Saturday, March 14, 2009

Good reads

Over the course of time I have read plenty of novels, books, publication and short stories by various authors. My favourite author so far is Michael Crichton , god bless his soul, I was really looking forward to his next book. But later on that, for that's not what this post is about. I would like to share a few of my favourite short stories with the readers. Both of these are very amazing stories which always give me goosebumps near their ends. I have to warn you though, me being a Sci-Fi fan, they are all total science fiction stories, and may sound nerdy at times so if that's not really your cup of tea, you might just want to skip these stories.

The first one is without any doubt - The Last Question (1956) By Isaac Asimov.
This story is about a super-computer of sorts which has been asked a very import question which it is unable to answer. It ponders over this question for the rest of eternity, surpassing trillions of zillions of years overseeing the progress the human beings make during this time. But finally at the end of eternity and at the end of time it finally figures out the answer and in one burst of brilliance its executes the answer in an act that would make any reader completely change their perspective about time, life and eternity.
 You can read the entire story here.

The next in line is - Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke
This story is timed around the time when our sun , the sol, is about to go supernova. Someone arrives at Earth to know more about the inhabitants of this doomed third planet and possibly rescue some of them. There is nobody on the planet, but they discover the trace of a not-so-ancient civilization. Their mission a failure, they  leave the solar system and following a heavenly direction pointed by a transmitting antenna array they finally make a discovery which surpasses their wildest imaginations.
 You can read the entire story here.

So, do read those stories and let me know what you think of them. I'm post about more interesting works of literatures in a later post.

Reg,
PeeKay

3 comments:

  1. I finally got around to reading "The last question". At first I didn't understand a thing about where the story was headed, and at the end I was left quite disappointed. But after a few minutes I remembered the last line. And then, not quite unlike a 40 ton trailer heading towards me, it all hit me.. And I was like - OMG!!!!!

    My reading is quite slow and as such i'm not really that much into reading either, so i'll get around to the other story later and let you know

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  2. Longest delay ever between posts since the inception of the blog. Hope it doesn't extend any further any more

    BTW i read the second story and i would ike to say that what rakesh said about the first story kinda applies to the second story too.

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  3. Well, I guess you could kinda call those stories deep.

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