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I’ve just got off the phone with NPR’s Morning Edition. I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow if I made any sense.
Things I tried to say:
He was the last, really the last, of the heroic age of twentieth-century science fiction writers. Everyone knows the trinity: Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke.
Despite polio, and post-polio syndrome, and an increasing number of infirmities late in his very long life, he seems to have managed to live very much on his own terms. He had a reputation for self-regard—his nickname in 1930s and ’40s London-area SF fandom was “Ego” Clarke—and on the one occasion when I met him, his method of making conversation was to take Tom Doherty and me on a tour of his file of recent press clips. But good grief. He was Arthur C. Clarke. He invented the geosynchronous satellite and wrote Against the Fall of Night. He wrote 2001 in the Chelsea Hotel and co-broadcasted moon landings with Walter Cronkite. A tenth of his achievements would justify a healthy pride.
Like Heinlein, and unlike Asimov, in Clarke a practical science-and-engineering outlook coexisted with a mystical streak a mile wide. Indeed, much of his work establishes the basic template for one of modern science fiction’s most evergreen effects: the numinous explosion of mystical awe that’s carefully built up to, step by rational step. So much of Clarke’s best work is about that moment when the universe reveals its true vastness to human observers. And unlike many other writers who’ve wrestled with that wrenching frame shift, for Clarke it was rarely terrifying, rarely an engine of alienation and despair. He was all about the transformational reframe, the cosmic perspective, that step off into the great shining dark. He believed it would improve us. He rejoiced to live in a gigantic universe of unencompassable scale, and he thought the rest of us should rejoice, too.
UPDATE: NPR has the Morning Edition segment here. It’s at the top of the page, above the big boxed All Things Considered segment.
that step off into the great shining dark
Well, Arthur just made his step off, I guess. Damn.
Godspeed, Sir Arthur, and may you find it's full of stars.
My LJ friends list and email box have been full of tributes to him
as the man who opened up the universe/science/science fiction to the
writer and changed their life forever. He had an enormous impact on the
world and I'm sad. He was the last of the giants my generation grew up
on. Well, there's still Bradbury I guess. But he doesn't seem in the
same league with Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Williamson. And Fred Pohl's in very bad health...
MKK
Without any fuss, another star just went out.
He rejoiced to live in a gigantic universe of unencompassable scale, and he thought the rest of us should rejoice, too.
Yes. And his work showed me that it was glorious to look out into that gigantic universe. It changed me.
it's a sad day. He was a giant in our industry and a wonderful
weaver of words and worlds. He was among the first SF authors I read,
before I was even in Junior High.
Alas.
That's a wonderful expression of his work.
I just checked to see if the SciFI channel had bothered to interrupt programming, and they're running a hideous wrestling show.
Clarke was an amazing writer, and an amazing person. He will be sorely missed.
Earl, SciFi should probably change its name, right after BSG is
over, to something like "The Dumbass Cheese Channel." But they don't
actually have any announcement staff. They can put up a crawl, but they
don't have a news department. I turned to them on 9/11 because they
were the only channel that wasn't covering it, and I was tired of
hearing the same thing over and over.
Well said. One of the first science fiction movies I can remember
watching was 2001. I have the massive collected short stories I know
what I'll be reading tonight.
"There's a Hilton in the sky
For all the good fen when they die
The panels never start till three
No one disturbs you when you're sleeping
All the filk songs rhyme
And you're guaranteed a real good time
That just goes on and on
If you're good enough to go to Heaven-Con."
- Words and music © Kathy Mar
Welcome to the Con at the End of the Universe, Sir Arthur.
I remember in my early days of finding this very blog, I came across a thread in which a contributor identified themselves as "Arthur C Clarke" (I believe in my heart it was he).
I tell you, a frisson (or what ever a really big frisson is called) of fangirl squeeful excitement went through me at the time.
Ad Astra Sir Arthur
It is odd to see all the stars of my childhood going out one by one.
There's a part of me who will always be the little girl sitting under
the lemon tree reading stories full of wonder...
