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Arthur C. Clarke Is Dead At 90
Many readers are sending in word that Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka. He wrote over 100 books including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous With Rama, and popularized the ideas of geosynchronous communications satellites and space elevators.
It can only be attributable to human error.
Sigs cause cancer.
The world will miss him.
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Who actually has done a lot to promote science. Ok, so he did a lot of Sci-Fi. But most scientists I know were drawn to it *because* of some of the sci-fi they had seen. A sad passing, not just for the cause of geeks and entertainment, but nerd and science.
Off to that big old Monolith in the Sky, I suppose
...Are Yours. Except for 2001 - attempt no more sequels there.
RIP, ACC.
True
'Islands in the Sky' Blew me away when I first read it as a child, I still consider it to be one of the most prophetic of all SF books. I recently spent rather a lot of money of a 1952 paperback edition of same.
Rest in peace, Sir Clarke. You will be missed.
in a few years, perhaps longer, he will be reborn to lead the xenu empire on its glorious crusade.
sorry, couldn't resist.
I see a notice of passing of this or that "famous" person every day. But this one hurts...
Bon Voyage, Sir Arthur! Many of us will truly miss you...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
AP/Washington Post
BBC
LA Times
Bloomberg
National Post
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
It's such a shame, isn't it, that they can't get things right in these articles, even when the slightest research would have shown the writer that the novel Space Odyssey was written as a novelization of the classic movie. The movie itself was based mostly on Clark's short story, The Sentinel. Furrfu!
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Clarke corresponded with C. S. Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s, and once met in an Oxford pub, the Eastgate, to discuss science fiction and space travel.
Oh to have been a fly on the walls of that pub.
It's understandable that, as he got older, his energy to write faded, but it's a real shame that he let other people put his name on shoddy products that he essentially had nothing to do with. They say that the apalling sequels to Rendevous with Rama (an excellent work and a science-fiction classic) were basically entirely Gentry Lee's doing in spite of the prominent appearance of both names on the covers. When the sequels are so bad they can only tarnish the perception of the original (see Star Wars).
This news is sad, but I hope that younger generations today will go back to the early works, ignoring all of the later publication, and see just how visionary a writer Clarke was.
"Time is the fire in which we burn..."
RIPHere is a video from ACC made in December 2007 in which he reflects upon his life and how he will be remembered.
His Kipling quote at the end should help bring closure to all his fans.
I hope wherever he's gone, it's full of stars.
It was only a matter of time before some jackass puked forth this groundless accusation.
STFU. Try to have a little respect for a man whose shoelaces you are not fit to tie.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
That's all.
i prefer his third law 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'
the sci fi show stargate seems to be based on it. loved that they referred to him in show when mentioning how to create a sun.
it's a great loss but he's left behind so many books and fired the imagination of so many people that i can only ask the question are there writers writing today who will have such an impact?
My deepest condolences to his family, friends, and fans. He was one of the first writers I experienced that changed the way I thought and felt about the world in a drastic way.
I can still remember hollowness in my chest from "Childhood's End," the wonder and fear from the "Odysseys", and the rompy fun from "Rama."
Though we can all take some solace from the immortal parts of him that live on in all of his books and in us, his readers, I for one will surely miss him.
Thank you Sir Clarke and peace on your eternal rest.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
His long lasting legacy is that he taught many computer sciences (and electrical engineers) how to dream.
many of those dreams became a relaity.
And we are still pursuing some of them.
--dmg
My 3 favorite, and the 3 who most influenced me are now gone... Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein..
But their stories, intellect, and vision for the future will inspire generations more.
Corporatism != Free Market
In terms of his factual writings, I have many of his articles that were written for Wireless World, including the letter and two follow-up articles on geostationary satellites. Those three in particular can be found on the web - many people have scanned them in. They're well worth reading. He was a highly skilled writer on technical stuff. Technical writers today should pay attention to them and learn.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
He's just been absorbed by the monolith.
...I shed a tear - and then I felt...ashamed...why?
Why is it that when one cries at a movie involving war heroes or romance it is socially acceptable, but when I become choked-up not just about the passing of one of our greats - as I have today - but at the whole of scientific discovery I feel somehow, I'm not sure...I guess just ashamed.
