Tales from the White Hart is a 1957 collection of short stories by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, in the "club tales" style.
Thirteen of the fifteen stories originally appeared across a number of different publications; some had no connection to the White Hart in their original version. "Silence Please" was the title of two distinct stories; the version in the book has a different plot from the original magazine version. "Moving Spirit" and "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch" were first published in this book.
The White Hart is a pub (modelled on the White Horse, New Fetter Lane, just north of Fleet Street, once the weekly rendezvous of science fiction fans in London till the mid-1950s, when they moved to the Globe pub in Hatton Garden) where a character named Harry Purvis tells a series of tall tales. Incidental characters inhabiting the White Hart include science fiction writers Samuel Youd (also known as John Christopher), John Wyndham (John Beynon), and Clarke himself in addition to the narrative voice as his pseudonym Charles Willis.
The style and nature of the stories was inspired by the Jorkens stories of the writer Lord Dunsany, whom Clarke admired and with whom he corresponded, a fact humorously acknowledged by Clarke in his introduction to the first Jorkens omnibus volume.
According to Clarke's preface to the book, the book was his third collection of short stories, which were written between 1953 and 1956 in such diverse spots as New York, Miami, Colombo, London and Sydney.
One additional story from the White Hart 'universe', "Let There Be Light", is reprinted in Tales of Ten Worlds.
Clarke and Stephen Baxter collaborated on one final White Hart story, "Time, Gentlemen, Please" for a 2007 limited edition from PS Publishing, issued for the book's 50th anniversary. ("Let There Be Light" does not appear in that edition.)
Contents
The collection, originally published in paperback in 1957 by Ballantine Books, includes the following stories.
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin-right: 0;"
! scope="col" | Title
! scope="col" | Time of first publication
! scope="col" class="unsortable" | First edition publisher/publication
! scope="col" class="unsortable" | Summary
! scope="col" class="unsortable" | Citations
|-
! scope="row" |
|
| Science Fantasy
| The story describes the efforts of a brilliant college student to design a machine that would produce a field of absolute silence by inverting the sound waves it senses. The gadget is then used in a prank at an opera house.
|
|-
! scope="row" |
|
| Adventure
| In the only story not narrated by Harry Purvis, a visitor to the White Hart tells of an eccentric professor who studies the electrical circuitry of the brain, and attempts to use electrical stimulation to control animal behavior. The professor's work is discovered by a wildlife photographer, who tries to exploit it to film a giant squid. The story was also published as "The Reckless Ones".
|