Sad news. I think I'll go and re-read one of his novels as an
admittedly minor tribute to someone whose impact went beyond what most
major media outlets will attribute to him.
Like Heinlein, and unlike Asimov, in Clarke a practical science-and-engineering outlook coexisted with a mystical streak a mile wide.
Yeah, but Clarke was better than Heinlein at engineering big with known science, without letting the mystical streak get in the way. Consider The Fountains of Paradise, among others....
Anyway, that's another of the Great Names fallen to the reaper.... :-(
Kate, #13: Alas, that comment (in the "Namarie Sue" thread) wasn't
by the real ACC, it was from someone clowning around in response to a
comment signed "Neil Gaiman" that was obviously not actually posted by
the real Neil. We made people knock it off, IIRC.
"someone whose impact went beyond what most major media outlets will attribute to him"
I dunno--his very respectful New York Times obituary
is on the front page of their web site right now, and CNN ran one of
their top-of-page "BREAKING NEWS" banners on their front page when word
first hit. From here it certainly looks like the major media are
treating him as a cultural figure of unquestioned importance, and his
death as a big story.
And, you know, rightly so. But we inside the SF subculture, we
really do need to get over that reflexive assumption that the "major
media" will trivialize or misrepresent what's important to us. It's
2008, not 1988 or 1968 or 1948. For all my criticisms of the modern
media, I suspect that lots and lots and lots of the decision-makers at the modern New York Times or NBC or the Telegraph grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke. It's just not that esoteric to read SF any more.
I have no religious beliefs, but I think I have an even chance --
after I die -- of traveling the Cosmos in some ethereal form and
discovering not so much all of its secrets, but rather that there are
even more secrets than a puny human corporeal mind can imagine. I have
no reason to believe that. I just do, is all.
I'm not sad today. I mean, I'm sorry he's gone, but I'm not sad. I think he's out there in Arthur C. Clarke Heaven. I hope he's enjoying the hell out of the Universe. In fact, I'm sure he is. He enjoyed it plenty enough when he was still just one of us, after all.
I discovered Arthur C. Clarke
and Isaac Asimov in grade 6. It is easy to be sure of where and when it
was, because I was in a different school the next year. I remember the
school library where I first read them. I was 11; it was 1965. Over the
next few years I inhaled everything they wrote, rereading when I
couldn't find new material. Every so often I'd throw a Heinlein or
Simak or someone else into the mix, but they never reached me the way
those two did. Together they shaped who I became. Asimov was likely the
greater influence on me, because I never connected with Clarke's
mystical streak. But Clarke
was the more beautiful writer, and painted the images that shaped my
imagination, from falls of moondust to his signature image of the stars
going out.
I feel orphaned tonight.
NPR's All Things Considered had a short interview with ACC's American agent Russell Galen on Tuesday.
Arthur C. Clarke was my first favorite SF writer.
It's for exactly the reason you said (more eloquently than I could):
his optimism. Boundless optimism. His belief that humanity would
persevere.
As a pre-teen in the early 1980's, I needed that.
He rejoiced to live in a gigantic universe of unencompassable scale, and he thought the rest of us should rejoice, too.
There's an enviable obituary. Good night, Mr. Clarke. Rest among the stars.
Read Childhood's End when I was, oh, 7 or 8 ... it had a huge
effect on me -- opened up the vastness and wonder of the universe, and
taught me not to take everything at face value. Sir Arthur: Ave atque vale.
@PNH - I hadn't seen those yet. I did hear a BBC radio piece about
two hours ago that spent a lot of time on his later years and not so
much on why he really was important, and I extrapolated on that single
data point.
Patrick, I forgot to say: your post is great. What a beautiful epitaph.
I'm glad someone mentioned Frederick Pohl, who I think belongs up there.
Like jmnlman, "2001" was one of the first SF movies I went to.
(During the first theatrical run, a few days after my parents saw it
under the influence of, um, enhanced brownies . . . my father had a
co-worker who was sure this would lead to Enlightenment.) It really set
the course for my life; once I knew what science fiction was I wanted
more, more, more.
