Tales from the White Hart
Cover of the first edition | |
Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
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Cover artist | Richard M. Powers |
Language | English |
Genre | Fantasy, science fiction |
Publisher | Ballantine Books |
Publication date | 1957 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (paperback) |
Pages | 151 pp |
Tales from the White Hart is a collection of short stories by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, in the "club tales" style.
Thirteen of the fifteen stories originally appeared across a number of different publications. "Moving Spirit" and "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch" were first published in this book and hence presumably were written specifically for it. "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch" rounds off the cycle of stories and explicitly mentions their book publication.
The White Hart is a pub (modelled on the White Horse, New Fetter Lane, just north of Fleet Street, once the weekly rendezvous of science fiction fans in London till the mid 50s, when they moved to the Globe pub in Hatton Garden)[1] where a character named Harry Purvis tells a series of tall tales. Incidental characters inhabiting the White Hart include science fiction writers Samuel Youd (also known as John Christopher), John Wyndham (John Beynon), and Clarke himself in addition to the narrative voice as his pseudonym Charles Willis.
The style and nature of the stories was inspired by the Jorkens stories of the writer Lord Dunsany, whom Clarke admired and with whom he corresponded, a fact humorously acknowledged by Clarke in his introduction to the first Jorkens omnibus volume.[2]
According to Clarke's preface to the book, the book was his third collection of short stories, which were written between 1953 and 1956 in such diverse spots as New York, Miami, Colombo, London and Sydney.
One additional story from the White Hart 'universe', "Let There Be Light", is reprinted in Tales of Ten Worlds.
Clarke and Stephen Baxter collaborated on one final White Hart story, "Time, Gentlemen, Please" for a 2007 limited edition from PS Publishing, issued for the book's 50th anniversary. ("Let There Be Light" does not appear in that edition.)
Contents
The collection, originally published in paperback in 1957 by Ballantine Books, includes:
- Preface
- "Silence Please"
- "Big Game Hunt"
- "Patent Pending"
- "Armaments Race"
- "Critical Mass"
- "The Ultimate Melody"
- "The Pacifist"
- "The Next Tenants"
- "Moving Spirit"
- "The Man Who Ploughed the Sea"
- "The Reluctant Orchid"
- "Cold War"
- "What Goes Up"
- "Sleeping Beauty"
- "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch"
Reception
Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the collection as "as light and frothy a conglomeration of sidesplitters as it has been my good fortune to read."[3]
Citations
- ^ "Close to tears, he left at the intermission": how Stanley Kubrick upset Arthur C Clarke
- ^ Portland, Oregon, 2004: Night Shade Books, The Collected Jorkens, Volume One
- ^ "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1957, p.108
General sources
- Clarke, Arthur C. (1981). Tales from the White Hart. London: Del Ray. ISBN 978-0345298805.
- Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-911682-20-5.
External links
- Tales from the White Hart title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- v
- t
- e
- Prelude to Space
- The Sands of Mars
- Islands in the Sky
- Against the Fall of Night
- Childhood's End
- Earthlight
- The City and the Stars
- The Deep Range
- A Fall of Moondust
- Dolphin Island
- Glide Path
- Imperial Earth
- The Fountains of Paradise
- The Songs of Distant Earth
- Cradle (with Gentry Lee)
- The Ghost from the Grand Banks
- The Hammer of God
- Richter 10 (with Mike McQuay)
- The Trigger (with Michael Kube-McDowell)
- The Light of Other Days (with Stephen Baxter)
- The Last Theorem (with Frederik Pohl)
Space Odyssey |
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Rama series |
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A Time Odyssey |
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collections
- Expedition to Earth
- Reach for Tomorrow
- Tales from the White Hart
- The Other Side of the Sky
- Tales of Ten Worlds
- The Nine Billion Names of God
- Of Time and Stars
- The Wind from the Sun
- The Best of Arthur C. Clarke
- The Sentinel
- Tales from Planet Earth
- More Than One Universe
- The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke
- Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics
- The Lost Worlds of 2001
- The View from Serendip
- The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010
- How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village
- An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (comics)
- 2010: The Year We Make Contact (film)
- The Nine Billion Names of God (short film)
- Rendezvous with Rama (video game)
- "The Star" (TV episode)
- The Songs of Distant Earth (album)
- Rama (video game)
- Childhood's End (TV miniseries)
- Arthur C. Clarke in media
- Sir Arthur Clarke Award
- Arthur C. Clarke Award
- Geostationary orbit
- Clarke's three laws
- Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World
- Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers
- Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe
- Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies
- God, the Universe and Everything Else
- Great Basses wreck
- 4923 Clarke
- Serendipaceratops
- GRB 080319B