This happens to me now and then. Like when I saw a documentary on mitochondrial eve, and I became full of such emotion about the interconnectedness of us all that I had to leave the room lest my wife see me weep (not that she would ridicule me, just because).
Why should I not be proud of my tears? Why, even in this day, surrounded by so much intellect and accepting cultures should I still not disclose this little secret to anyone except the pseudo-anonymous like-minds on this website?...
Why should we not all weep at the stars?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
It was either a prophesy or a forewarning on society and privacy - you pick. Even now it gives me the shivers thinking about it... and damned few SciFi books (of which I've read way too many) can do that.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My understanding was that he wrote sections of the book alongside the movie, making the script/book a joint effort, although the book was actually finished and polished later. Well, the only two people who know for certain are now working on a prequel (not available on Earth), from the Monolith's perspective.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
StarChild, are you now speeding amoung the stars
finding your great connexion
with the majesty that lies buried in mens' hearts
watching and waiting to see if those you left behind
will understand your message before it's too late
arthur c clarks should have been done in threes
a backup seer always ready
to disarm warmongering nukes from Mercury or even Imperial Earth
leading us across a bridge to the heavens and a rendezvous with destiny
counting the nine billion names of god as they are one and none
now we carbon based bipeds must confront childhood's end
with a memory in our hearts
of one who changed the world with intelligence, nobility and grace
rest in peace, arthur c clarke, you will be forgotten all too soon
but not for a little while yet
... he even died tomorrow!
The article states he died on wednesday, but it's still tuesday!
(I know, I know... it's due to the time zones...)
So say we all
First Gygax, then Clarke. Who will be geek number three?
Stallman had better keep an eye out for ninjas.
Clarke was certainly one of the masters of SF and popular space writing; also, he was my personal favorite.
His story "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time" about his failure to patent his geosynchronous communication satellite network concept is simultaneously sad and funny. He got everything right except he thought that the satellites needed to be crewed because of the requirements of changing burnt out vacuum tubes! Too bad the transistor was still ten years away at the time.
More than once in his writings he made the claim that he was proud to be an atheist. Somehow I hope that he wasn't disappointed being wrong and instead was pleasantly surprised.
They got so much wrong, but the issues they got right. We don't have flying cars, but we are different people due to technology. We do not get our food from cubes, but the fast food is just presented manner meant to imitate the food it replaces. We had pocket calculators long before the cleaning work was autonomously taken over by machine, but the roomba exists. Children are being trained in ware fare using video games. The basis of our interactions are being changed by rapid instantaneous communication. Our basic functions, such as sex, have been changed by the picture phone and internet. No longer must anyone settle for the person next door, when one can surf for an attractive specimen in the morning, text during class, and set up the date for the evening at a bus stop midway between the two of you. In fact, we never have to settle when everything can be custom made to out specifications.
There are two things that disappoint me about many so-called intellectuals. The first is that they don't seem to read enough history. The second is that don't seem to read enough science fiction. To me this strikes me as a person who knows not where they came from, and who knows not where they are going. All they know is what is happening at the moment, their immediate desires, and all they care about is what they must do to fulfill those desires.
Clarke's writing clearly defines him as a different sort of person. The Foundation series clearly identifies him as a man who knew history. His life defines him as a man who knew where he as the rest of us were likely going. I wonder what the world would be like if our leaders were like this. People of history and vision, rather than people who apparently do not even both to hold a book correctly, and proudly states that they never read, or that they read the cliff notes versions. I am reminded of John F. Kennedy, the person who pushed the nation to space, for better or worse. It is claimed in Thirteen Days that JFK had read the Guns of August, did understand that many conflicts start because leaders assume they know what the other party is thinking, and then constructs inflexible plans based on those assumptions. As he knew history, he could do something different in his attempt to achieve a result. Again, history and vision of the future. Something we are sorely lacking, and something that is all too often ridiculed by those who are justing looking at how to swindle their first million by the time they are 25.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
My first exposure to Clarke wasn't fiction at all but a non-fiction, non-technical look at the future of space travel called "The Exploration of Space." My father must have acquired it in the early Fifties. It was completely understandable to a young reader, and the beautiful illustrations fired the imagination. I went hunting for it on my shelves just now and could not find it; I'm thinking one of my offsprigs must have made off with it just as I appropriated it from my dad when I left home. I was in grammar school when I first read it--didn't encounter his fiction until I was somewhat older. I treasure the memory of it because it wasn't about "IF" we achieve interplanetary travel but rather about "WHEN" we achieve it.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Indeed. I remember an interview of his where he discussed his ideas around satellites. The amusing thing to him was in fact how wrong he had been. He had imagined them as (relatively) enourmous, crewed space stations. A limitation of the technology at the time he was envisaging them, where you only had unreliable vacuum tubes (or whatever they would have been) which needed constant replacing, and hence a human crew. Also a salutory lesson out there for all the people who like to predict what the future holds technology wise. It is just impossible to know what is going to come along out of the blue and knock your world view on its head.
Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke - you will never be forgotten.
I can still remember the chill that went down my spine at the end of 2010 (the year we make contact) when HAL relays David Bowman's message:
All these worlds are yours except EuropaAttempt no landings there.
Use them together. Use them in Peace.
And the (almost Obamaesque) hope I felt when Haywood Floyd tells his son, "Someday, the children of the old sun will meet the children of the new sun. I hope we can be friends"
2001, 2010, Rama, Glide Path (and instrument landing systems), The City and the Stars, Earthlight, The Nine Billions Names of God, his Scientific American paper on geosynchronous satellites, and so much more. I can't imagine what our world would be like without his contributions.
Growing up in the 70's I scoured every library of every place I moved to for Asimov,Clarke and Heinlein and read their books many times over. Now they're all gone and I feel sad, like the last of a special group of friends is gone.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
Let us be reminded that Clarke also wrote about the Newspad back in 1964; it appeared a couple of times in the film 2001, It was tablet computer accessing a world wide web, thirty years before it finally came to life. The only difference was that Clarke thought the URLs were numeric instead of ASCII strings.
How cool it must have been for him to see so many of his visions turn into reality!
...ranks as perhaps the best Sci-Fi book I've ever read. It still takes my breath away.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
You forgot to take your Paxil again today, didn't ya? ;)
(I once forgot my Paxil for a couple days, and cried at the end of The Goonies. Really... Made no sense.)
I am going to go to the nearest graveyard, find a big black tall grave stone and act like a monkey and throw a plastic bone up in the air and then quietly walk away.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
"WIRED: Have you given any thought to what you'd want your epitaph to be? ACC: Oh, yes. I've often quoted it: "He never grew up; but he never stopped growing." now will some moderator with a soul please tag this story with this?
This is a normal tactic in the book industry. It is a way for publishers to introduce new authors they think might be good to the reading public. If you saw a book by someone named Gentry Lee, how likely would you be to buy it if you had never heard of him before? Now, if you see Arthur C Clark's name on the cover, you would be likely to buy it. It's not a totally bad system, because it does help to get people who are really good authors established. My father is a best selling author and the first 6-10 of his books were coauthored with someone famous (who did little more than add a couple anecdotes and a forward).
The big problems with the system, though, are when you have authors who are famous not checking up on the books they put their names on. This can happen either because they are lazy, getting old, or most likely just want another paycheck that they know a book with their name on it will bring. This can dilute the brand when bad books with their name on it get out, and sometimes hurt the author if thecoauthor gets into a scandal or does something disgraceful. That also happened to my dad when the famous coauthor did something entirely out of character with what the books were about.
So here's the basic rule of thumb when buying books. If you see a book with two names on it (one of them being a famous person you recognize), IMMEDIATELY assume that the book was written by the other, unknown author with the name in small print. Know that you are taking a risk and getting a book that may not be as good as previous books by the famous author. However, also know someone at the publishing house thought this author was pretty good or they wouldn't be trying to publish him and get his name known. So there is some chance you may find a gem of a book, and if so, you should buy books from that author again. But know going in that 95% of the time you see coauthors on anything other than a university text, the famous coauthor did 0% of the work, and probably didn't even read the book before putting his name on it. You have no guarantee he liked it, and no guarantee of quality (because even if he wrote the forward, he didn't necessarilly read the book).
