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Arthur C. Clarke story about a matrioshka brain



Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about a huge matrioshka brain that sends out probes to the far reaches of the Universe to find out more information. I cannot recall the title, and was hoping someone else knew.



Answer



You may be thinking of Clarke's 1968 short story Crusade (ISFDB).


The story is set on a world without a sun, halfway between two galaxies. The world is covered with seas of liquid helium. The conditions permit superconductivity, which eventually evolves into a planetwide, computer-like intelligence.


The intelligence decides it should explore the two nearby galaxies, and sends a series of probes. The first probes fail as soon as they get close enough to be warmed by the stars. But eventually the intelligence learns that one of the galaxies is teeming with life--life that somehow exists at high temperatures.



The intelligence views this "non-mechanical" life as inferior to itself. It learns that there are other mechanical intelligences like itself, but they're in the minority, and they're under the control of the inferior life forms, who claim to have built the mechanical intelligences. It eventually decides to remedy the situation. The story closes with the indication that liberators sent by the intelligence are headed this way.



Crusade was reprinted in Clarke's book The Wind from the Sun, and more recently in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. I also found a Youtube video which contains a reading of the story.






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