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Title: interesting for history of sci-fi, but otherwise out-of-date
Review: Clarke was a prolific writer. Some would say that qualifies as being a great writer, but I would say that putting out a high quantity of stories just fills the bell curve as far as quality of stories. Maybe it is because of the span of time over which these were written, but many of them read like episodes of "The Twilight Zone" or "Outer Limits" - and many more read like bad episodes of such.Reading these stories, you get a feel for where the seeds of other sci-fi stories came from, but often times, you are simply left confused (like the ending of "The Star"), wanting a better ending (his endings definitely tend to be pessimistic), or simply laughing at the infantile writing while asking yourself, "This is one of the greats of sci-fi?"Again, maybe it is just because sci-fi was in its infancy when he wrote most of these, but his prejudices and pessimistic elitist style too often cloud what could have been a decent story.
