I remember the first Arthur C. Clarke story I ever read. It was called The Nine Billion Names of God and it was a short piece about a guy who works for a big multi-national computer company. He is in a remote part of Asia at a Buddhist temple where he has been contracted to set up a supercomputer that will print out every name humans have given to God. He is a skeptic and doesn’t see what the point is, but is happy to be getting paid. At the end of the story, just as the computer is finishing its print out, the stars in the sky at night begin to blink out of existence as if they are being turned off at the switch.

Just last night I re-read (quite unaware that Mr. Clarke was in his final hours) his short story Guardian Angel where the Earth has given up administrative control to an advanced alien species that live above our major cities in giant spaceships, but never show themselves to us. When the central human protagonist, the UN Secretary General, who is the only person to have regular contact with the leader of the aliens, attempts to catch a glimpe of him, we discover that the aliens perhaps resemble our collective image of The Devil and the alien leader drops an ominous hint that perhaps they were here once before and made a few mistakes.