RIP Arthur C. Clarke

Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps best know for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, passed away yesterday at age 90 in a hospital in Columbo, Sri Lanka.  The death of Clarke marks the passing of the last of what have often been referred to as the “Big Three” of science fiction, who also included Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein.  A paper that Clarke wrote in 1945 for the journal “Wireless World” has widely been credited with leading to the development of communications satellites.

Arthur C. Clarke is one of my all time favorite authors.  I think the first book of his that I read was Childhood’s End, when I was in eighth grade.  Since then I’ve read many other Clarke novels, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous With Rama, almost all of his short stories (I own his entire short story collection), and several of his nonfiction essays and papers.  Clarke was lumped into what has been called Hard Science Fiction which pays particular attention to scientific details and ideas that could be plausible in the not too distant future. 

Two of my favorite Arthur C. Clarke quotes

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

~ by Nathaniel on March 19, 2008.