Not because of the story itself, but because it's one of the most well-known SF stories around. I had second thoughts about choosing this story. Did anyone else get the reference about 'Sam Jaffe'? I also think that Frederik Pohl's placement of the story as last in the original 'Star SF Stories' collection was intentional. Was this a limit on the computers of the time or did he figure that a 32 character limit would make the calculation times impossible? I think that this is the reason for 32-bit encryption, because of the insane amount to time it would take to calculate all the options. I wonder about the ten character limit that Clarke imposed on the length of God's names. Again, the stars go out in sync in spite of the insane galactic distances, not to mention that a lot of those 'stars' are galaxies. It is never explained how he did this, but everyone in the world seems to know about it and that he is responsible. In 2014 I read a story by Gordon Eklund (I said I was Sorry Didn't I?) in which the unnamed protagonist apologizes for causing the end of the universe. This not the first story I've read where all the stars go out for some reason. The point I'm trying to make is that the fading stars at the end of the story would have to have died out thousands of year previously if they were all to start going out at the same time as the last name came out of the computer.

The physics of the story make it impossible to happen the way that it did, and I don't want to get into the metaphysics because I try not to get into discussions about religion.

Of course, the two stories are more fantasy than science fiction. It reminds me of Issac Asimov's 'The Last Question', another SF tale about God and the end of the universe. Clarke who I've always thought of a hard science writer. A fun little story but a little weird for Arthur C.

The 9 billion names of god