Arthur C. Clarke, 90. Indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer, died today in Sri Lanka. He was 90.
In 1945, he wrote a paper predicting a globe-spanning network of communications satellites. He showed that “space stations†parked in a circular orbit above the equator would exactly match the Earth’s rotation period of 24 hours. The satellite would remain above the same spot, providing a “stationary†target for transmitted signals, which could then be retransmitted to wide swaths of territory below. This so-called geostationary orbit has been officially designated the Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union. He called this paper the most important thing he’d ever written. Then there were the stories and novels. His story The Sentinel was the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke worked on the screenplay with Kubrick, then wrote the book. When the Apollo astronauts orbited the moon, they were tempted to report “a black monolith” on the surface. Here’s a summary of his brilliant career.
Clarke formulated the three laws of prediction:
I. 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.
II. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
III. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
He was one of the sages who imagined our world into being.
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March 24th, 2008 at 10:36
A giant among scifi writers. He had great imagination matched with a writing style you can chew on for long periods without losing flavor. We should be as lucky as to have another writer from the Arthur Clarke school of writing.
Sigh.