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Science-Fiction Writer and Scientist Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90
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findingDulcinea Staff
Clarke lived to see several of his innovative concepts realized, among them the geostationary satellite. The space elevator is yet to come.
30-Second Summary
Described as a “living prophet” by fan and technology blogger Jason Perlow, writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke died Wednesday, leaving behind a world that reflected much of what was created in his mind and made permanent by his pen.
Supercomputers, a space elevator, carbon nanorods and lightning-fast earth-to-satellite telecommunications were just a few of the fanciful inventions depicted in his more than 100 published works. Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee has credited Clarke’s short story “Dial F for Frankenstein” as a childhood inspiration, specifically the point in the story “where enough computers get connected together.”
Clarke refused to be constrained by convention. After serving in World War II, he got married and divorced in the early 1950s and settled in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—after becoming intrigued by its opportunities for diving, which Clarke said gave the closest possible sensation to the weightlessness of space. He was knighted in May 2000.
A video clip he had filmed on the anniversary of “his 90th orbit around the sun” reflects satisfaction with his accomplishments: “I have been fortunate to see many things come true.”
In addition to being a pacifist, he was noted as a man of humility. As fellow sci-fi author Allan Steele writes in a message board on SFFNet Web News, Clarke signed his letters “’Art.’ Not ‘Arthur C. Clarke’ or even, after he was knighted, ‘Sir Arthur.’”
Supercomputers, a space elevator, carbon nanorods and lightning-fast earth-to-satellite telecommunications were just a few of the fanciful inventions depicted in his more than 100 published works. Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee has credited Clarke’s short story “Dial F for Frankenstein” as a childhood inspiration, specifically the point in the story “where enough computers get connected together.”
Clarke refused to be constrained by convention. After serving in World War II, he got married and divorced in the early 1950s and settled in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—after becoming intrigued by its opportunities for diving, which Clarke said gave the closest possible sensation to the weightlessness of space. He was knighted in May 2000.
A video clip he had filmed on the anniversary of “his 90th orbit around the sun” reflects satisfaction with his accomplishments: “I have been fortunate to see many things come true.”
In addition to being a pacifist, he was noted as a man of humility. As fellow sci-fi author Allan Steele writes in a message board on SFFNet Web News, Clarke signed his letters “’Art.’ Not ‘Arthur C. Clarke’ or even, after he was knighted, ‘Sir Arthur.’”
Headline Links: ‘Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90’
Writer Arthur C. Clarke died at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, early Wednesday morning of respiratory problems and heart failure, said his aide. He had been wheelchair bound since 1995 due to post-polio syndrome. Nulaka Gunawardene, his secretary, said, "Sir Arthur has left written instructions that his funeral be strictly secular.” Clarke wrote more than 100 books, in which he foresaw the advent of space travel, supercomputers and fast communications systems.
Source: The BBC
Reactions: Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 90th birthday thoughts
Speaking last December, the writer reflected on completing his “90th orbit around the sun.” He said that he had enjoyed watching “how things have evolved” in his time. “I have been fortunate to see many things come true.”
Source: YouTube
Historical Context: His predictions, fulfilled and unfulfilled
Telecommunications satellites
Lakdiva.org, a Web site about Sri Lanka and famous residents, writes that Clarke’s foresight regarding telecommunications satellites is “his most famous prediction on the future.” He first proposed the theory in Wireless World magazine in 1945. It became reality when Intelsat was launched in April 1965.
Source: Lakdiva.org
Space elevator
The space elevator described in Clarke’s novel “Fountains of Paradise” could come to be built in a matter of years. David Smitherman of NASA/Marshall’s Advanced Projects Office is drafting plans to construct a long cable stretching from Earth’s surface attached to a counterbalance located somewhere beyond 35,786 km from the Earth. Said Smitherman, "The system requires the center of mass be in geostationary orbit. The cable is basically in orbit around the Earth.”
Source: NASA
Nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes are tubes consisting of bonded carbon molecules. They would be the building blocks of a space elevator because they can withhold heavy tension. According to Science News, “A carbon-nanotube string half the width of a pencil can support more than 40,000 kilograms.”
Source: Science News
Supercomputers
A review of David Stork’s book “HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality” examines how closely computers have come to the level of sophistication embodied by the sentient, chess-playing supercomputer HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In 1997, a computer named Deep Blue defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov, and there are computers that can talk and process speech. “The artificial intelligence initiatives heralded with such optimism … in the 1950s proved vastly more complex than anyone at the time imagined,” however.
Source: EMC Paradigm Publishing
The Internet
British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, credited as the creator of the World Wide Web, says that he drew inspiration from Clarke’s short story “Dial F for Frankenstein.” He remembers the point in the plot “where enough computers get connected together,” so the network “started to breathe, think, react autonomously.”
Source: ABC News
Arthur C. Clarke wrote in an article on climate change that one way fossil fuel consumption can be cut down is through greater use of telecommuting. “Mobile phones and the Internet have already cut down a lot of unnecessary travel—and this is only the beginning. We should revive a slogan I coined in the 1960s: ‘Don’t commute—communicate!’”
Source: British Council
Biography: Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008)
Arthur C. Clarke was born into a farming family on Dec. 16, 1917, in Somerset in southwestern England. He studied at King’s College in London and did scientific research before breaking into sci-fi writing. In 1945, after working during World War II as a radar instructor, he described the possibilities of satellite communication. His first book, “Prelude to Space,” was published in 1951, and more than 100 others followed. His 1968 work “2001: A Space Odyssey” became a Stanley Kubrick film. He got married in 1953 and divorced a year later. In 1956, Clarke moved to Sri Lanka, lured by the island nation’s sea diving—an activity he thought to be the closest earthly feeling to the weightlessness of space.
Source: The Biography Channel
Opinion & Analysis: Fans, scientists reflect on Clarke’s passing
Jason Perlow writes Between the Lines, a blog on ZDNet.com, that while other master sci-fi writers of the mid- to late 20th century such as Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury wrote “pure literature of the fantastic, Clarke was a living prophet that would see many of things he wrote about come true during his lifetime ... Watching those predictions come true made his writings more real for me as I grew older.”
Source: Between the Lines blog on ZDNet.com
Semiotics, cinema and literature blog Cerebral Mastication writes of the death of one of the past century’s most celebrated science-fiction writers: “I am at a loss for words, and I must turn to him once more. How does ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’ end, again? ... ‘Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.’”
Source: Cerebral Mastication
Writer Allen Steele writes on a message board on SFFNet Web News that, in his correspondence with the departed author, Clarke presented himself as a humble man. He signed his letters “‘Art.’ Not ‘Arthur C. Clarke’ or even, after he was knighted, ‘Sir Arthur,’ but simply ‘Art’ … For a young writer at the beginning of his career, to be at the receiving end of such casual correspondence from one of the masters was nothing less than astonishing."
Source: SffNet Web News
Reference: Arthur C. Clarke’s works
His 1953 short story “The Nine Billion Names of God” is available in its entirety online. In 2004, the story won the retrospective Hugo Award for the Best Short Story of the Year for 1954.
Source: Lucis
“The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke” contains more than 100 of his short stories, including “The Nine Billion Names of God” and “The Star.” The 1,000-page volume is available from findingDulcinea’s bookstore.
Source: findingDulcinea’s Bookstore
The Clarke Foundation supports research in the sciences and, in the words of its mission statement, “represents an endless opportunity to enhance Sir Arthur Clarke’s legacy, and to share that opportunity with like-minded institutions.”
Source: Clarke Foundation
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