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
I think the Fountains of Paradise was his best. He certainly tried to make it his last great novel.
I once read an early story of his "Travel by Wire" which is about teleportation. He goes into gory detail about what can happen to the traveller transported at too low a resolution, or when noise got into the line "They looked like nothing on Earth and very little on Venus or Mars". It ends with an observation about engineering: that the people who build things like this sometimes seem reluctant to travel on them, knowing how badly they were put together.
At the other end of his career he wrote "Transit of Earth" which is a much better put together story but less fun to read.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I think that there are two different kinds of emotions here; with a movie, you're being 'forced' to feel the way you do, so it doesn't seem to be a 'real' emotion although it feels the same.
In real life, if you will, these events cause really deep, pure emotions that are... well, difficult to handle at times.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Yes, the same show that said "It's not a frequency we can here, let me turn up the volume." is definitely as technically sophisticated as Clark's writing.
To answer your question, yes there are. I'm sure they will be recognized years from now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... including myself. Arthur C. Clarke's books are largely responsible for where I am today. I read The Fountains of Paradise as a kid and now I'm 2 years from my Ph.D. focusing on nanotechnology and ultra-high strength lightweight materials. His mind will be missed but his vision and legacy will never be forgotten.
Look at the advancement of humankind because he didn't patent the idea of satelites
Wow, literary publishing is exactly like scientific publishing.
Some of it's on YouTube. Have a search for the third part of the Antikythera video. That was was what first brought home to me some hint of what a tremendous loss to humanity the destruction of the Library at Alexandria was. He makes a reasonable argument that it cost us 2,000 years of technological development.
The man impacted all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Ahh... another of the few great Science Fiction (straight real Science Fiction no SciFi and things like that) leaves us. I have always been more of an Asimov fan, but as they both used to say, I will certainly miss the two, second-best science fiction writers in the world...
Too bad these they do not make Science Fiction writers as they used to...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Be sure not to share any of his works that you find online, because copyright terms mean the stories cannot be freely distributed.
So please, please, don't search for The Nine Billion Names of God on Google and read one of his greatest short stories.* By not reading it for free, immediately, you are enriching yourself and protecting our way of life. Observe the reasonable limitations on the distribution of creative works that we have in place in the US, and enjoy sharing this story with your friends when it enters the public domain in 2062... ninety five fucking years after it was written.
* Really, don't. Don't to it. **
** You're going to do it, aren't you? I'm telling.
PS Yes, this gets my goat.
PPS Yes, I have written a book, pr8 it if you can find it, I don't care.
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/
If I saw Gentry Lee I would have thought about the guy from Rush, who it isn't, but who wrote 2112 and Hyperspace, and then the other guy from Rush who wrote the theme for the first season or two of Andromeda.
rewriting history since 2109
Damn. One of the Great Three (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke).
Pulp westerns, sure. The classics, however, paint a vivid picture of human behaviour and of nature: at times in harmony but often fraught with peril. Travel between spots of civilization was long and slow, with language and culture as interesting variables. The old frontiers and the new are more alike than we may immediately realize.
rewriting history since 2109
Not that it means anything if they didn't but I'm just interested to know their stance. I guess we'll find out when they print their obituary. Try this from the guardian in 2000
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,6000,374388,00.html Rupert and Arthur are good friends. The author of 2001: A Space Odyssey faced his trickiest moment three years ago, when he was turned over by the Sunday Mirror. It was Murdoch who wrote him a "very nice" note promising him that the reporters responsible would never work in Fleet Street again. "He is a rather shy, modest person," Clarke says teasingly. "I find him very deferential."
The Mirror claimed that Clarke had paid young boys for sex. It produced affidavits from the boys in question. Sri Lankan police later disproved them, he says. The story ran two weeks before Prince Charles flew to Sri Lanka to confer a knighthood on the grand old man of science fiction. The saga was the lowest point in his career. At a banquet in his honour Clarke, who has post polio syndrome, found himself hobbling away from the press, pursued by an unctuous reporter from the Daily Telegraph. The episode still upsets him. "I take an extremely dim view of people mucking about with boys," Clarke says. "The whole thing was distressing to me. It was vindictive and very unpleasant. I can only assume it was a plot to embarrass Prince Charles." The novelist finally got his gong this May, at a low-key ceremony at the British high commission in Colombo.
