Improving the Neighbourhood

"Improving the Neighbourhood" is a science fiction short story by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was first published in Nature on 4 November 1999 and was the first piece of science fiction Nature ever published. It is also the last story included in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, where it is dedicated to Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann.

"Improving the Neighbourhood"
AuthorArthur C. Clarke
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Science fiction
Published inNature
Publication typeMagazine
Publication date4 November 1999

Plot summary

The story is written as a monologue and tells of the development of a civilization and a disaster which destroys them when they are on the verge of abandoning their "clumsy chemical filled bodies and thus achieve multiple connectivity." The monologue's narrator reveals that they are a germanium-based lifeform after their ancestors switched from being carbon-based lifeforms long ago. This would point to the narrator being either an alien or a human from the far future.[1]

gollark: Yes.
gollark: Those can be edited via the string metatable.
gollark: The sandbox's path resolution relies on a few string operations.
gollark: Anyway. The string metatable is global, and can be set inside the sandbox, yes?
gollark: ```luaif (f1 == p1 and f2 == p2) or (f2 == p1 and f1 == p2) then term.clear() term.setCursorPos(1, 1) print "Accepted. Moving potatOS files. This computer will now boot to CraftOS." for _, filename in pairs(files) do local newpath = ".potatOS-old-" .. filename pcall(fs.delete, newpath) pcall(fs.move, filename, newpath) end print "Press any key to continue." os.pullEvent "key" os.reboot() else```

References
  1. Quotes and information from The Collected stories of Arthur C. Clarke ISBN 0-312-87821-4
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