A great man and a great author has passed away.
I nice sentiment, but I did get a chance to meet Dr. A a few times, once for quite a while, and he never thought there was anything beyond death but nothing. I think Clarke thought similarly. Heinlein, on the other hand, had proof of life after death as one of the discoveries to be made in his Future History timeline.
Wow. He was one of my true inspirations. Time for his final odyssey, I guess…
RIP
I’ve just started rereading City and the Stars written in 1956. In the very first chapter he has the hero, Alvin, deep into what we recognize now as a virtual reality video game - in a cave. It could be D&D. He mentions that other games involve logic. How is that for hitting it on the nose?
Hear, hear. Tales From the White Hart wasn’t the first science fiction I read, but I read it early, and it was always one of my favorites. I’ll have to dig out my old copy and hoist a glass tonight with Harry Purvis in Arthur’s honor.
He recorded a little thank you for his fans recently when he felt he was not going to be around much longer, they played it on Radio 2 this morning, very nice.
Yep - they did an obit on Radio 4 as I drove into work. By doing it over Also sprach Zarathustra almost had me blinking back tears (not a good thing on the M4 in Reading at 7:00am).
I grew up with his books - short stories, novels and the movie. I drifted away a bit from the later books, but I think I’ll be looking for some collected short stories for a personal retrospective.
Daisy, . Daisy, . give … me … your … ans . wer … do …
Si
Were there any justice in this universe, Mr. Clarke would have been worth at least as much as George Lucas is. (And can you imagine what that would be like?) 
I’ve only read a handful of his books, but I did enjoy them. I only just finished Childhood’s End a couple of months ago. I was expecting a bleak ending, but was happy to find an optimistic one. I’ll have to find some more of his books.
That’s a very nice touch indeed, not something you’d get on Radio 2, but I did muse that one of the pieces of music from the film would be nice to hear afterwards.
For years I’ve had two quotes on the wall of my office (I’m an IT Manager). The first one is by Clarke:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
I usually have the local classical radio station playing in the background while I work. Yesterday afternoon, they played “On the Beautiful Blue Danube”, but I didn’t realize until later that it must have been a tribute to Sir Arthur.
One of the things that I appreciated about his work was that his optimism about humanity, and his own generous spirit seemed to come through so well, and so often. Characters are more often foolish or misguided than they are really evil. I also enjoyed his subtle, dry humor.
His work will live on.
I believe Clarke’s farewell is available on the BBC article on his passing. I’m in work so I can’t check it right now, but there are three media links on the right of the page.
From my window, I can probably spot a half dozen unwitting monuments to Clarke… parabolic-shaped and aimed at a point 36,000km above the Equator.
Pretty good job, and a full life. Good bye, Sir Arthur.
We may have geosynchronous satellites, but I’m still waiting for that space elevator. Clarke will definitely be missed.
From the Simpsons
The very first book I remember reading was “Islas en en Cielo”, or the spanish translation of “Islands in the Sky”. It had been my father’s book and it turned me into a science fiction fan. Many years later when I finally learned enough Engllish to read the original version I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the original was just as readable and enjoyable.
Just out of curiosity, is the other sign Merlin’s Converse to Clarke’s Equivalence Theorem?
Forgot to say this in my previous post: May Sir Arthur’s memory endure as a blessing.
I hope some future spacecraft is named after Clarke. I know Discovery and all but one should just be called The Clarke.
This is from Clarke’s Three Laws, which came about haphazardly but appear to have been first collected in his 1973 revision of Profiles of the Future. He compared them to Newton’s three laws, but I’ve also heard that he jokingly made them a deliberate parallel to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
I have the first paperback edition, from Bantam in 1964, with the kind of beautifully abstract evocative scientific painting on the cover that nobody does any more.
The books ends with a chart of future achievements, “not to be taken too seriously.”
It includes:
“Correct predictions,” depending on your definition of correct, are few. A global library in 2005. “Sub-nuclear structure,” undefined, in 2000.
He was an eternal optimist about technology. There’s not a negative in the whole list.