I was delighted when I found the novel and the "making
of" and the "lost worlds" book a few years later. I'm sure I read
everything that ACC wrote until he started partnering up with others.
* * *
Like Freeman Dyson, Clarke seems to have been deeply affected by Olaf Stapledon's writing.
Go gently, and may your night be full of stars.
His was the first science fiction I ever read. "My God, it's full of stars" was my initiation in sensawunda.
I am sad.
He was. But unlike Stapledon, Clarke
rarely lost track of the human POV. There's a posthuman chilliness to
Stapledon, and it's what makes him great in his own way. Clarke is all about the circuit between cosmic vastness and us, here in the quotidian land of us, and that's what makes him greater.
It's not my memory, but something Sarah Zettel wrote on LiveJournal seems like a truly touching eulogy:
"So there I was at the New Orleans Nebula Award ceremony. Connie
Willis was the MC, and she decided that we needed a montage, like they
do of movie clips at the Oscars. So, she read a montage of SF lines and
concepts.
"I know where I came from -- but where did all you zombies come
from"..."First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or through
inaction cause a human being to come to harm..." We sat and listened,
but when she got to "Overhead, without any fuss..." a banquet room full
of science fiction authors was all murmuring along "the stars were
going out."
It was the only line the whole room spoke, and that said a great deal."
http://filkertom.livejournal.com/788725.html?thread=13379061
I believe that Childhood's End, The City and The Stars, and More Than Human were the first SF novels I read. Sense of wonder, yes. Dear God, yes.
There were giants in the earth in those days.
Godspeed, Sir Arthur. May the road rise to you, the wind be at your back, and may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.
I don't think Stapledon lost track of the human POV. It didn't especially interest him. In fact, the only character
in all of his writing that I can remember is Sirius, a dog. Stapledon
is like one of the first kids in a huge amusement park. He raced from
one incredible ride to the next, trying them all. Scoping out the
territory for those who followed. I adore Stapledon's imagination, and
love the incongruity between what he wrote about and his Victorian
writing style.
One measure of Clarke's ability as a writer: I actually read one of
his books about exploring the waters around Sri Lanka all the way
through. And enjoyed it. I dislike swimming quite intensely,
and can't imagine any other writer who could inspire me to read a book
on the topic. But it was the only Clarke book I could get that I hadn't read, so...
Re: notice taken in the media -- I note that the story is currently "above the fold" on Google News.
Patrick, now I am doubly bereft.
p.s. My replacement illusion will be that you particled the Joss
Whedon Musical based on my comment in the open thread. Please don't
disillusion me on that one.
I met him when I was 15. I was volunteering as a runner/messenger at
a science symposium in San Antonio in 1968, and he gave a talk there.
To a teenaged science-fiction fan, it was nothing less than thrilling
to talk briefly with the man whose books gave me so much pleasure and
opened my mind to an incredible universe.
I will miss him.
Thanks for those comments about Clarke -- they deal well with his Greatness, whereas I fear that most media coverage will concentrate overmuch on his Fame.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Go gently into the great beyond, and return with magic, indistinguishable from technology.
#38: I second Don Fitch's sentiment. I have been posting here and there about Stuff He Did, but the real heart of our love for Clarke lies in the effect his writing has on us.
#34: Greg, your thumbnail summary of Stapledon is wonderful.
#28: Stefan, Clarke recently completed a novel in collaboration with Fred Pohl. It's in the pipeline, so far as I know. I'm intrigued.
This really is the end of an era, isn't it? Clarke
was the last of the Big Three to survive and as long as he was alive
there was still a link with the beginnings of science fiction. Now
that's no longer the case; science fiction has been around too long to
still be encompassed by a single human lifespan.
That's how it feels to me.
On a more personal level, it was largely Clarke
and Asimov who got me twentyfive years or so ago into science fiction
when I discovered them in the children stacks of the local library.
Thank you, Patrick, for words worthy of the man and his words. Clarke
was my introduction and inspiration for a view of the universe as a
vast and complex place of wonders and marvels, a view that's been
central to my relationship with the world ever since. I was lucky; I
was 9. He got to me early, and his words held on to a part of my heart
and my mind from then on. He will be deeply missed.
