Cancel program Genesis and open the pod bay doors
Mar 19th, 2008 by Moonage
Arthur Clarke passed away this morning. He was by far my favorite science fiction writer. It was very clear to me why. Whereas most science fiction writers wrote stories that involved completely removing oneself from reality, Clarke’s stories usually took reality and expanded it. Things didn’t go “boom” in Arthur Clarke’s space. Smoke didn’t billow from rockets. He went to great detail to explain the fact that the unbelievable could be accomplished and why. He came by this naturally apparently. Years before space was fiarly easily manipulated as it is now, he wrote about putting satellites in geosynchronous orbit for something so simple as bouncing radio waves off them. Sixty years later, every person on Earth can talk to each other by bouncing cell phone signals off satellites sitting in geosynchronous orbit. We are traveling to distant planets and other objects in space because Clarke pondered using other objects in space to slingshot objects faster than they were going before so small objects didn’t have to be overly weighed down with huge amounts of fuel. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, he gave us debit cards, video conferencing, and a whole host of other very simple things we take for granted in the 21st century. He was a pure genius in that he saw things no one else did and presented them in a very simple manner that made it easy to believe that it could be done. Because of that, he was the man Walter Cronkite chose to co-host the Apollo moon landing. No other person could have been more perfect. He even gave us the concept of the space elevator, which has yet to be realized. But, given it’s a Clarke concept, it will.
Clarke didn’t limit his insight to space. He worked for years on the Great Barrier Reef. And, focused on the strife of Sri Lanka as well. But, his underlying theme until his end would be space and what all was out there. If for no other reason, if Clarke says there is extra-terrestrial intelligent life out there, there is. And, the icing on the cake for me personally was his main character in 2001, Dave Bowman, spawned my favorite musician David Bowie, who’s spaceship knew which way to go.
I think I’ve mentioned it here before, but Clarke created one of my top five favoritest movies of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey, without a doubt the greatest sci-fi movie of all time. Although 2010 was made as well, it didn’t have quite the input from Clarke as 2001 did, and definitely shows. Here’s a little sample of some of the more fun stuff he’s done. If you don’t consider anything else, get the 2001, 2010, and 2061 paperbacks and read them together. I didn’t even like reading until I got these.
Now, after 90 years, Arthur is getting the answer to one of my favorite questions he ever asked, and one of the deepest. “Will I sleep?”
I have yet to read any of his novels with Stephen Baxter only because I think Baxter wrote most of them with just some input from Clarke. Anyway, Ive been a fan of ACC since I was 16 when I read my first Science Fiction novel, Childhood’s End. After that I gobbled up every ACC story I could find. It was his writing that led me to discover other great sci-fi writers like Heinlein and Asimov. Its truly amazing when you think of all the ideas he wrote about that became reality. I truly think that within in the next 20 or 30 years the space elevator will become a reality. How it could it not? Its such a simple idea with a huge potential gain.
Jeff
There is a distinct difference in style between the 2001 series and the Baxter et al co-authoriships. So, I tend to agree with you on that. If you read the entire 2001 series, including 3001 which I omitted by accident, sorta, it even changes drastically as it moves through the series. 2001 is sort of aloof, almost mechanical. By the time you reach 3001 it becomes much more human and personal. So, I never really could tell if it was Clarke ceding to the other authors or him just approaching the story differently. However, for me personally, the exclusively Clarke novels were my favorites. I started with 2001 and read the entire series, because of the movie, then worked my way back to some of the others. More recently, I’ve enjoyed his features more than the books. He has an almost childlike presentation in Mysterious Universe. Which, given the nature of his contributions, was pretty much what I expected.