Am I the only one thinking that his tombstone should be a 1x4x9 black obelisk?
No 
RIP Mr. Clarke
No - something attributed to Mark Twain, and *very * applicable to my field:
“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
From his Wikipedia article:
Now that I think of it, his work always seemed to have a slight formal British voice, but with about as close to a universal perspective as modern humans can get. Not a bad combination for writing science fiction.
As a teenager in the '70s, I must have read everything he wrote at least once, and what I loved about him and will deeply miss was his ability to write popular scientific non-fiction as well as science fiction. I know that Asimov is better known for his non-fiction, both scientific and scholarly, but Clarke wrote at least 20 great science books. He showed that even those who deal in hard data need to have an good imagination, if only to come up with metaphors to explain reality.
Humanity should collectively do something really special in his memory. How about a space colony in the asteroids?
RIP Sir Arthur. His orbit has finally decayed.
The Fountains of Paradise was the first science fiction novel that I even bought for myself.
RIP Sir Arthur.
A few words by the man himself
On his 90 years. A visionary. And a decent human being. May he rest in peace.
I was excited when I saw the first seconds of the trailer for ID4. I thought to myself, ‘Someone’s finally made Childhood’s End!’ Man, was I disappointed.
Agreed. One of the things I like most about his writing is his eternal optimism in the future bringing a peaceful, technological utopia. There’s this undercurrent of optimism in most of his books, and that always lifts me when I read it.
The collaboration I always hoped for was Henry Purvis dropping into the Angler’s Rest to raise a pint and share a story with Mr. Mulliner. 
More seriously, The Nine Billion Names of God and The Star have to rank up there as two of the best SF short stories ever.
Any one know why he choose to live in such an isolated place as Sri Lanka? I’m sure he had a great computer system to communicate with the world and I understand he lived in one of the nicest neighbors in the capitol, Colombo, but still…
I have never seen this particular house that he supposedly had, but I had heard that he went diving frequently. I also heard that he had dug out a man-made bay that went straight to the bedroom in his beach house. His bed was directly beside this open water. He then ‘trained’ local dolphins to swim right up to his bed every morning and bark at him. He would then roll out of bed and swim with them for about an hour before breakfast.
Even if the story about the bedroom over the bay is not true (and it’s a little too good for truth, if you ask me…), he did believe that we would do better at communicating with dolphins if we went to their environment and tried to understand them in that context.
Also, my father was in Sri Lanka for 6 weeks on an agricultural exchange mission. The photos made me want to go immediately. Kick ass beautiful.
I think the stated reason was the scuba diving. And he feel in love with the place. Why Sri Lanka and not some other warm water place I don’t know.
An amusing tribute by Michael Moorcock in today’s Guardian.
Diving and taxes, basically.
And sorry, but “The Nine Billion Names Of God” made no sense to me. Everyone remembers the last sentence - “Above, without any fuss, the stars were going out one by one” {from memory, but that’s the gist} - but considering the distance and the time it takes for the light to reach Earth, they would have had to have started going out separately - and at different times - a long time before the names of God were finally listed.
Well, I was sorry to hear that he had died, but I’d stopped reading his works long ago, once he started the collaboration path. Somehow, that never seems to produce works as satisfying (Niven, are you LISTENING???).
His works were quite enjoyable. I remember one quite well: Glide Path. That book proved he was a writer when he needed to be; he didn’t need to rely upon science fiction to support his efforts.
He was one of the best at leaving you with all sorts of question marks in your head as you tried to figure out what he had really said with his novel.
But that’s exactly the point - it makes you think about the physics of the end of the universe.
There are at least two possible explanations for the ending of the story:
-
God is omniscient and omnipotent. God knew exactly when humanity would fulfill its task, and arranged the universe accordingly, so it would all come to an end, in an Earth-based frame of reference, when the 9 Billioneth Name was posted in the monks’ big book. That means that other stars (and possibly other sentient races) came to an end billions of years ago, but that’s just a sign of God’s omniscience and omnipotence.
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The End of the Universe means the end of everything, including light. Once the 9 Billioneth Name was posted, God began winding everything down, including light that was in transit from stars light-years away. The Laws of Entropy no longer applied at this point, and both energy and matter can come to an end. This approach doesn’t depend on God’s omniscience, simply God’s omnipotence, winding down everything in the Universe at once.
Of these, number 2 is more satisfying to me, since number 1 is so anthro-centric an approach. Under Number 1, the various parts of the Universe have ended at different times, but all at the same time relative to Earth. Number 2, on the other hand, suggests that it doesn’t really matter that it happened to be on Earth that the 9 Billioneth name was posted; once that happened, everything in the known universe started winding down, even energy in transit.
Either way, it’s great science fiction, since it makes you think about exactly what are the physical implications of the end of the Universe. It’s also interesting theology.