Thank you, Patrick, for words worthy of the man and his words. Clarke
was my introduction and inspiration for a view of the universe as a
vast and complex place of wonders and marvels, a view that's been
central to my relationship with the world ever since. I was lucky; I
was 9. He got to me early, and his words held on to a part of my heart
and my mind from then on. He will be deeply missed.
Sorry for the double post. There was a Server Internal Error page up
when I came back to the tab I posted in; I think the second post was
just a burp of the webserver.
Xeger @ 39: Go gently into the great beyond, and return with magic, indistinguishable from technology.
Tonight, if it's not overcast, go out somewhere you can see the sky
clearly. Look up for long enough and you'll be bound to see one or more
of the points of light moving. It's full of stars and, my god, we put some of them there.
Then take the phone from your pocket and call someone who lives on the other side of the planet.
There is magic here already and it's in no small way because of him that we have it.
What a beautiful tribute to a great man, Patrick. What a loss to the world, both our little corner of it and in general.
Paul Duncanson@45: It's full of stars and, my god, we put some of them there.
We take so much of our tech for granted, don't we?
Thank you - you just gave me one of those "This really is the
Future, sometimes" moments. Any minute I shall begin mourning the lack
of flying cars.
I see the way you feel
And I know that your life is real
Pioneer searcher refugee
I follow you and you follow me ....
You know - a starship circlin in the sky - it ought to be ready by 1990
You gotta ride said the Doktor of space
I have lived here once before
The lites in the nite are a village of stars
Of stars that I have explored
Sunrise
Surprise
Civilized Man
You were keeper to me
Now your animal is free
you're free to die
Have You Seen The Stars Tonight?
Do you know
We could go?
We are free
Anyplace you can think of
We could be
I thank Arthur Clarke for all his brilliant common sense along the way, even if I could never make myself read much that he wrote after about 1975.
The land is green and you make it grow
And you gotta let go you know
You gotta let go you know
You gotta let go you know
Or else you stay ....
(The last link is to my favorite Clarke
work. For me, the stfnal era of the Big Three ended years ago. But the
greatness of their writing is alive in the work of a few contemporary
s-f authors who I won't embarrass by naming.)
Only one line of your interview made it into the NPR story this morning, Patrick. But you did make sense. :)
Paul Duncan @ 45, Wirelizard @ 47 -
XKCD - We are in the future.
Good bye, Arthur. Thank you.
All the rest of you - stop dying. Just for a while. Please?
Patrick @18 -- ...I suspect that lots and lots and lots
of the decision-makers at the modern New York Times or NBC or the
Telegraph grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke. It's just not that esoteric to read SF any more.
No, but I think it's still a minority who continue to read SF past adolescence and let themselves be fascinated and awed throughout their lives. And for me, Arthur C. Clarke was one of the people who pointed me on the way. Thank you, Sir Arthur, and Godspeed.
He was a visionary, and one of the first sci-fi authors I read. 2001 and Childhood's End are still favorites of mine.
Good night, Mr. Clarke; may your future be full of stars.
Well said, Patrick.
Last night, saddened by the news, I dug out my copy of Against the Fall of Night to read again. This copy (Ace, 1953, 35 cents) is one of a small number of SF paperbacks that I've keep for 50 years.
From Profiles of the Future (and later incorporated into an essay
called Credo) -- here's both Stapledon, and the wonder of the child on
the sea shore in the face of the endless, and a hole lot of what what
Patrick said:
One thing seems certain. Our galaxy is now in the brief springtime of its life—a springtime made glorious by such brilliant blue-white stars as Vega and Sirius, and, on a more humble scale, our own Sun. Not until all these have flamed through their incandescent youth, in a few fleeting billions of years, will the real history of the universe begin. It will be a history illuminated only by the reds and infrareds of dully glowing stars that would be almost invisible to our eyes; yet the sombre hues of that all-but-eternal universe may be full of colour and beauty to whatever strange beings have adapted to it. They will know that before them lie, not the millions of years in which we measure eras of geology, nor the billions of years which span the past lives of the stars, but years to be counted literally in the trillions.They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all
things, and to gather all knowledge. They will be like gods, because no
gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will
command. But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright
afterglow of creation; for we knew the universe when it was young.
