Crusade (short story)

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Short story by Arthur C. Clarke

"Crusade"

Short story by Arthur C. Clarke
Country| United States
Language| English
Genre(s)| Science-fiction
Publication
Published in| The Farthest Reaches
Publication type| Anthology
Publisher| Trident Press
Media type| Print, book
Publication date| 1968

"Crusade" is a short story by English writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1968 and later reprinted in The Wind from the Sun as well as The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.

## Synopsis

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The story follows the extremely long life span of an artificial intelligence that exists on a frozen planet in the vast space between two galaxies. The intelligence sends out scouts into another galaxy to seek other life like themselves, only to discover biological intelligences, whose physique is very different from their own. Tens of thousands of years pass to collect data about them, before the intelligence decides to send a "crusade", which will reach planet Earth in the year 2050.

## Release

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"Crusade" was first published in 1968 as part of the anthology The Farthest Reaches, which was published by Trident Press.[1] The following year it was given a French translation and released in the fifteenth fiction special for the magazine Histoires stellaires.[2] It has subsequently been republished in several different collections that include The Wind from the Sun and The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.[3][4] "Crusade" has been translated into approximately five languages, which include French, German, and Croatian.

## Themes

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Themes covered in the story include the concept of humanity. In his paper "2001 in Perspective: The Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke", John Hollow covered the story along with "Dial F for Frankenstein", noting that "The thing mocked in each of these stories, however, is not the machine but man's assumption that he is the be-all and end-all of the universe."[5] Zoran Živković covered "Crusade" in his 2018 paper, writing that "The transience and fragility of the world of the giant ammoniac mind–in aeonian proportions, of course–compel it to act to preserve itself. Thus it takes a step that Clarke considers to represent a necessary phase in the development of every cosmic being."[6]

## Legacy

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Soumya Banerjee cited "Crusade" as the inspiration for this 2016 paper "A Roadmap for a Computational Theory of the Value of Information in Origin of Life Questions".[7]

## References

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1. ^ Elder, Joseph (1968). The farthest reaches. New York: Trident Press. OCLC 448277.
2. ^ Clarke, Arthur C. (1969) "Croisade", Histoires stellaires, Fiction Spécial #15.
3. ^ Clarke, Arthur C. (2000). The collected stories. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-07065-X. OCLC 49338196.
4. ^ Clarke, Arthur C. (1972). The wind from the sun; stories of the space age (1st ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-196810-1. OCLC 293152.
5. ^ Hollow, John (1976). "2001 in Perspective: The Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke". Southwest Review. 61 (2): 113–129\. ISSN 0038-4712. JSTOR 43468825.
6. ^ Živković, Zoran (2018), "The Theme of First Contact in the SF Works of Arthur C. Clarke", First Contact and Time Travel, Science and Fiction, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 3–36, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90551-8_1, ISBN 978-3-319-90550-1, retrieved 2021-02-23
7. ^ Banerjee, Soumya (2016). "A roadmap for a computational theory of the value of information in originof life questions". Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems. 14 (3): 314–321\. doi:10.7906/indecs.14.3.4. ISSN 1334-4676.

## External links

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* Crusade title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

* v
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Arthur C. Clarke

* Bibliography

Novels|

* Prelude to Space
* The Sands of Mars
* Islands in the Sky
* Against the Fall of Night
* Childhood's End
* Earthlight
* The City and the Stars
* The Deep Range
* A Fall of Moondust
* Dolphin Island
* Glide Path
* Imperial Earth
* The Fountains of Paradise
* The Songs of Distant Earth
* Cradle (with Gentry Lee)
* The Ghost from the Grand Banks
* The Hammer of God
* Richter 10 (with Mike McQuay)
* The Trigger (with Michael Kube-McDowell)
* The Light of Other Days (with Stephen Baxter)
* The Last Theorem (with Frederik Pohl)

Novel series|

| Space Odyssey|

* 2001: A Space Odyssey
* 2010: Odyssey Two
* 2061: Odyssey Three
* 3001: The Final Odyssey

|

Rama series|

* Rendezvous with Rama
* Rama II (with Gentry Lee)
* The Garden of Rama (with Gentry Lee)
* Rama Revealed (with Gentry Lee)

A Time Odyssey|

* Time's Eye (with Stephen Baxter)
* Sunstorm (with Stephen Baxter)
* Firstborn (with Stephen Baxter)

Short story
collections|

* Expedition to Earth
* Reach for Tomorrow
* Tales from the White Hart
* The Other Side of the Sky
* Tales of Ten Worlds
* The Nine Billion Names of God
* Of Time and Stars
* The Wind from the Sun
* The Best of Arthur C. Clarke
* The Sentinel
* Tales from Planet Earth
* More Than One Universe
* The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

Non-fiction|

* Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics
* The Lost Worlds of 2001
* The View from Serendip
* The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010
* How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village
* An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

Adaptations|

* 2001: A Space Odyssey (comics)
* 2010: The Year We Make Contact (film)
* The Nine Billion Names of God (short film)
* Rendezvous with Rama (video game)
* "The Star" (TV episode)
* The Songs of Distant Earth (album)
* Rama (video game)
* Childhood's End (TV miniseries)

Related|

* Arthur C. Clarke in media
* Sir Arthur Clarke Award
* Arthur C. Clarke Award
* Geostationary orbit
* Clarke's three laws
* Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World
* Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers
* Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe
* Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies
* God, the Universe and Everything Else
* Great Basses wreck
* 4923 Clarke
* Serendipaceratops
* GRB 080319B

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