The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (1967) by Arthur C. Clarke. This collection includes the title story "The Nine Billion Names of God." This story deals with a philosophical confrontation between Western scientists and the religious beliefs of Tibetan monks.

Childhood's End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke. This was the first of Clarke's major novels to win wide public acclaim. It deals with the evolution of utopia imposed on Earth by an alien race which confines humanity to its own planet by eliminating space travel.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) derives from his short story "The Sentinel" and was written concurrently with the screenplay for the motion picture of the same name The novel is divided into sections. In the first section, a monolith appears on Earth and signals the dawn of man by nudging pre-homo-sapiens...