The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke

I do identify with the protagonist, George Takeo Pickett, in the short story, Into the Comet, more than any of the other short stories I had read this week. As I read the story I could tell that Pickett is the narrator. Picket can also be classified as a round character. There was a lot of information given about him. One example is in the beginning of the story. Pickett references a book that he read as a child that relates to the situation they were in. It made me feel like I could see what his interests were as a child. Another example is when the story tells you about Pickett’s qualifications and what he had to do to be a crew member on the Challenger. He is three dimensional. Pickett is a Dynamic character. He undergoes changes from the beginning to the end of the story. After the Challenger encountered computer problems and Pickett remembered the abacus he used as a child, he educated everyone on how to use the abacus. He thought this may possibly save them from their demise. Pickett started out as reporter/executive officer on the Challenger and he became a leader by the end of the story. I think his role took a dramatic change. I felt like I knew a lot more about Pickett than any other character in the story. This short story had an antagonist but it wasn’t a person. At first I thought it was Martens, but after further thought I think the antagonist in this story was the computer system of the Challenger. The computer system is the adversary to the Challenger and the crew. The crew had a huge problem with a faulty computer. Without it operating correctly they were actually trapped in the comet’s nucleus. The computers quick calculations were needed to put the Challenger on an orbit back to Earth. Although Pickett came up with a great idea with the use of the abacus, it was a slow method and wouldn’t completely answer their problems. The crew could only hope that the use of the abacus would get them back into radio range of the Earth.

Taking a look