Critical Overview
‘‘‘If I Forget Thee, O Earth . . . ’’’ was published in 1951, when most mainstream and literary critics thought science fiction had little literary value. This view persisted despite the fact that English authors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, had written critically acclaimed science fiction works. Still, science fiction readers were hungry for short stories by their favorite authors, which they often read in science fiction magazines like Future, where ‘‘‘If I Forget Thee, O Earth . . . ’’’ was first published. In fact, science fiction’s many pulp magazines helped give science fiction a negative image with critics, even while the cheap magazines attracted popular readers. When the story was collected in Clarke’s Expedition to Earth in 1953, it did not receive much critical attention.
However, in the second half of the twentieth century, as the science fiction publishing trend started to shift from magazines to books, critical focus shifted as well. This change was initially due to the literary quality of books by science fiction writers such as Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ray Bradbury. More critics started to review science fiction works, and more teachers started to use science fiction stories in their classrooms. Overall, Clarke has fared well with the critics since this shift, although it is his novels, such as Childhood’s End, published in the same year as Expedition to Earth, which have earned the most critical acclaim.
The few critics who have commented specifi- cally on ‘‘‘If I Forget Thee, O Earth . . . ’’’ have given the story high marks. In his entry on Clarke for the Critical Survey of Short Fiction, David N. Samuelson says that the story is one of Clarke’s ‘‘best and best-known stories,’’ noting ‘‘the haunting rite of passage of a young lunar exile getting his first glimpse of the unapproachably radioactive world of his ancestors.’’ In his entry on Clarke for Science Fiction Writers, Samuelson adds that the story is ‘‘static,’’ with ‘‘little or no plot complications,’’ and ‘‘elegiac,’’ meaning that it expresses sadness for something in the past—in this case, the ruined earth. For Samuelson, the static quality is a positive, since it enhances the elegiac effect of the story. Likewise, in his essay ‘‘The Cosmic Loneliness of Arthur C. Clarke,’’ Thomas D. Clareson calls Clarke’s ‘‘‘If I Forget Thee, O Earth . . . ’’’ ‘‘one of his finest short stories’’ and notes that it falls into the category of stories that serve as a warning to society.
Clarke’s short fiction in general was reviewed in 2001, upon the publication of The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. In her review of the book for Library Journal, Jackie Cassada says: ‘‘this collection of short fiction by Grandmaster Clarke serves as a definitive example of sf at its best.’’ Cassada also notes that the book ‘‘displays the author’s fertile imagination and irrepressible enthusiasm for both good storytelling and impeccable science.’’ In his review of the collection for Booklist, Roland Green agrees. Says Green: ‘‘The stories demonstrate Clarke’s dazzling and unique combination of command of the language, scientific and other kinds of erudition, and inimitable wit.’’ Finally, the reviewer for Kirkus Reviews notes Clarke’s ‘‘awesome inventiveness, sure grasp of scientific principle, readability, openness, and utter lack of viciousness or meanness.’’ For these reasons, the critic is not surprised that Clarke is regarded as ‘‘the single most famous and influential non-American SF writer of the post-WW II period.’’
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