Elentarri’s Reviews > The Collected Stories > Status Update

The Ultimate Melody ★★★☆☆ Another tale told at the White-Hart. A physiologist attempts to find the ultimate musical melody that aligns perfectly with human brainwaves. He creates a machine, "Ludwig," to discover this mental trigger, and succeeds in creating the "Ultimate Melody" with unintended results.

The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch ★★☆☆☆ A sound engineer, fed up with his wife's incessant talking, creates a recording device that counts the number of words spoken by himself and his wife, Ermintrude. At the end of the experiment, the word counter shows that the engineer's word count beats his wife's by 100! The engineer is incredulous, and begins debugging the machine...

Moving Spirit ★★★★☆ A humorous story in which Harry Purvis tries to help a relative charged with illegally distilling liquor. Purvis steps in to defend his relative, arguing that the scientist was not making illegal liquor, but was instead working on a revolutionary, top-secret "osmotic bomb". To prove his point, Purvis demonstrates the "bomb" in the courtroom, with interesting results and a short term victory.

The Reluctant Orchid ★★★★★This is the unfortunate tale of Hercules Keating, a meek man who cultivates exotic orchids and cactii, and has an overbearing aunt he dislikes intensely. Keating comes across an unknown Amazonian orchid who has a fondness for meat... and plans to use the carnivorous orchid to kill his domineering aunt. As usual for Clarke, the twist is in the tail - things don't go at all as planned

The Pacifist ★★★★☆ The story of an incredibly advanced, massive supercomputer built with the aim to solve complex war-strategy problems. The computer is programmed by a meek, brilliant mathematician who is constantly berated and mistreated by the pompous, harsh commanding General in charge of the project. As revenge for the abuse, the mathematician sabotages the machine by programming the computer.

🟢Venture to the Moon ★★★⯪☆ Originally written as a series of six independent but linked stories about the first joint American-Russian-British mission to the Moon in 1975, told from the perspective of the British team commander. Humorous and entertaining.

What Goes Up ★★★⯪☆ A comedy spoof bites the teller in the butt. This story is told to silence a U.F.O. fanatic with unintended consequences.

The Star ★★★★☆ 1955 Hugo Award-winner. A starship crew (including a Jesuit priest/astrophysicist) on a deep-space expedition explores the ruins of a supernova in the Phoenix Nebula, finding a "vault" of artifacts on a remote planet, which serves as a final record of the doomed civilization. The priest/astrophysicist calculates when the light from this supernova reached Earth, questioning his faith.

🟢Refugee ★★★☆☆ A simple, sentimental piece that focuses on themes of British history, traditions and royal loyalty in a futuristic setting. The twist at the end was a bit obvious. "Prince Henry" visits a new type of spaceship and has an interesting discussion with the American captain.