All Comments on 'God, Sex & the End of the Universe'

Clarke's other story about the end of the universe (NBNOG) is also at the other extreme. Characters, opinions, life, happiness are all grist for the mill of an active imagination. Somewhere in between we have "The World That Jones Made". solipism as therapy. And to many of us that is the reason we write and read what others write. New worlds, better worlds, friendlier worlds. Populate your worlds with people we like and we read you more. Thin stories with all action and no character have a place, the same occupied by televison between the commercials. Tomorrow we don't remember them. But some of the stories here have sex on every other page, and with characters we would like to call friends. I tell you that it is worth it to give that appendage seeking orifice, or orifice seeking like, a person we want to like and become an author we look for when checking new stories.

It brought to mind Dick Francis' comment on the short story: "Tell me a story, and tell it strong and quick. No bloody corpses, no horrors, no hung, drawn and quartered heroes....Amuse, enthuse, raise the protest, sink the fearsome terror. Pull wide the window, watch the play within. Close the curtains. Try the next house, look into the fridge there, tumble its ice cubes down sleepy necks....Recipes second to size. Never mind the contents, feel the length. Three thousand best words, here please, eight thousand or so there." From Field of Thirteen, c 1998 by Dick Francis, fair use exception asserted.

What a cool story and such great comments! Makes me proud to be a Lit reader.

I prefer NBNOG as a story. Depicting God as a programmer is way too 'cutesy' for my taste.