Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

On March 18, the science and sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke died, which is a sad passing for us all. Clarke codified the future through a series of scientific and literary experiments that will never pass as he has. They will endure, mostly because they realize the utter singularity of the human race over time, from its earliest manifestations to its later, terrorized forms. "I hope that we have learned something from the most barbaric century in history -- the twentieth," he said in his last recorded message to his home planet Earth. "I would like to see us overcome our tribal factions, and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalization." Instead, we have panic in the streets from globalization of another kind, and our eyes are more glued to our inner spaces than our outer ones. But even Clarke had hope we would pull out of it, as Clarke's friend Harlan Ellison told me by phone, in his own patently cranky way. (I wrote more on that conversation at Wired.) Clarke knew the human race would realize how absolutely lucky it is to be living at all in the void of space, much less living together in harmony on Earth. From his prescience on satellites to the immortality that is 2001: A Space Odyssey and beyond, he always had his mind and art on something bigger than all of us -- and himself, the ever-gracious but still droll wit, who never wanted to stop growing. We could learn lessons from his work that would last us centuries. And we could start learning them tomorrow, days after he died. We better. Or else.

Comments

[RoseMerry]

"The future is not what it used to be".

[Gibbons]

The belt where we park our sattelites was named in honor of him as the Clark belt because he was the first to mention that anything at that altitude would travel at the same speed as the earth thus being geo-stable.

[SeriousBlack]

"Clarke knew the human race would realize how absolutely lucky it is to be living at all in the void of space, much less living together in harmony on Earth."

I have been a lifelong sci-fi fan (since age 8. Really! The first book I ever checked out of the library was Rocketship Galileo by Heinlein and by the time I graduated from high school I had devoured most of the "greats" - Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury and many other great sci-fi authors.)

I have throughout my life been hopeful that the human race would in fact realize the concept in the above quote. It makes me sad to say that based on the rapidity with which we seem to be destroying our environment, I am not optimistic. I do hope we can turn it around.

[Herrington]

The world has lost a luminary.

[Mariel]

I remember the night I first saw "2001, A Space Odyssey". I felt that I had not just seen a movie, I had undergone a change inside me.

Years later, I was teaching Science Fiction in a community college, starting the class out by watching
"2001". That was the last teaching I did in a classroom. Two things happened that day: one, I became sick from the new carpet that had been installed in the building; technology had provided a finish for my career: a toxic carpet; two, a student complained to the head of my department because I said that a floating pen was, in part, in part only, a symbol of fertility, and the student thought I had brought vulgarity into the classroom.

I realized I was too different to be a teacher; I was chemically sensitive, and I had a different world view than some of my students, who were becoming vocal about "values," and I was offended that I, a person with high values, should be attacked by a right-winger who did not know that I, too, believed in God.

So, I moved on into the next growing phase of my life, impelled again by "2001," the movie which first got me interested in Science Fiction and led me to teach it in college.

Arthur Clarke, hoping to meet you again some day, in Otherwhen.