the tiny moon of Mars, being chased by a heavily armed adversary & winning.

There are some detailed descriptions of Phobos, & somewhat dated descriptions what you would see on Mars from there.

Not a bad reading.

Fact sheet.
Hide-and-Seek, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Thriller
First published: Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1949
Rating: A

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Expedition to Earth"
3. "Of Time and Stars"
4. "Across the Sea of Stars"
5. "More Than One Universe"

"Superiority" (short story): Dilbert in prose

Every time I begin to get bored with Clarke's stuff, he throws in a surprise. This is an outstanding & hilarious comedy - probably the best single story I have read yet of Arthur Clarke.

He anticipates Dilbert by decades. If you manage a business or a project, you will find a lot you can relate to. It also is a story about rolling out new technology in an enterprise - what the software industry calls deployment. A 1951 story still totally relevant today, wow!

Story summary (spoiler).
The plot is about a war. One side has vastly superior technology & financial resources - too superior for its own good! Other side wins by shear tenaciousness, & ruthless focus. Hare vs tortoise.

Comic situations are all on the superior side. They begin with vastly larger number of war machines, their machines are more efficient too, & they have been the winning side till now. And then they get a new technology head - a true geek.

Now this geek looks at deployed war machines, & wonders why we are still using 100 year old technology - only innovations, of late, in weapons have been minor tinkering. Cannot we change the paradigm, & quickly end the war?

He convinces the generals to instead use his new weapon, the "Sphere of Annihilation". When activated, it makes all matter within several hundred meters of it vanish. Demonstrations are very convincing. Deployment begins. Ouch - it annihilates its own ship! OK - so then need to be mounted on missiles. But existing missiles cannot carry its heavy load - need minor improvements, etc. You get the idea.

On the battlefront, war situation has been changing. Enemy is not only sticking to old technology, they have been producing those weapons in great numbers.

No problem, the geek says. He has yet another weapon that can compensate for loss of advantage in conventional weaponry, while the Sphere is undergoing teething troubles. It's "Battle Analyzer" - a computerized system that can double the effectiveness of a conventional warship.

When the Analyzer deployment begins, we begin seeing little issues. This machine needs some 500 odd technicians to operate. We need to both train the technicians, & make space for them on the warship. Of course, fewer numbers are actually trained than planned. And to house the additional technicians not on duty, an unarmed liner will accompany the equipped warships. Of course, the enemy quickly figures out the simple way to win - destroy the liner.

Battlefront situation has become grim for the superior side; enemy is knocking on their own door.

Ever an optimist, our geek produces yet another wonderful weapon - "The Exponential Field". It is both defensive & tactical. On the press of a button, it distorts the space around its location in a way that you effectively move far away along a fourth spatial dimension - relative to your physical neighborhood when field was not active.

How do you use it? When cornered, you activate the field, & vanish! When attacking, you suddenly appear in the midst of the enemy & surprise them. Wonderful. Only there is a little glitch. After a couple of uses, deactivation leaves you a little away from target, & the various precision systems on board have been failing - including intership communications.

Some debugging sessions later, we are told the deactivation doesn't move all matter displaced to exactly the original location; there are computational errors. Original particles of matter have moved very slightly around relative their immediate neighborhood. This, of course, kills all electronics. We are not told why it doesn't kill the humans on board, but why do nit picking?

I am not complaining. Fantastic story.

Trivia.
When introducing this story in "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke", Clarke mentions the inspiration rooted in World War II: "German V2 rocket program" - an inter-continental ballistic missile program, too late to influence war & sapped resources - made Germans as the superior side; Allies were the inferior side that won.

Fact sheet.
Superiority, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Humor
First published: Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, August 1951
Rating: A

The story appears in the following collections.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Expedition to Earth"
3. "Across the Sea of Stars"
4. "More Than One Universe"

See also.

1. Eric Frank Russell's "Allamagoosa" (A), & James P Hogan's "Making Light" (A): Other lovely Dilbertian tales, but about organizational bureaucracy. Similar tone.
   
2. A device that lets you move along a fourth spacial dimension also features in Arthur Clarke's "Technical Error".