Name: CLARKE, Arthur Charles Aged: 90
Born: December 16, 1917 Where: Minehead, Somerset, England
Died: March 18, 2008 Where: Colombo, Sri Lanka
Interred: Colombo, Sri Lanka
Married: Marilyn Torgerson When: 1953 (dissolved 1964)
SF Awards: Hugos: 1956 Short Story for "The Star," 1969 Best Dramatic Presentation for 2001: A Space Odyssey (w Stanley Kubrick), 1974 Novel for Rendezvous with Rama, 1980 Novel for Fountains of Paradise, and 1984 Best Dramatic Presentation for 2010: A Space Odyssey (w Peter Hyams). Nebulas: 1972 Novella for A Meeting with Medusa, 1973 Novel for Rendezvous with Rama, 1979 Novel for The Fountains of Paradise, and 1986 Nebula for Grand Master. 1952 International Fantasy Award for Non-Fiction The Exploration of Space. International Aerospace & Space Hall of Fame Awards, 1989. And multiple literary, scientific, and aerospace awards too numerous to mention here.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke

"If in fact we are alone, it means that we're not only the heirs to
the cosmos, but its guardians, which is a portentous thought."

Arthur C. Clarke definitively proved that being an intellectual hypocondriac (as opposed to physical) and taking a constant assortment of pills and dietary supplements DOES NOT shorten the human life span. The Times of London pushed aside such trivia and came straight to the point, "Arthur C. Clarke was the foremost science fiction writer of his time." Well, that too, but he was ...eh... a bit eccentric and more often than not found playing croquet on the lawn with a bent hoop or two. He also had the knack of being in the right place AND the wrong place at the right times. No easy feat while living his last half century in Sri Lanka.

Clarke was certainly in the front row of great science fiction writers of all time. But he was much more than that...spreading across mankind like the stars above. Clarke was able to sense the directions humanity could and should move toward and those we needed to move away from. That theme became a famous sf novel, unlike any before it, the now famous Childhood's End, 1953. It changed a 'noticed' writer into a 'leading' writer and Clarke never relinquished the position. His concepts were well researched and scientifically accurate, most realized in his lifetime, with the notable exception that proves the rule ... his space elevator, pun-labeled by some as "dumbed from the start."

Clarke's father died when he was 13 and he moved to London in 1936 where he gained employment with the Exchequer, and where he became a member of the British Interplanetary Society. During WWII, Clarke served as a Flight Lt. working on microwave/radar projects. In 1945, he had published in Wireless World an article on the possibility that radio signals could be bounced off a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, calculating that at 23,000 miles above the Earth, an object could sustain a fixed position. He entered King's College London after the war, earning in 1948 a Bachelor of Science degree with majors in physics and mathematics.

Arthur C. Clarke managed a simultaneous career between fact and fiction, seeing them as being a compliment rather than a contradiction, as most scholars did. The decade of the 1950s was by far Clarke's most productive in three categories; short fiction, novels, and space exploration books. His most important non-fiction books are Interplanetary Flight (1950), The Exploration of Space (1951), and The Exploration of the Moon (1954); followed by Profiles of the Future (1962), and The Promise of Space (1968). Novels, in addition to Childhoods End, included The Sands of Mars (1951), Islands in the Sky (1952), Against the Fall of Night (1953), and The Deep Range(1957).

I was an avid reader of Larry Shaw's short-lived Infinity magazine, but still remember reading Clarke's "The Star" there in 1955 ... and being stunned by both the theme and Clarke's ability to hide it until the last paragraph. He was a passable novelist, crossing from rough to smooth, but a natural short story writer. Representative collections are Reach for Tomorrow (1956), The Nine Billion Names of God (1967), and Tales from Planet Earth (1990). The quantity of his work in the 1950s built a firm career base for expansion into television, motion pictures, space exploration, and celebrity appearances --- including guest commentator for CBS during the Apollo Moon missions. Clarke's career was step by step, but in retrospect it seems to have happened all at once ... full blown ... and I lack the interest to pick that apart.

Clarke once said that the three achievements he most valued in life were formulating the idea for the communication satellite; inspiring Gene Roddenberry to create Star Trek through his book, Profiles of the Future; and working with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

If humanity fulfills its promise to move into space to the point where we can survive independently from the planet Earth, then Arthur C. Clarke shall be among the reasons we were able to do that. Our window of opportunity is not without limits. Clarke's bibliography (below) shows the stories and books that helped to build an inspiring interest in a space program and to point the way outward. Maybe our descendants will see us among the stars when a barren Earth, devoid of life, orbits the sun. It is that thought, above other urges, that drives us outward ... in equal parts because of genetic instinct to survive and because the universe is there. And too, like dead Captain Ahab, we are beckoned to follow.

"Religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species."
"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any
religious faith, should be associated with my funeral."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

OBITUARY: Hundreds ... search Google.

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