SOURCE: Ferrara, Patricia. “‘Nature's Priest’: Establishing Literary Criteria for Arthur C. Clarke's ‘The Star’.” Extrapolation 28, no. 2 (summer 1987): 148-58.

In the following essay, Ferrara considers Arthur C. Clarke's use of traditional literary techniques in his science fiction stories “A Meeting with Medusa,” “The Awakening,” and “The Star.”

Much of Arthur C. Clarke's fiction is oriented towards rapid and simplistic plot development in the way that most pulp fiction is, frequently to the detriment of any other literary values; yet his fiction deserves more critical attention than its faults warrant. Noting this, Michael Thron has argued that we should judge the value of Clarke's fiction, not by literary standards, but by the value of the ideas it contains (82-83), and many of the other critics in Joseph Olander's collection of essays seem to agree implicitly with this judgment, mixing esthetics with scientific and philosophic appeal as criteria in applied criticism...