#49 Jvstin: Only one line of your interview made it into the NPR story this morning, Patrick...
Yahbut, he had Strauss's Giant Space Baby Music rising underneath him.
Patrick is on NPR right now. As he speaks about Clarke's
writing and the moment when the reader hits the "remote, almost
unencompassable universe," they play Also Sprach Zarathustra behind him. How's that?
(I'm sure the Morning Edition clip will be available for download in a day or so.)
Patrick, you sounded great on NPR (if not for very long).
I read "The Nine Billion Names of God" when I was a wee girl, and I
still remember the 'whoa! - my mind has just been blown' feeling I got
at the end. It must have been one of the first pieces of science
fiction that I read.
Debbie @ 51:
It may be a minority who continue to read science fiction--a lot of
adults rarely if ever read fiction at all, though they do read and they
do watch fiction on screen--but people who grew up reading people like Clarke don't suddenly come to scorn him the day they're old enough to drink legally.
And if they needed to, to justify major attention here, they can
point not just to Clarke's fiction, but to the Apollo broadcast and the
invention of the telecommunicatiosn satellite.
My mother knew ACC's physics teacher.
ACC was one of those who attended the first SF convention to be organised.
The book of Clarke's I remember most isn't a work of fiction. Interplanetary Flight,
written about 1950 IIRC, is a serious look at the possibilities of,
well, interplanetary flight. (Including Earth-Moon, which Clarke correctly predicted would be the easiest and first.) The physics haven't changed much, although I think the engineering has.
Clarke
explains what orbital and escape velocities are (and how to calculate
them), the principles of multi-stage rocketry, why orbital refueling is
good for long missions, why takeoff and landing are so little of the
time but so much of the fuel, how to plan the most efficient orbit to
reach another planet, and lots more. Much of the book correctly
anticipates the next several decades of space flight.
Lots of people can write good fiction, and even make you not notice if their science doesn't quite add up. But Clarke could also write good science, and make it interesting too.
I'd like to think his presence was requested by Robert and the good
Sir kindly obliged. Now, there's a mind to keep Robert engaged and busy
for eternity, eh?
He probably requested Clarke purely to settle a matter of arcane SF reference he was arguing LeGaultian style with Heinlein & Asimov. Likely, Clarke is -- as I write -- backing Robert's take.
I can hear Robert now: "Err, weelll... let's just ask Arthur, why don't we?" With that smile of his that just broadcasts that he already knows he's right...
The thing of Clarke's that most vividly sticks in my memory is a passage early in Earthlight. The hero is traveling on the Moon's surface, as I recall, and sees a beam of light shining up from somewhere beyond his horizon. Then he realizes that he wouldn't actually be able to see a beam of light
rise, and that int he almost-vacuum of the lunar surface he wouldn't be
able to see a beam at all unless some remarkable accumulation of dust
or something created scattering. His working out what it actually was
plays a significant part in driving the story forward.
I'd like to think his presence was requested by Robert and the good
Sir kindly obliged. Now, there's a mind to keep Robert engaged and busy
for eternity, eh?
He probably requested Clarke purely to settle a matter of arcane SF reference he was arguing LeGaultian style with Heinlein & Asimov. Likely, Clarke is -- as I write -- backing Robert's take.
I can hear Robert now: "Err, weelll... let's just ask Arthur, why don't we?" With that smile of his that just broadcasts that he already knows he's right...
Arrgh. Sorry for the double post - there was a server denial and when I refreshed there were two.
Patrick,
You sounded great, and if I am remembering correctly, they ran a bit
of Also Sprach Zarathustra under your last few words, which was a very
nice effect.
If I'd had someone else in the car with me I'm sure I would have been embarrassingly nerdy about it.
