"Transience"
Short story by Arthur C. Clarke
Cover of the July 1949 issue of Startling Stories
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Science-fiction
Publication
Published inStartling Stories
Publication typeMagazine
Publication dateJuly 1949

"Transience" is a science fiction short story by English writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1949 in the magazine Startling Stories.[1] It was later collected in The Other Side of the Sky and The Nine Billion Names of God.

Summary

The story is told through scenes of three children playing on the same beach on Earth, but across vast gulfs of time.

Development

Clarke wrote that the story was inspired by one of A. E. Housman's poems[2] as well as his childhood memories.[3]

Release

"Transience" was first published in the July 1949 issue of Startling Stories. The Beechhurst Press later published in the anthology volume Looking Forward in 1953.[4] The story was also published in collections of some of Clark's work such as 1958's The Other Side of the Sky and 1961's From the Ocean, from the Stars.[5][6] In 2001 the University of Western Australia Press published "Transience" in the anthology Earth is But a Star: Excursions Through Science Fiction to the Far Future.[7]

"Transience" has been translated into four languages, Dutch, French, German, and Serbian.

Themes

Per Gary Westfahl, "Transience" is one of relatively few works by Clarke that mention the theme of terraforming.[8] Other themes in "Transience" include the passing of culture and time, the end of the world, and "the sea as seen".[9][10][11]

Reception

John Hollow has described "Transience" as "more meditation than story".[9] In a review for the 2001 collection Earth is But a Star: Excursions Through Science Fiction to the Far Future, Jennifer Burwell favorably compared it to Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" and noted that the story "barely hints at the circumstances that ultimately lead to humans abandoning their home on earth. Clarke at once invites the reader to immerse herself in the melancholy sensibility of the story, and invited to take the active role of a detective searching between the lines to uncover."[7]

Adaptations

The story has been adapted into a musical piece The Tentacles of the Dark Nebula by David Bedford.[2][12][13]

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Transience title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  2. ^ a b Arthur C. Clarke (12 July 2016). The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. RosettaBooks. pp. 178–. ISBN 978-0-7953-4973-7.
  3. ^ Victoria Brooks (2000). Literary Trips: Following in the Footsteps of Fame. GreatestEscapes.com Pub. pp. 11–. ISBN 978-0-9686137-1-9.
  4. ^ Mccomas, J. Francis (1953-11-15). "The Spaceman's Realm; Psychiatric Espionage (Published 1953)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  5. ^ Clarke, Arthur C. (1987). The other side of the sky : 24 short stories of the future. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-14937-8. OCLC 18045693.
  6. ^ Clarke, Arthur C. (1962). From the ocean, from the stars; an omnibus containing the complete novels: The deep range and The city and the stars, and twenty-four short stories. Harcourt, Brace & World. OCLC 710823.
  7. ^ a b Burwell, Jennifer (2001). "Review of Earth is But a Star: Excursions Through Science Fiction to the Far Future". Utopian Studies. 12 (2): 275–277. ISSN 1045-991X. JSTOR 20718340.
  8. ^ Gary Westfahl (14 June 2018). Arthur C. Clarke. University of Illinois Press. pp. 54–. ISBN 978-0-252-05063-3.
  9. ^ a b Hollow, John (1987). Against the Night, the Stars: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke. Ohio University Press. pp. 8, 17. ISBN 978-0-8214-0862-9.
  10. ^ Pierce, John J. (1989). When World Views Collide: A Study in Imagination and Evolution. Greenwood Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-313-25457-4.
  11. ^ Dougherty, Stephen (2019). "Liu Cixin, Arthur C. Clarke, and "Repositioning"". Science Fiction Studies. 46 (1): 39–62. doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.46.1.0039. ISSN 0091-7729. JSTOR 10.5621/sciefictstud.46.1.0039.
  12. ^ "David Bedford: The Tentacles of the Dark Nebula [JF] Classical Music Reviews - MusicWeb-International". www.musicweb-international.com. Retrieved 2021-02-20.
  13. ^ Philip Rupprecht; Philip Ernst Rupprecht (9 July 2015). British Musical Modernism: The Manchester Group and their Contemporaries. Cambridge University Press. pp. 398–. ISBN 978-0-521-84448-2.

External links

Arthur C. Clarke
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