"Clonk Clonk" was written specifically for The Scorpion God. At one point the plan had been for "The Scorpion God" and "Envoy Extraordinary" to be rounded out with two new short stories and later Monteith suggested using two much shorter stories of Golding's that had been previously published: "Miss Pulkinhorn" (Encounter, vol 15, August 1960, pp.
12–14 and in the collection Winter's Tales 16, 1970, edited by Alan Duart Maclean). Golding felt that they were too different – "written with the right hand while SCORPION and ENVOY were written with the left, if you see what I mean" – and wrote "Clonk Clonk" instead.