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When it comes to writers like Arthur C. Clarke, it seems almost irreverent to be writing a review. What can someone like me possibly have to say about someone like him -- a titan of the genre whose works were not only seminal to the world of science fiction but who also contributed significantly to the facts of science as we know them today? Most especially, what is left to be said when it comes to a volume like The Other Side of the Sky, a reissue of a collection of classic Clarke stories like the transcendent "The Star," voted the best science fiction story in 1956, or the extraordinary, sad, luminous "Transience," with its sweeping vision of an ephemeral flash of consciousness and intelligence that was the human race?

Perhaps the joy of collections like that is simply the re-encountering of such stories. I knew, for instance, of "The Star" -- one of the most exquisitely sketched portraits of a faith shaken as I have ever read anywhere in any genre -- but until now I had somehow never found myself in a position of owning a copy -- and for that alone this slim little volume is a treasure to me. Not to mention other stories like the remarkable and deservedly acclaimed "The Nine Billion Names of God," which, in the 2003 update to his original preface, Clarke mentions as having found its way to the Dalai Lama who apparently wrote the author a "charming letter" in response to it, in which he said he found the story "very amusing." Hackle-raising is more the phrase I would have used -- with that astounding, understated, utterly immortal final line of the story which makes it one of those which, once read, you never forget.

I have them all now, safe in my collection. I've read them all once more for the purposes of this review, and I think there is only one thing left to say as I close the book with a satisfied sigh.

Thank you for the legacy, Mr Clarke.

Alma A. Hromic, addicted (in random order) to coffee, chocolate and books, has a constant and chronic problem of "too many books, not enough bookshelves". When not collecting more books and avidly reading them (with a cup of coffee at hand), she keeps busy writing her own. Following her successful two-volume fantasy series, Changer of Days, her latest novel, Jin-shei, is due out from Harper San Francisco in the spring of 2004.