Expedition to Earth

Cover of the first edition
Author	Arthur C. Clarke
Cover artist	Richard Powers[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1953
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	167

Expedition to Earth (ISBN 0-7221-2423-6) is a collection of science fiction short stories by English writer Arthur C. Clarke.

There are at least two variants of this book's table of contents, in different editions of the book. Both variants include the stories "History Lesson" (1949) and "Encounter in the Dawn" (1953), but only one story is included under its own title; the other story is included under the title "Expedition to Earth". Variants differ in the story that is included under its own title.

Contents

This collection, originally published in 1953, includes:

• "Second Dawn"
• "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth"
• "Breaking Strain"
• "History Lesson" (as "Expedition to Earth" in the British Edition, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954)
• "Superiority"
• "Exile of the Eons" (as "Nemesis" in the British Edition, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954)
• "Hide-and-Seek"
• "Expedition to Earth" (as "Encounter in the Dawn" in the British Edition, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954)
• "Loophole"
• "Inheritance"
• "The Sentinel"

Reception

Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas selected the collection as one of the best sf books of 1953, praising the stories' "humor, technical ideas, science-fictional thinking and all-around excellence."^[2] Groff Conklin said that "The stories are continuously fascinating" and "exhibiting their author's versatility".^[3] P. Schuyler Miller praised it as "an excellent collection . . . span[ning] the whole range of [Clarke's] talents.^[4] Writing in the Hartford Courant, reviewer R. W. Wallace declared that the stories "show [Clarke] as a more skilled literary artist" than even his novel Childhood's End had.^[5]