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March 19, 2008 12:24pm by David Farrar

Arthur C Clarke is dead

Another giant falls. He was 90 years old.

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Arthur C Clarke
RIP

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Comments (25)

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Right of way is Way of Right

I wonder if he was ever disappointed his vision for 2001 was never realised. WHen you consider a young boy who watched the Wright Brothers flight at Kittyhawk could also have watched man land on the moon, it makes me wonder at the lack of progress we have made in the last 50 years.
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March 19, 2008 12:37pm
Linda Reid

He was an innovative thinker and I enjoyed many of his books. RIP.
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March 19, 2008 12:45pm
Ben Wilson

RIP.

Loved ‘Rendezvous with Rama’, excited to see the movie that’s being made about it.

2001 was a great movie too, although I did feel a bit bummed in 2001 that we couldn’t just take a flight to a space station, economy class. But I don’t think it’s fair to blame that on humanity’s ‘lack of progress’. It’s only when we begin to do the things dreamed of in SciFi that we see how unrealistic much of it is. Most space fiction simply underrates the exorbitant expense involved in actual exploration/exploitation of outer space, and it insist for dramatic reasons on putting humans in the spaceships. If HAL 9000 was even possible (another wildly unrealistic projection), why did they even bother sending people? They could have made a much smaller, faster, cheaper rocket with only HAL in it. I guess HAL got that point ;-).
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March 19, 2008 1:07pm
Josh

A great loss. Rendezvous with Rama in particular was an incredible experience as a young reader.
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March 19, 2008 1:34pm
Ross Nixon

I certainly enjoyed his books. And he was an accurate visionary. But he had his flaws http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19980202/03350954.html so for that reason I would not call him a “giant”.
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March 19, 2008 1:36pm
Rocket Boy

Ross Nixon – it would be wrong not to clear up this matter, so from wikipedia……………

In early 1998, Clarke was to be made a knight, with Prince Charles visiting Sri Lanka in order to make the investiture. Just before the ceremony, a British tabloid, The Sunday Mirror, claimed in a sensationalist story that Clarke was an avowed paedophile, giving supposed quotations from Clarke about the harmlessness of his predilection for boys. Clarke released a statement saying that “the accusations are such nonsense that I have found it difficult to treat them with the contempt that they deserve.” He also said, “I categorically state that The Sunday Mirror’s article is grossly defamatory and contains statements which in themselves and by innuendo are quite false, grossly inaccurate and extremely harmful.” He later asked that the investiture of his knighthood be delayed “in order to avoid embarrassment to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales during his visit to Sri Lanka.” In answer to the newspaper’s allegations, Clarke was investigated by Sri Lankan authorities, who eventually dismissed the accusations. The Sunday Mirror later printed a retraction and Clarke was made a Knight Bachelor on May 26, 2000, in a ceremony in Colombo. A formal investigation undertaken by Sri Lankan police cleared Clarke in April 1998.

I think that takes him back up to ‘giant’ status.
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March 19, 2008 1:46pm
Leg Break

“A giant”?? Is that what the Sri Lankan kids used to call him?

Interesting how mud stuck on that one. My recollection is that the Sunday Mirror went OTT in their article and were rightly pulled up on specifics.

But ACC’s living arrangements had a touch of the “Neverland” about them…
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March 19, 2008 3:12pm
Andrew W

He was one of the “big three” of the golden age of SF, that’s why he’s recognised as a giant in that field.
RIP.
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March 19, 2008 3:41pm
Leg Break

“Big 3”.

I presume one of the others was the Scientology guy, but who was the third?
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March 19, 2008 3:43pm
Danyl Mclauchlan

Asimov and Herbert, surely. (Although I guess you could make a case for Heinlein). Hubbard wouldn’t even make it to the top 100.
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March 19, 2008 3:46pm
Andrew W

Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein.
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March 19, 2008 3:47pm
Linda Reid

I’m guessing Issac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.
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March 19, 2008 3:47pm
Rex Widerstrom

Hubbard? The greatest fantasy in which he had a part was convincing so many people that Tom Cruise could act 😀

There was no one quite like Clarke when it came to imagining the future, and describing it so well, though Asimov and Heinlen came close. Everyone writing in the same genre who’s followed since owes him a debt of gratitude. It’s tragic that some tabloid’s fascination with his private life is still the primary fact many people – particularly those who haven’t read his work – recall when his name is mentioned. There really ought to be some penalty (other than risk of a libel suit) for smearing someone in that way.
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March 19, 2008 4:37pm
Pascal

Well, Mission Earth was not too bad. Hubbard did alright with that one for what it was a – sci-fi soap opera.

But it’s sad to see so many of the big names fall. Robert Jordan is gone and if I recall correctly David Gemmel is as well. All these people that helped fill my childhood with wonderful memories.

