After discussing books with a friend, and referring him to the story I think is the best I have ever read, I decided to read it anew. It was still as good as the first time even if it lacked the thrill of exploring a new story of that quality. The story in question is a short story by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, called Rescue Party. It is a science fiction story, but an untraditional one. The setting is around 150 years into the future from when Clarke wrote it (1946), and there are two main stories.
The backstory is that the Sun is about to go nova (or more correctly, supernova), and a ship from the Galactic Survey is being sent to save what it can of the newly discovered civilisation which inhabits the planet. The civilisation was discovered by chance just in time for one spaceship to be able to reach the Earth in time to rescue some of its inhabitants. Appearently humans have evolved unusually fast, a survey ship passing through the Solar system 400,000 years ago had seen life on the planet but it had not yet evolved into intelligent life, and was not expected to do so by the next scheduled survey 600,000 years into the future. The fate of the human civilisation, and the extremely rapid evolution of the race are important background storylines.
The main plot is the story if the ship which is being sent to the rescue. It is populated by various races, all of which are far older than humanity, one is as old as the universe itself. They arrive at Earth mere hours before the Sun explodes, leaving them little time to explore and search for survivors. We get glimpses of how human society has evolved, and as the story goes on, it becomes clear that humans are not to be underestimated, they have evolved rapidly and show remarkable pace in their technological progress.
The story is unusual for Clarke in that it is not hard science fiction, strictly speaking. Sure, human technology is all within the limits of hard scifi, but the alien races have vastly superior technology, some of which defies the laws of nature as we know them, such as faster-than-light travel. This does however not take anything from the story, and considering that these races have had millions of years to evolve it's perfectly plausible that there are ways of acquiring such technology which humans simply haven't found yet.
Anyways, as mentioned above, this is simply the best story I have ever read, and you should all go find a book in your bookshelf with the story in it. If you should be unfortunate enough not to own such a book, go buy one at the bookstore. This book for example is quite nice. Should you for some reason not be able to get a book, the story is also available online on this page.
Clarke died far too young, may he rest in peace.