Clarke's private life remains a mystery. He was married briefly to an American, Marilyn Mayfield, now dead, whom he met while diving in Florida in the 50s. Asked whether he is gay, Clarke always gives the same puckish pro forma answer: "No, merely cheerful." The answer, presumably, lies in the "Clarkives" - a vast collection of his manuscripts and private writings, to be published 50 years after his death. A further quote
""I had an operation for prostate cancer 10 years ago," Clarke says. "I haven't the slightest interest in sex."
He deserves respect, not anonymous sniping , for his remarkable influence and contributions to humanity.
Rest in Peace Sir Arthur.
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Paul Preuss got the same treatment. I think the series was called Venus Prime or something like it. It had a very early non-gritty proto-cyberpunk feel to it. The gimmick in the series was interesting. Paul took a short story from Arthur C. Clarke's back list, and turned it almost-absolutely verbatim into a chapter of the ongoing serial plotline. He did a reasonable job making it blend in so you couldn't spot the short story without already being familiar with it. There were at least four books, I can't be bothered to search them now, but it was cool to compare the short with the chapter after reading each novella.
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Childhood's End scared the hell out of me. I think I was 10 at the time. Reread it in college for a class and understood it a lot better. Still gave me chills, though.
Requiem im pace, Sir Arthur. The world is not a better place for your passing.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
His attempts at nuclear fusion research by accelerating chairs to a high velocity have inspired countless thousands of comic strip writers, and I think it likely that he will always be remembered for this most valuable contribution to society... no matter how hard he tries to make us forget...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Back in 1997 I did a live internet streaming event with Arthur C. Clarke, it was the first of it's type, and literally sent video across a 12 hr time difference to Chicago, even then Clarke was making internet history and I was privileged to be part of it.
I actually got to travel to Sri Lanka and meet him. It was truly the experience of a life time. I had been following the foot steps of many other great people. Astronauts, writer, Hollywood types and scientists that have all traveled there to meet him. I had lunch at his home, got to play ping pong with him, it was one of the few physical activities he was still up to. He showed me original sketches of the Space elevator that he and Buckminster fuller had drawn. Even gave me a signed copy of one of his books.
Unfortunately I was so broke at the time all I could afford was one of those 10 Dollar disposable cameras and none of the photo's I took came out, maybe the X-ray machine zapped em. The grand old British hotel there the Galle Face Hotel built in 1864 was incredible but was killing my finances at $150 per night. http://www.gallefacehotel.com/
The video streaming even was at UIUC in celebration of Hal's birthday.
It was amazing to see the turn out. On the large theater screen he was larger then life and it really seems th e internet owes him a large debt of gratitude. For he has been an inspiration for so many.
Sri Lanka was Paradise. In spite of the Civil war, I have never been anywhere so majestic, the people were so hospitable, even strangers on the street were inviting me to there homes to have some food and drink with them. I must have walked every part of Colombo in the week I was there. The food was fantastic, the women were so beautiful, the ocean breeze and the sun sets. Oh the sun sets they put even the best ones in Santa Monica to shame. I still feel almost home sick for Sri Lanka even though I have only been there the one time.
I can completely understand why he moved there. I would if I could also.
Never making it back there is something that I deeply regret. Hearing this news really drove that home this afternoon. Meeting him has been one of the defining moments in my life.
Godspeed Arthur.
For Clarke is for us techies far more significant to us then Prices Dianna ever was.
It's nice to see that this slashdot page it turning into a memorial. I wonder if more formal memorial services would happen around the world.
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/clarke.html This is from the streaming even and some video clips of him.
I actually think this may be the longest clip up on youtube, somehow they must have allowed it to slip through there size restrictions.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
... not read one of his books of failed to be impressed? I'm sure I've read most of his books, if not all (especially the ones he wrote on his own), but probably my favorite is "Fountains of Paradise" -- I can still remember so much of the story even though I last read it in the 1980s. Maybe not all of it, but who can forget the concept?! Okay, maybe he didn't think of this one himself, but if the space elevator ever becomes a reality, it'll probably be thanks to this book.