Damn man. Just damn.
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March 19, 2008 5:27pm
LabourMustBeLiquidated

Big three of scifi my ass. Phillip K Dick leaves them all for dead.
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March 20, 2008 9:16am
Barnsley Bill

The Paul Gadd of science fiction.
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March 20, 2008 10:44am
Leg Break

I liked the bit in one obit I read which said, without any sense of irony, that he migrated to Sri Lanka aged 75 because of his love of scuba-diving.

Perhaps that’s some euphemism I wasn’t aware of.
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March 20, 2008 10:52am
enough rope

“Big three of scifi my ass. Phillip K Dick leaves them all for dead.”

You betcha. Clarke’s wooden characters with their stilted 1930s attitudes are a joke.
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March 20, 2008 10:56am
Andrew W

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

“Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the “Big Three”. ”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinlein

“For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the “Big Three” of science fiction.”

I like Philip K Dick’s work also, and plenty of his stories have been turned into movies, but for some reason he doesn’t have the same status amongst the SciFi community as the others.
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March 20, 2008 3:35pm
Murray

Hienlien was a navy Lt, Clark was an RAF Flt Lt and Assimov spent three years in the Philadelphia Naval Air Experimental Station before doing a stint in the army.

Right now they’re propably arguing over who buys the drinks, the senior service or the higest rank.
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March 20, 2008 6:42pm
tom hunter

The first Science Fiction book I ever read was A Fall Of Moondust, and it captivated me, especially since I had seen astronauts performing their strange ballet on the moon just months earlier. Everything he wrote about the experience of living on the moon seemed realistic, particularly since he treated much of it, via his characters, as an everyday thing.

After that I went through some of the catalog of past works, Childhoods End, The City and The Stars, The Deep Range……, as well as keeping an eye our for new stuff. In that I was rewarded with the outstanding Rendezvous with Rama.

…..Clarke’s wooden characters with their stilted 1930s attitudes are a joke

Hmmm. It should be remembered that most Sci-Fi contains wooden characters, often speaking in a formal, if not stilted manner. Clarke was not unusual in that regard and while I admire Dick’s hipster approach it actually seemed to strike more false notes!

In any case what should be remembered is that these writers were pushing big ideas for all of humanity, so character development and dialog were almost always going to take second place. What I would point out is that the stilted 1930s attitudes really don’t apply as Clarke moved into the second half of his career.

The next book after Rama was a lesser known work – Imperial Earth. I cannot underestimate the impact that made on me as a 14 year old in terms of thinking about what a society could be. The book is set in the year 2276 and the third generation of a wealthy family on the Saturnian moon Titan is returning to Earth for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the US declaration of Independence. Thing is – he’s a clone – created by Grandad when his first child dies of some horrible genetic disease. Naturally Grandma hates his guts. At the end he returns to Titan with the 4th generation – except that it is the clone of his closest childhood friend – and former gay lover. That book played with themes of bisexuality, drug use, religion and a whole lot more. So did subsequent works like The Fountains of Paradise and The Songs of Distant Earth. Actually one of his earlier books The City and The Stars touched on those themes as well. One of my favourites.

It all made quite an impression on a kid who was being dragged to church every Sunday. Clearly a good laugh on censors too: my dear old parents would never have guessed that books with the usual ‘space scene’ covers would ever have contained anything so subversive. Hardly a “1930s” approach.

The only book of his that I never really liked was the famous Childhood’s End. That’s partly because it’s about the only one in which humanity does not survive, but more because of the manner of our demise. Humanity’s children swallowed up into some universal, collective mind with all individuality wiped. I hated the final scenes in which the children’s faces meld into the same, blank, slack look, fail to recognise their parents any longer, wipe out an entire continent of plant and animal life because their ‘primitive’ thoughts are interfering with the development of this hive mind, and finally destroy the earth. Clarke tried (via his characters) to make it seem glorious and transcendent but it just comes off as incredibly sad, cruel and pathetic.

Apart from that one piece, what those books really gave me was a sense that the future would be wonderful, tolerant (but not utopian), and built upon science and technology. Even while reading great dystopian visions like Neuromancer Clarke’s vision has been the one I have kept.
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March 21, 2008 9:25am
Andrew W

I was in the 2nd hand bookshop in Victoria st Hamilton last Saturday and nearly bought Imperial Earth but decided not to (I’ve read it) I did though buy a copy of Verne’s From The Earth To The Moon, and I’ve finally gotten around to starting it, pg 5, extract: “”This is horrible!” said Tom Hunter one evening,”…
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March 21, 2008 5:26pm
tom hunter

Andrew W

In that case this is all just getting too creepy because I’ve just found out that the current administrator of the Arthur C. Clarke Award is………. Tom Hunter!

Maybe bloody Clarke knew more about cloning than he let on. Time to take a second look at that bloody family tree!!!!
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March 21, 2008 6:56pm
Andrew W

🙂 oh, so Tom Hunter isn’t a pseudonym? Looks like he’s one of the main characters in Verne’s book. Creepy.
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March 21, 2008 7:13pm
tom hunter

It’s the one Verne book I’d not read. Guess now I’ll have to and see if yet another namesake wins fame, fortune and scores the hot chicks!
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March 21, 2008 7:30pm

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