Author and title help

[Eckythump]

Hey guys.

Was hoping someone would be able to help me here :)

One of my bosses at work has been trying to remember the Author and Title of a short story he red about 25 years ago and i was hoping someone here may have heard of it.

From what he remembers it was about a guys who was rescued my some monks in the Himalayas...(maybe the Himalayas) and they then hire him to build them a computer that can collate and write down all the different names of god because legend had it that if all the names of god are writen down the universe will cease to exist. At the end of the book the man looks up and sees that stars start to go out one by one.

Hope someone knows this story and can help me out.


Thanks :)

[Randy M.]

Hi. That's a short story by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God."

Randy M.

[phil_geo]

I love the lines:


"Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world."

Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.

"That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ‘It’s nothing as trivial as that’."

http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html

[Eckythump]

Thanks heaps guys...he'll be happy to hear this :)

I'm suprised he couldnt rememebr the author at least, I thought it was going to be some obscure writer i'd never heard of.