Clarke was a great story teller, I have read nearly every one of his books, and most of his stories, and there were very few that didn't enthrall me.
I didn't really care for short stories until I started reading those by Clarke. The Nine Billion Names of God is my personal favorite, followed closely by Rescue Party and Sentinel (the basis for 2001, A Space Odyssey).
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First published Novel: Prelude to Space (1951)
Final Work: The Last Theorem (2006)
Series By Arthur C. Clarke
Space Trilogy
1. Islands in the Sky (1952)
2. Earthlight (1955)
3. Sands of Mars (1951)
Space Odyssey
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2. 2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
3. 2061: Odyssey Three (1985)
4. 3001: The Final Odyssey (1996)
Rama
1. Rendezvous with Rama (1972)
2. Rama II (1989) (with Gentry Lee)
3. The Garden of Rama (1991) (with Gentry Lee)
4. Rama Revealed (1993) (with Gentry Lee)
Time Odyssey (with Stephen Baxter)
1. Time's Eye (2003)
2. Sunstorm (2005)
3. Firstborn (2007)
Novels
Prelude to Space (1951)
Against the Fall of Night (1953)
Childhood's End (1953)
The City and the Stars (1956)
The Deep Range (1957)
A Fall of Moondust (1961)
Dolphin Island (1963)
Glide Path (1963)
The Space Dreamers (1969)
Imperial Earth (1975)
The Fountains of Paradise (1979)
Cradle (1987) (with Gentry Lee)
Beyond the Fall of Night (1990) (with Gregory Benford)
The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990)
The Hammer of God (1993)
Richter 10 (1996) (with Mike McQuay)
The Trigger (1999) (with Michael P Kube-McDowell)
The Light of Other Days (2000) (with Stephen Baxter)
The Last Theorem (2008) (with Frederik Pohl)
Novel and Short Story Collections
Expedition to Earth (1953)
Reach for Tomorrow (1956)
Tales from the White Hart (1957)
The Other Side of the Sky (1958)
Across the Sea of Stars (1959)
Tales of Ten Worlds (1962)
aka Tales From the Ten Worlds
The Nine Billion Names of God (1967)
The Lion of Comarre (1968)
Earthlight and Other Stories (1971)
The Wind from the Sun (1972)
Of Time and Stars (1972)
The Best of Arthur C Clarke 1932-1955 (1973)
Best of Arthur C. Clarke: 1956-1972 (1977)
Four Great SF Novels (1978)
Possessed (1978)
Arthur C. Clarke: 2001, A Space Odyssey; The City and the Stars; The Deep Range, A Fall of Moondust; Rendezvous With Rama (1980)
Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night (1982)
Space Odyssey (1983) (with Robert Silverberg and Kurt Vonnegut Jr)
The Sentinel (1983)
More Than One Universe (1985)
The Songs of Distant Earth (1986)
The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (1988)
Tales from Planet Earth (1989)
A Meeting with Medusa (1990)
The Arthur C. Clarke Collection (1995)
Childhood Ends (1996)
The Shining Ones (2001)
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)
The Ghost from the Grand Banks and the Deep Range (2001)
Childhood's End was my first exposure to Arthur C. Clarke. It was also my first exposure to the concept of transention/ascension. The book was very good but it was also extremely disturbing. To think of man evolving into something no longer recognizable as man haunted me in a way that the devolution concept never did. I think that what really bothered me about ascension was the thought that once perfection is attained, what is there left to strive for?
From the E-Book:
"In the near future, enormous silver spaceships appear without warning over mankind's largest cities. They belong to the Overlords, an alien race far superior to humanity in technological development-and their purpose is to dominate the Earth. Their demands, however, are surprisingly beneficial-end war, poverty, and cruelty. Their presence, rather than signaling the end of humanity, ushers in a golden age-or so it seems."
What is it? Who built it? Where did it come from? Where is it going?
The crew of the Endeavor will attempt to find answers to these questions.
From the E-book:
"An enormous cylindrical object appears in Earth's solar system, hurtling toward the sun. A ship is sent to explore the mysterious craft-which the denizens of the solar system name Rama-and what they find is intriguing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than ours. They find an interior stretching over 50 kilometers; a forbidding cylindrical sea; mysterious and inaccessible buildings; and strange machine-animal hybrids, or "biots," that inhabit the ship. But what they don't find is an alien presence. So who-and where-are the Ramans?"
This collection has three of my favorite shorts by Clarke - The Nine Billion Name of God, The Sentinel, and The Star.
Clarke's vision of a space elevator is fascinating, and it's story is great reading.
From SF Reviews:
". . .this Hugo and Nebula winner is a beautifully mounted story about the human need to reach — literally — for the stars, and the fine line between genius and megalomania. It is also SF's definitive novel about the "space elevator," a concept which enjoyed a brief but enthusiastic vogue among SF circles at the onset of the '80s. The idea seems incredible: an elevator that stretches from Earth's surface to a station in geosynchronous orbit, which would in turn serve as the launching point for voyages to the planets and deep space, thus obviating the need for expensive, inefficient, and environmentally unfriendly rocket launches from the ground. Yet it is not outside the realm of engineering possibility, and Clarke makes an excellent case for the viability of such a project within the context of a completely engrossing story set in the 22nd century."
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