Arthur C. Clarke Is Dead At 90 538
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.
shame. (Score:2, Informative)
his earlier works were total classics. RIP.
Coverage from several news sources (Score:5, Informative)
AP/Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]
BBC [bbc.co.uk]
LA Times [latimes.com]
Bloomberg [bloomberg.com]
National Post [nationalpost.com]
From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] was written as a novelization of the classic movie. The movie itself was based mostly on Clark's short story, The Sentinel. Furrfu!
90th Birthday Reflections (Score:5, Informative)
His Kipling quote at the end should help bring closure to all his fans.
Re:From TFA (Score:1, Informative)
Re:From TFA (Score:3, Informative)
Huh. (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:From TFA (Score:2, Informative)
... the slightest research would have shown ... 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!
While you're right about the movie being initially based on the the short story "The Sentinel", Clarke actually wrote the book concurrently with his and Kubrick's work on the screenplay (according to Clarke's introduction in the book). Perhaps that still qualifies as a novelisation of the movie, but in my opinion it sits uniquely in film/book crossovers, since elements of each were affected by decisions (and technical limitations) in the other.
Regardless, it was a fantastic piece of work by two great artists, both of whom will be sorely missed.
City and the Stars... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What the machine might do (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What the machine might do (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All These Novels... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Link for the uninformed. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:He's not dead you earthing fools (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What the machine might do (Score:3, Informative)
Says the guy who doesn't read enough SF to know the difference between Clarke and Asimov.
Re:What the machine might do (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps it identifies him as a person who knew history. Or perhaps it identifies you as a person who does not know science fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series [wikipedia.org]
The foundation series was written by Isaac Asimov, and he also wrote a number of history books, and in fact his knowledge of history was quite extensive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#Other_writing [wikipedia.org]
Re:All These Novels... (Score:4, Informative)
Uhh, it was Midnight Cowboy. Hardly a forgotten film.
Re:Wasn't A. C. Clarke a pedarist? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,6000,374388,00.html [guardian.co.uk]
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.
""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.
Re:From TFA (Score:3, Informative)
Pedantry, I know. But if you want to use Latin... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Loved this quote by him. (Score:1, Informative)
LOL, they said that in Stargate ?
A C Clark's quote vis a vis technology / magic might be his most well known,
but the following quote had me grinning ;
(Of UFOs:) "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth."
Strange in a way for a man who, on the other hand, wished to meet/communicate with ET.
Re:Mortality (Score:5, Informative)
1. 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.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Predicter (Score:2, Informative)
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."
Re:All These Novels... (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh, it was Midnight Cowboy. Hardly a forgotten film.
Yeah, but 2001 was released in 1968, the "best picture' that year was the musical "Oliver".
Re:Not Just the Fiction (Score:5, Informative)
He was a imaginative and intelligent man. He contributed a lot. He's gone, but he's not going anywhere.
Re:shame. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:shame. (Score:2, Informative)