The Nine Billion Names of God (Scholz)

Orson Scott Card called the story "unforgettable",^[1] while in the Los Angeles Times, Ed Park described it as an "amusing cover version" of Clarke,^[2] and "deeper-than-it-looks".^[3] The New York Times felt that the story suffered from "too strong a wall of irony".^[4]

Locus noted that although the story begins as "one of those epistolary-story goofs that used to turn up in the [science fiction] magazines", it soon "develops a sharper bite".^[5]

SF Signal praised it as "a fascinating idea-centric story", and emphasized that it "works on multiple fronts, whether it’s on the metafictional level or in sheer plot."^[6] The SF Site, conversely, felt that it "isn't SF at all", while noting that it nonetheless "could be considered a kind of science fiction criticism".^[7]

• The Nine Billion Names of God title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Audio of the story, read by Scholz, in RealMedia format

This article about a science fiction short story (or stories) published in the 1980s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e