Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (born December 16, 1917, Mine head, Somerset, England—died March 19, 2008, Colombo, Sri Lanka) was an English writer best known for his science fiction and nonfiction works. His most well-known works include the script for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) which he co-wrote with American film director Stanley Kubrick, as well as the novel that accompanied the film.

Clarke had always been interested in science, but he lacked the financial wherewithal to further his education. He became a member of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) in 1934, a tiny advanced group dedicated to the advancement of rocketry and human space exploration. From 1936 through 1941, he worked as a government auditor. Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar teacher and technician from 1941 until 1946. In 1945, he published an article in Wireless World titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays." The essay envisioned a communications satellite system that would relay radio and television signals around the world; two decades later, the system was operational. In 1946, he started selling short tales to science fiction journals in the United States and the United Kingdom. From 1946 to 1947 and 1951 to 1953, Clarke served as chairman of the BIS.

Clarke graduated from King's College in London with a bachelor of science degree in 1948. Interplanetary Flight (1950) and The Exploration of Space (1951) were his first nonfiction books (1951). Prelude to Space (1951), concerning the first journey to the Moon; The Sands of Mars (1951), about the colonization of that planet; and Islands in the Sky (1952), set on a space station, were among his earliest novels. Childhood's End (1953), Clarke's next novel, is widely regarded as one of his best, and it dealt with how human evolution is triggered by initial contact with aliens.

Clarke wrote two short stories that became science fiction classics in the 1950s. A Tibetan monastery purchases a computer in "The Nine Billion Names of God" (1953) to complete its centuries-long work of gathering all possible names for God. A voyage to a distant planet discovers the wreckage of a civilization that was destroyed when its star went supernova in the Hugo Award-winning "The Star" (1955). When a Jesuit priest on the trip realizes that the supernova was the Star of Bethlehem, his faith is put to the test.

Clarke became interested in undersea exploration and relocated to Sri Lanka in 1956 to pursue a second career that included skin diving and photography. He wrote a number of works, the first of which was The Coral Coast (1956). In the same year, he published The City and the Stars, a sequel to his earlier novel Against the Fall of Night (1953). He was one of science fiction's most influential personalities, and he was known as one of the "Big Three" alongside American authors Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. For "A Meeting with Medusa" (1971), about an expedition that uncovers life in Jupiter's clouds, he earned the Nebula Award for best novella. Another narrative concerning the first encounter was Rendezvous with Rama (1973). A huge asteroid from interstellar space enters the solar system in the early 22nd century.

Imperial Earth (1975) was a science fiction film set in the 23rd century about cloning and solar system colonization. The Fountains of Paradise (1979) received the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, chronicling the construction of a space elevator on the island kingdom of Taprobane (a fictionalized version of Clarke's adopted home, Sri Lanka). The Songs of Faraway Earth (1986), a sequel to a 1958 short tale, is set on a distant planet whose society is upended by the arrival of the last survivors from a destroyed Earth. During this time, Clarke also penned two sequels to 2001: A Space Odyssey: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982, filmed 1984) and 2061: Odyssey Three (1982, shot 1984). (1988). Clarke collaborated with other authors on most of his later novels, with varying degrees of involvement from him.

Clarke wrote two autobiographies in addition to his many collections of writings. Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography collects his scientific articles, including "Extra-Terrestrial Relays" (1984). In Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography, he talked about the impact of the magazine Astounding Stories on him as a teenage science fiction fan and later as a writer (1989). In the year 2000, Clarke was knighted.

1. "Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."

2. "I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself."

3. "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

4. "A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets."

5. "Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."

6. "I will not be afraid because I understand...And understanding is happiness."

7. "My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence."

8. "If the artist did not know his goal, even the most miraculous of tools could not find it for him."

9. "Guns are the crutches of the impotent."

10. "How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean."

11. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

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

13. "Magic's just science that we don't understand yet."

14. "If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative."

15. "Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now."