About Clarke: I distinctly remember eventually breaking through and masking-taping the binding of his essay collection Report on Planet Three
when I was in 8th grade or so. He was immensely knowledgeable yet never
seemed like he was talking down to the reader -- I got the sense from
his work that he was just as awestruck by the universe as I was.
I was going to post to say that I heard PNH -- nice leadup to 2001, but I see others have posted that.
At least I can add that NPR.com now has the segment online @ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88552259
My grandmother told me the story of the Nine Billion Names of God. I
was startled when I found the book, which I did, in her basement where
my uncle had left his boxes of sf novels. I still have the books of
Clarke's short stories I snagged when the basement was cleaned out. I'm
still fond of Tales from the White Hart.
Heard you this morning, Patrick. Never knew that you were Canadian...
Last of the Big Three, yes, if you're talking hard-science fiction. But Bradbury is still with us.
This is sad. Tales From The White Hart remains one of my favorite
collections of stories ever. I remember reading everything of his I
could get my hands on when I was in my early teens and being blown
away. It was wild.
He will be missed.
I think I'm going to head to the local Brick 'n Mortar to sit and stare for a bit...
Thank you Patrick and Godspeed Sir Arthur.
I was just, this morning, writing about reading Imperial Earth.
The book of his that had the most impact on me was the collection Of Time and Stars.
I bought it from a spinning wire rack of the kind they don't have any
more, in a sweetshop in Amroth when I was nine. It was the second
science fiction book I ever bought, the first was Amabel Williams
Ellis's Tales of the Galaxies which I'd bought from the same
wire rack the day before. I can remember sitting in the back of the car
by the sea in the rain while my grandparents dozed off in the front and
the windows slowly steamed up, reading "The Star" and "The Nine Billion
Names of God" and "If I forget thee, O Earth" and having the top of my
head blow off again and again.
69: It's the Maple Syrup Rule. If someone is in some way notable in
a positive way and they have ever seen a bottle of Maple Syrup [1],
they count as Canadian.
Actually having been resident in Canada counts too.
1: Most maple syrup and all good maple syrup comes from Canada,
usually Quebec (Note that one of the conditions required for maple
syrup to be good is for it to have been produced in Canada and not some
unstable break-away nation).
PNH @ #72: What, I misheard that "aboot"?
It's so odd -- I don't feel sad or like something has been taken away from me/us/the world.
I feel like that bit where you have the standing ovation at the end of a magnificent performance.
A great tribute, Patrick. Thanks.
Also, that anecdote about Clarke
and C.S. Lewis is awesome. What I wouldn't give to have heard *that*
conversation. (I wonder if any of the letters they exchanged have been
published?)
A last message from Arthur Clarke.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4db_1205893786&p=1
Shoulda googled before I made that last post. Lewis and Clarke's
correspondence has been published under the title "From Narnia to a
Space Odyssey" - thanks so much for pointing me toward this, Patrick!
Like so many others, I was brought up on Asimov and Clarke
- others, of course, I was raiding my father's SF collection, but those
are the first names to spring to mind. I discovered Heinlein on my own
later on.
I can't find any words to describe his writing that haven't already
been spoken far better than I can manage, but I'll add this - his work
on radar in WWII helped save a lot of lives, and his visionary writings
about geostationary satellites were cited as prior art in patent
rulings.
Because of him, nobody can control the steel stars that keep us all in contact.
Another of the nine billion names of God has been spoken.
Lewis' correspondence has recently been published (a three-volume set), though I don't recall offhand if letters to Clarke were in the collection. The real meat of the matter gets covered in their fiction, anyway (compare Perelandra with Childhood's End).
I remember reading Rendezvous with Rama and being blown
away. And, so, too, with many of the short stories (which I think were
Clarke's best form; it's hard to wrap an entire novel around an
engineering problem.)
In honor of Sir Arthur, let us all go out and watch something broadcast by a geosynchronous communication satellite tonight.
Lis Riba (#66): Thanks for the link to the NPR segment, which was
very good. But it suffers from an unfortunate lack of Nielsen Hayden.
