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: Short Stories
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…
Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket – Analysis
Jack Finney’s third story to see print in 1956 was the outstanding suspense tale, ‘‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket,’’ which appeared in the October 26, 1956 issue of Collier’s. This was to be Jack Finney’s last story in Collier’s, where his first published work had appeared in 1947. The magazine, which had been founded…
Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket – Exposition – Essay
Much of Finney’s body of work addresses the thematic concern of time. Indeed, The Third Level, the volume that includes ‘‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket,’’ has many stories about time and time travel. The opening story, ‘‘The Third Level,’’ for example, concerns a man who finds a third level at Grand Central Station, one…
Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket – Setting
The Cold War The explosions of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, brought World War II to an end, and the rapid growth of the Soviet Union’s military power and ambition cast a pall over the Western world, including the United States, in the post-war years. The Cold War is a term used…
Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket – Literary Devices
Plot ‘‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket’’ offers an excellent example of plotting in a short story. Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray in The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms define plot as the ‘‘arrangement and interrelation of events in a narrative work, chosen and designed to engage the reader’s attention . ….