Science fiction author and visionary Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and countless other works, died this morning in a Sri Lankan hospital, aged 90. He was one of the gods of speculative fiction, and he will be sorely missed.I first encountered his work through 2001, the film, which I saw as I wide-eyed eight year old. I didn't understand it, but I loved the cavemen prologue, fell asleep during the middle of the film, and woke up just in time to meet the Star Child. I was hooked.
In high school my favourite work of Clarke's was the short story collection, Tales from the White Hart. Today I'd be hard-pressed to name a favourite, as I haven't read his work for some years; a situation I intend to rectify as soon as possible; but I think I shall perhaps remember Clarke best for his 'Three Laws', which display his characteristic dry humour and his vision in equal measure:
- 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.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I wonder what his dying words were? Perhaps he said nothing, but slipped into a quiet, peaceful death. But maybe, just maybe, he said, "My god. It's full of stars."
1 comment:
Probably the best of the 'Golden Age' SF writers - he stuck to the rules of 'hard' SF while actually introducing some quality writing into the genre. Despite the grand claims for the genre, (a genre which I love, btw) very few of the writers (Asimov, Van Vogt) were genuine visionaries.
Clark was, perhaps because he was willing to enter into philosophical inquiries about God, the nature of humans, and morality, and not fall back upon the default SF response (ie, it can 'all be explained by science.)
He produced his best work really before and during the space race, but writing about an optimistic future after the space race had concluded, when people went on scientific exploratory missions across the solar system (2001, Rendezvous with Rama) or even for sport.
Certainly a sad loss. Very few writers nowadays have the intuition and imagination to match Clark's optimism. Time for me to do some re-reading myself, I guess!
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