Beautiful expression of Sir Arthur's unique blend of hard science, poetry and optimism. Childhood's End and Against the Fall of Night
affected my life profoundly. After a wonderful, long rich life he has
left us, but he is not really gone. I'm reminded of Auden's lines about
another great explorer, "to us he is no more a person/ now but a whole
climate of opinion/ under whom we conduct our different lives." Except
with Clarke, it's more than a climate. We literally conduct our lives under his orbit -- the Clarke
Orbit, the IAU's official designation for the geostationary orbit where
all the satellites that bind us together into one world are parked.
Like Patrick, I only met Clarke
once. I said to him not the most important things I thought about him,
only the most recent: did he feel his writing had changed after 2001?
I felt the transitions in "A Meeting with Medusa" were more like film
edits than the old "meanwhile"s and "later"s, and I wondered if he'd
picked anything else up from working on the film. He said nothing at
all had changed, and turned away.
It may have been a disappointing encounter, but it didn't lessen my
opinion of him at all. Nothing, not even the mediocre collaborations,
ever has.
Don't forget Ray Bradbury. He's the last one of his class left.
Kit notes over at DreamCafe that when he was young and reading Childhood's End, he refused to go to the beach so he could finish reading it.
I didn't go quite that far--or was it further? I was just turning ten, and took the whole omnibus collection that contained Childhood's End
to the beach *with* me. And kept coming out of the water, drying off
minimally, and reading some more. And read in the car all the way back
home. I did turn down an invite to come out and play hopscotch or
kickball the next day in favor of finishing, though.
The thing that always struck me about his work, at least up to about
1975, aside from the great glowing transcendence of the best of it, was
a dry, understated, totally Brit sense of humor, that I had never
encountered before. Totally captivating. Of the Big Three, he certainly
had the best sense of literary style.
James Davis Nicoll @ 74:
"Most maple syrup and all good maple syrup comes from Canada, usually Quebec"
I am currently involved in a debate with Canadian friends of mine
(who claim that I'm an honourary Canadian now) about exactly who makes
the best maple syrup. I grew up in a small town along the Mid-Hudson
Valley where maple sugaring still happens, and I am bringing some
home-style Putnam Valley syrup to my friends next week. We'll have a
syrup showdown.
As an honourary Canadian, I can't lose, eh?
(And according to the Maple Syrup Rule, I qualify as Canadian anyway
-- I lived in Guelph for a semester of vet school, under a work permit.)
I remember performing "The Nine Billion Names of God" along with
"The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" for speech and debate (Prose, long
form)*. He made us think...
Though I bet my most enduring memory of him will always be of
Saturday mornings or late weekday nights long after my bed time when I
watched this funny old man talk about the impossible in foreign places.
*it was such a cheerful set.
sigh. the trinity. you could start a million flame wars over that
one. i almost did, but then i checked myself before i wrecked myself.
More on the forthcoming novel by Pohl and Clarke: It's The Last Theorem.
Plot summarized here.
Its Amazon sales rank is #9,837, not bad for a book that won't be published before December 2008.
Sorry if this has been linked already, but here's his last message to the world.
I feel like Samwise Gamgee watching the last of the Elves on their
way to the Gray Havens. All the Olympians, a thing never known again.
I'm an SF addict. So was my father. My mother was not interested...
except for Clarke's Tales From The White Hart. She even re-read them on
occassion.
Hearing of his death, I had a gleeful image:
Arthur found out who cranks the stars! And now he gets to play with the
crank. Keep your eyes on the skies, because some cool things should
happen in the next year.
This may be Sir Arthur's final interview, with Saswato Das for IEEE Spectrum, in the hospital on 8 March.
Das's article here.
87: Did you ever make over to Elmira for the Maple Syrup Festival
(which as it happens is one of my earliest memories from Canada)?
James @ 94: No, I never got there for the festival. Now that I know about it, though..
Interesting that people have such good memories about Of Time and Stars.
I only read that a couple of years ago when my partner was in hospital
and it's probably the only book that could've held my attention in such
a situation, where you're waiting for news.
Freshly boiled maple syrup being poured on snow... Yummy, in spite of what Frank Zappa had to say about yellow snow.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008
A giant rose from the Somerset coal,
A mind at home far out in the night,
or in the tides of the Center's light;
he lifted us up towards that cosmic goal.
