The Nine Billion Names of God

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Nine Billion Names of God" is a 1953 science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke. The story was the winner (in 2004) of the retrospective Hugo Award for Best Short Story for the year 1954.

[edit] Plot summary

This short story tells of an Tibetan lamasery whose monks have long sought to list all of their very numerous names for God, as they believe the universe was created in order to note all the names of God and once this naming is completed, God will bring the universe to an end. Centuries ago, the monks created a writing system in which, they calculated, they could encode all possible names of God in no more than nine characters each, according to a set of constraints. (For example, no name could have the same character repeating more than three times consecutively.) Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, would take another fifteen thousand years; the monks wish to use modern technology in order to finish this task more quickly.

They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along with the monks.

The operators engage the computer. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer when nothing happens. The men decide to flee the monastery some hours before the computer is scheduled to finish its task. They know the monks won't bother to chase after them, because the computer is operating automatically. After their successful escape on ponies, they pause on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. They estimate that it must be just about the time that the computer back at the lamasery is printing the final name. They look back, their faces toward the sky, and notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

[edit] Publication history

• 1967 - in Clarke, Arthur C. The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
  • Reprint: Amereon, Ltd., 1996. ISBN 0-8488-2181-5

A cassette tape was released of Clarke himself reading the story. It may be the one released in 1989.

1. ISBN 0945353448
2. ISBN 978-0945353447

[edit] See also

• Names of God
• Towers of Hanoi, a puzzle that mentions a similar story

[edit] External links

• The Nine Billion Names of God publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Nine Billion Names of God at BestScienceFictionStories.com - short story reviews and resources.