I'm going to miss him. He was one of those people who you've admired for so long that you hope they'll live forever. Of course, nobody ever does, so when people like Sir Arthur start to grow old and you hear that they're becoming weaker, you begin to dread the inevitable years in advance. A world without people like this is so much less interesting. Hell, I still hate the fact that Frank Zappa and Richard Feynman are no longer with us -- two of my other heros. Sir Arthur's passing is also going to take a very long time to get used to.
It's requiescat, if you want to say "[may he] rest in peace", i.e. the traditional RIP.
If you mean it as a command (as you phrased it), it would be requiesce.
Requiem is a noun. You could say something like Requiem ei donetur (Rest be granted unto him).
And of course, it's in, not im.
http://mrcopilot.blogspot.com/2008/03/sir-arthur-c-clarke-dead-at-age-90.html
Out of all his predictions, I was really pulling for the monkey servants.
From the wikipedia:
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Yes, the discourse between imaginative minds is an amazing and truly capturing phenomenon whatever the domain of discourse it may be. I would also have liked to be a fly on the wall in Max Born's office when he talked to Heisenberg, or to have listened to the tornados of mathematical rhetoric that went on betwen Feynman and Bohr when they talked over the phone to discuss the things that nobody else in the world could understand, or bear to hear. Maybe that wouldn't have been as entertaining as the distant worlds Clarke would have talked about, but it was still imagination, and imagination is such a darn beautiful thing. It is born of reflection, and reflection is what marks human kind, because it embodies the sentience/self-awareness/abstraction of concepts and physical symbols that makes us so "special". Actually, take away the quotes there. We are very lucky, and very special.
So it is no exaggeration to say that these are the people who have really lived. The least we can do, so that we ourselves can be said to have lived, is read what they wrote down.
RIP Mr. Clarke. Thank you for everything.
Frank Herbert was not a Hack. His Dune series is not interesting from the perspective of Science Fiction, but from that of Anthropology.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
What about, "Romans, go home!"
Most of the stuff on
For some random reason I was reading up on cryonics today and ran across a supportive quote from Clarke
"Although no one can quantify the probability of cryonics working, I estimate it is at least 90% -- and certainly nobody can say it is zero."
I didn't see any mention of cryonics in any coverage of his death so I assume he never followed through with it, but if he actually did maybe there's the hope that he's not gone forever and may be back again someday.
I stole this Sig
Same here...
So long and thanks for all the fiction?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Yeah, it's a lot like slashdoting, too.
testing out my trending skills
Arthur Clarke has been behind numerous perceptions and ideas that are commonplace nowadays.
For example, he is the author of the widely quoted "Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic".
As well, he was able to pretty accurately imagine an astounding number of technological advances.
A loosely re-translated quote from a Russian magazine "Esli"(If), regarding Clarke's 90th birthday:
"By the way, in the early works of Clarke there is an enormous amount of bold technical predictions, many of which have been realized - or they have every chance to be realized in near future. In the very same "Childhood's End", which is more of a religious-philosophic rather than futurological work, there is the determination of the baby's gender during pregnancy (very similar to nowaday DNA testing), contraception pills, document sending over phone lines with a device which is even named "facsimile device". Among the catalogue of technological predictions it is easy to miss a direct hit on social predictions -- Clarke assumes that socialism as a political order will be extinct by 22th century."
Open the Pearly Gates, HAL.
I wish I could find a handy transcription to quote the conversation between Chandra and HAL, but in 2010, Clarke showed he did know how to write. I'll never forget the chill up my spine when Dave Bowman shows up to warn the crew that they have to leave, and on leaving, the dark spot appears on Jupiter... *shudder* (When 2010 shows up on the boob tube, I tune in just for the ending).
And the final dialog between Chandra and HAL actually talking with him and being honest. And HAL chosing the right thing. The redemption of HAL is one of my all-time favorite moments in SF.
That was awesome writing.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Gah, that movie. The effects were wonderful, but they completely mangled the storyline in order to make an anti-Cold War statement. Do yourself a favor and read the vastly superior book. I read it again every couple of years, it's one of my favorites. The entire message was, "All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there." They also didn't mention the Chinese expedition, and they made the existence of life on Europa inconclusive, unlike the book.
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...