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Arthur C. Clarke Talks With The Onion

Posted by timothy on from the 30-english-winters dept.

sootman writes "The Onion has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke in this week's issue. My favorite line: 'The asteroid [named after me] is number four thousand and something, and the International Astronomical Federation, which deals with these sorts of things and numbered it, apologized to me because number 2001 wasn't available, having been given to somebody named "A. Einstein."'" Reader ronys point out that Despite the source, the interview is not a spoof or satire."

10 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Believe it or not by Joe+U · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Onion does have real interviews and a pretty good AV section.

    The print edition is like a reverse newspaper, with the comic section everywhere and a small non-comic center pull-out.

  2. Fungus Eating Oregon by airConditionedGypsy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In the article, Clarke mentions the "largest living creature" to be a fungus two or three miles across "eating Oregon."

    His word choice leads one to envision doom and death, and I was sufficiently motiviated to search for more info on this beastie.

    http://www.harpers.org/Oregon.html

    http://www.newhouse.com/archive/story1b080700.html

    Google search gets you more.

    on another topic: Anyone amazed at how many quotes this guy has stored up in his head?

    --
    I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
  3. Great Quote from the Article by jsonic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    O: Another favorite quote you tend to bring up in interviews is, "If there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they can't be very important gods." Can you expound on that?

    ACC: [Laughs.] Well, I was rather a cynic once. But now I've combined all my beliefs into this phrase I've been circulating: "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." It's adapted from a phrase by the British writer and scientist Richard Dawkins, who said that religion was a mind virus, an idea that infected the mind. He said that not all mind-viruses are malignant; some may even be beneficial. But many are harmful--racist theories, for instance.

    1. Re:Great Quote from the Article by indianajones428 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How about this one?

      "I'm very fond of the quote--I don't know who said it first--'The best proof that there's intelligent life in the universe is that it hasn't come here.'"

      Arthur C. Cleark quoting Bill Watterson....

      Very cool.

      --
      When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. --Anatole France
  4. Re:Sufficiently advanced technology... by tramm · · Score: 4, Interesting
    he first created the popular axiom "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick." Which of course leads to the corollary: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
    To be pedantic, that is the contrapositive of Clark's Law. The contrapositive is a rule of inference that allows you to reverse the consequent and antecedent: if P implies Q, then not Q implies not P.
    --
    -- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
  5. Vegitation Photos Link by FlashBIOS · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Here is a link to the vegitation photos that he seems to be talking about. It also includes a breif description of what it might be

    My questions is, why hasn't this been bigger news? Did it come out and I just missed it?

  6. Re:Maybe I shouldn't go back to Oregon... by buddahboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google for the humongous fungus
    I don't think anyone with a fondness for the english language could fail to appreciae that sentence....

  7. Film Adaptation of "Fountains of Paradise"? by liftwatch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was particularly interested in the last couple of paragraphs, regarding a possible film adaptation of Fountains of Paradise, and the fact that Clarke considers that his best/favourite novel.

    Fountains was the first novel to incorporate the modern concept of a space elevator.

    Anyone heard anything else about this news item?

    Personally, I'm hoping for Steven Spielberg. He did a terrific job on Minority Report. Between that, AI, and Taken, he's definitely on a sci-fi roll lately.

  8. Re:gotta agree by The+Grey+Mouser · · Score: 3, Interesting


    The Kuwaiti Oil Fires / Nuclear Winter thing was Carl Sagan. Pretty much the entire nuclear winter thing has been discredited as pop / junk science at this point.

    I've seen no credible refutation of the Nuclear Winter hypothesis, and would be interested to see any references you may have on this point. Conflating this with the Kuwaiti Oil Fires merely clouds the issue, if you'll forgive the expression. Junk science? I think that remains to be seen (hopefully not anytime soon...)


    Sagan was a MASTER science popularizer and spokesman, in the end, he wasn't a very good scientist.

    He was a highly-regarded planetary scientist, though it is true that he was more of a bureaucrat for the latter part of his career. Most of his work was done in large collaborations, but that can hardly be held against him.

    Cheers,

    Mouser

  9. Re:Sufficiently advanced technology... by Noren · · Score: 5, Interesting
    To be much more pedantic, that is the contrapositive of Clarke's Third Law(1973), the popular axiom to which the grandparent referred.

    Clarke's Law(1962), which was later renamed Clarke's First Law, reads:

    When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.
    When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
    It is perhaps relevant given the misattribution to Asimov earlier and the corollary reference of the grandparent to also mention Asimov' Corollary to Clarke's First Law (1978):
    When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion --
    the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.