The nine billion names of God

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The nine billion names of God ( English original title: The Nine Billion Names of God ) is a science fiction short story by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke from 1953. It was 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the 15 best Science fiction short stories prior to the launch of the Nebula Awards, as well as the 2004 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

content

In a Tibetan Lama monastery , the monks try to make a list of all the names of God . They believe that the universe was created for this purpose and that once the naming is complete, God will put an end to the universe. Three centuries ago the monks created an alphabet with the help of which it is possible to encode all possible names of God: There are approximately 9,000,000,000 (“nine billion”) names, all of which consist of no more than nine letters. Handwriting these names, as they had done up to this point, would take another 15,000 years. To speed up this task, the monks want to use modern technology.

They rent a computer that can output all possible permutations and hire two westerners to install and program the machine. The plant operators are skeptical, but play along. When the end of the job neared three months later, they fear that the monks will blame the machine and its operators if nothing happens. The two westerners delay the computer run so that the last print run would not be finished until shortly after their planned departure. After their departure on ponies back to the plane that is supposed to bring them back to civilization, they pause briefly on the mountain path. Under the starry sky, they estimate that the time has come for the monks to stick the last of the printed names in their holy books. Then they notice: "The stars went out silently above their heads."

reception

In 2004, The Nine Billion Names of God retrospectively won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, which would have been recognized in 1954. The Guardian called her a "wonderfully apocalyptic rib clitoris". In 1978, Carl Sagan referred to her as one of the few science fiction stories that combined an ordinary science fiction theme with a deep human sensibility for bringing the western audience closer to ideas of oriental religions .

Gary K. Wolfe noted that the story obviously contradicted Clarke's scientific rationalism. Paul J. Nahin pointed out that because of the delay due to the speed of light , an omniscient God would have had to destroy all the stars in the universe years earlier in order to cause them to disappear at the same time as the monks were doing their job. Clarke's idea of ​​the end of the universe was obviously not just the end of the stars, but the end of space and time, everywhere at the same moment.

In 2003, Clarke reported that Tenzin Gyatso , the 14th Dalai Lama , had told him by letter that he had found the story "very amusing."

Others

  • A song by the Portuguese singer Jorge Palma is named after the short story and inspired by it.
  • The story of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle game threatens a similar end to the universe.
  • Jorge Luis Borges ' short story The Library of Babel deals with the subject of an infinite number of combinations of characters.
  • In the film Pi (1998), a computer is used to guess the 216-character name of God.
  • The Futurama episode The Divine Bender is partly inspired by the short story.
  • Carter Scholz's eponymous short story Nine Billion Names of God takes the form of an exchange of letters between Scholz and an editor. In it, Scholz, who copied Clarke's story word for word, claims that it is a completely different story because the context of the 1980s is different from that of the 1950s - such as Don Quixote in Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote .
  • The Islam knows the 99 names of Allah , the hundredth name is unpronounceable and unknown people.

expenditure

  • Clarke, Arthur C .: The Nine Billion Names of God . In: Vom Scheidt, Jürgen (ed.): The monster in the park: 16 stories from the world of tomorrow . dtv, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-423-01866-6 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clarke, Arthur C .: The Nine Billion Names of God . In: Vom Scheidt, Jürgen (ed.): The monster in the park: 16 stories from the world of tomorrow . dtv, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-423-01866-6 .
  2. ↑ 1954 Retro Hugo Awards. In: The Hugo Awards. July 26, 2007, Retrieved September 8, 2019 (American English).
  3. ↑ Master of the Universe: A collection of stories from Arthur C Clarke is released with impeccable timing. In: The Guardian. January 21, 2001, accessed September 8, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Sagan, Carl: GROWING UP WITH SCIENCE FICTION . In: The New York Times . May 28, 1978, ISSN  0362-4331 , p. SM 7 ( nytimes.com ).
  5. ^ Wolfe, Gary K .: The Grand Tours of Arthur C. Clarke. In: The New York Times. March 9, 1997, accessed September 8, 2019 .
  6. ^ Paul J. Nahin: Holy Sci-Fi !: Where Science Fiction and Religion Intersect . Springer Science & Business Media, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4939-0618-5 ( google.ca [accessed September 8, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Hromic, Alma A .: The SF Site Featured Review: The Other Side of the Sky. Retrieved September 8, 2019 .