To be fair, Clarke started selling his stories when he was about 30 while Asimov was all of 18. The wonder isn’t that Clarke’s early stories were better than Asimov but that anybody reads Asimov’s early stories at all.
The funny part is that Clarke’s first story appeared in a 1937 fanzine when he was 20. By 20 Asimov had published more than a dozen stories, some famous today.
Also, to nitpick, “Loophole” appeared in the April 1946 Astounding and “Rescue Party” in May, but for all I know it may have been sold first.
I like his very short stories. I, too, recommend “the nine billion names of God”. I still shiver thinking of it. And the tales of the White Hart were fun, although i don’t remember them.
I liked the shorter version of “against the fall of night” more than the longer ones.
There was some sequel to 2001 that he wrote with someone else, maybe Rendezvous with Rama, that is the only one i would disreccomend.
Strongly recommend Rendezvous with Rama. I’ve read it several times.
It was Rama II, co-written with Gentry Lee, that I never finished.
ETA 2: and checking Lee’s biography, I see why I didn’t finish: Rama II was primarily Lee’s writing, going in a different direction from Clarke. I didn’t like it.
Rendezvous With Rama was written in 1972 and Clarke had no intention of writing a sequel. Lee turned the Rama series into a more character-driven story following the adventures of Nicole des Jardins Wakefield, who becomes the main character in Rama II
I have no idea what you think is so precient about it. No matter how many telephones there are in the world, even 100 times as many as there are neurons in the human brain, the phone network is not going to become sentient.
There are further sequels, all of which go downhill. From a very low starting point. Lee wrote a standalone book based on an idea by Clarke which is even worse.
Outdated now, of course, but one less-mentioned story I’ll nominate is “Hate”. When I read it, I’d forgotten just how much of a gut punch Clarke was capable of delivering.
Yes, that’s the chronology that Clarke gave in an interview, cited in the Wikipedia article on Rescue Party: that was the first article he sold to Campbell, but Loophole was published first.
Clarke mentioned in a few places that he was not thrilled when people said “Rescue Party” was their favorite story. He figured he improved at least a bit since his first.