Arthur C. Clarke - Rest in Peace

We've lost another giant in the science fiction literature world - Arthur C. Clarke died tonight.

Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.
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"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."

From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.

Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.

When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke's shorter pieces, including "The Sentinel," written in 1948, and "Encounter in the Dawn." As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," "2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."

Arthur C. Clarke wrote his three rules of prediction the year I was born. The most well-known and quoted was "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I grew up on his works, his and Isaac Asimov's and Frederick Pohl's excellent fiction. He will be missed.

UPDATE: What Kingdaddy said.

Comments

[Raymond Lee]

Sir Arthur's proposal in l945 for geostationary satellite communications went unheeded- dismissed as fantasy by the then more influential scientists.
http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/ has a good starting point for his innovatory idea.
He was a visionary writer, although his style is considered "dry" by some, lacking warmth, but he has left a lasting and usefully imaginative referential legacy. He was youthfully enthusiastic all his life.
He was a man for the future: "Let us begin." (The Ghost from the Grand Banks).

R.