Clarke wrote about science and its future impact with a greater purity of intention than any of his contemporaries in the science fiction category. It would not be going too far to say that Clarke’s main purpose—especially in ‘‘Dog Star’’—is to instruct and inform. Clarke’s readers in the 1960s were living at the beginning of…
Tag: Arthur C Clarke
Dog Star by Arthur C Clarke – Setting
Observatories The narrator of ‘‘Dog Star’’ is a professional astronomer, with the story revolving around the future of astronomy. Clarke believed that once space travel became routine, older earthbound astronomical observatories would replaced by instruments located away from Earth: ‘‘The stories of Mount Wilson, Palomar, Greenwich, and the other great names were coming to an…
Dog Star by Arthur C Clarke – Literary Devices
Science Fiction One could easily point to some of the most important twentieth-century novels, all of which concern events that seemed similar to events likely to transpire in the future, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. However, as Tom Shippey has pointed out in his study…
Dog Star by Arthur C Clarke – Themes
Parapsychology Clarke was not interested in paranormal phenomena per se. That is, he did not automatically believe in the claims of the supernatural. What interested Clarke was a class of items that seem to represent valid pieces of evidence that have not yet been fully accounted for by rationalist, materialist, or scientific explanation. In rhetorical…
Dog Star by Arthur C Clarke – Characters
Acquaintances When the narrator of ‘‘Dog Star’’ has occasion to visit the University of California at Berkeley, he stays with academic colleagues, who are not happy to have a large dog like Laika in their house. The narrator tries to pacify them by suggesting that she will deter burglars: ‘‘‘We don’t have any in Berkeley,’…
Dog Star by Arthur C Clarke – Summary
‘‘Dog Star’’ is told by a first-person narrator who never reveals his name. There are two levels of representation in what he says. He must be imagined as relating this story both to an audience of his own contemporaries in the future, who share his knowledge of everyday reality, as well as to the reading…