"The Nine Billion Names of God" is a 1953 science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke.

Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which they calculated they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about 9,000,000,000 ("nine billion") and each having no more than nine characters.

Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combinations, would take another 15,000 years;[note 1] the monks wish to use modern technology to finish this task in 100 days.

Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books.

[5] Paul J. Nahin has pointed out that, due to the delay imposed by the speed of light, an omniscient God would have had to destroy all the stars in the universe years earlier so that their "synchronized vanishing" would be visible at exactly the time that the monks completed their task.