He wrote of the fire the Titan stole,
future earth, alien air, the sight
of shapes in water in luminous flight,
and always the road to space and its toll.
He knew our path to be fraught and far,
filled with wonder and horror as well,
yet he never uttered a word of despair.
He found awe in the storms of a star,
in the well of life at the heart of a cell,
and showed us a starry road to fare.
I think the second most important thing Arthur C. Clarke ever did
with his life is going completely uncommented on. At least *I* haven't
seen any real mention of it yet.
First, of course, is his paper in "Wireless World" on geocomsats.
That was seminal, and ultimately changed the world for the better. An
*incredibly* positive change too (IMHO anyway). As Clarke himself has
it as the title of one of his books of non-fiction, "How The World Was
One."
But second, and mayhap just as important, was his proselytizing for
space throughout the 1950s. His book *Interplanetary Flight* was a Book
of the Month Club selection in 1950, and was the greatest sales job for
astronautics to that date reaching thousands of people who previously
had dismissed space travel as "just science fiction" (this sales job
was only eclipsed two years later by the von Braun articles in
*Colliers* magazine in 1952). He continued to write articles on
astronautics throughout the 1950s, placing them as well as he could in
magazines like "Holiday," "Harper's," and even "Seventeen" (!). (And
yes, I know that the sales to "Holiday" were made easier by Alfred
Bester being there. And I know about the BOTMC sf-world connection too.)
Great SF writer: Yep. 2001? Check. Clarke Orbit? Got it.
But he was also the man who sold the Moon.
PNH @ #23
Thank you.
My faith is convoluted at best...and that was, without a doubt, the
most personally affirming quote I've read in years. It buoyed up my
love for both men immeasurably in a few sentences.
I've been out of contact with the general world for so long, I didn't know he'd passed away until I happened on this thread.
"The City and the Stars" was the first ACC novel I ever read.
"Rendezvous with Rama" was the second. I re-read each of them once a
year. Each has left me staring at the stars at night more times than I
can count.
It is very unsettling to me to know that another of my favorite
authors has passed back into the collective energy of the universe. It
is so strange that contemporary things pass into the possession of
history and memory.
[81]: The is "The Fountains of Paradise" where Clarke popularises
the idea of building a space elevator. Over on David Brin's blog we
spent some time talking about the feasibility of building one in the
near future(Consensus was that nono-fibre tech will need to improve
before it is possible).
Asimov had the vision, Heinlein had the science, but only Clarke had both.
Farewell.
Thank you, Patrick. The man was 90, but my eyes are full of tears.
When I started going to College in 1973, I discovered that its
library was a True Treasure Trove(*) of SF. Among its many wonders were
Delany's Nova, and Clarke's City and the Stars and Childhood's End in one tome. Ptoing went my brain.
(*) Say that fast many times.
* Bittersweet Jeff Greenwald remembrance: Sundown with Arthur.
* Daily Kos runs David Brin's tribute to ACC.
"Against the Fall of Night" (along with "The Lion of Comarre" in the
omnibus volume) is the first science fiction I remember reading, when I
was in 2nd grade. I still love it!
I believe it was Shelley who said that "poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world." Clarke's life and work makes a strong case
that the science fiction writers have taken over that job.
I know that this is the most stupid question I could ask right about
now, but somehow I've never read any Clarke. Where do I start?
Daniel Klein @106 -
I would start with Against the Fall of Night for some early Clarke, then Childhood's End for the reach of his ideas, A Fall of Moondust for the meticulous engineering that he brought to life, and then The Songs of Distant Earth.
Just about any Clarke novel is a good one.
Daniel Klein @ 106... What's stupid about that question? I'd recommend Childhood's End. I rather enjoyed Sands of Mars too.
I have been fortunate enough (feeling late to the party, having
become a fan in the 70s) to meet several of the greats. And blessed
enough to be young when I did so, which got me some special attention.
Clarke was one of those I didn't get to meet. He, in the Tales of
the White Hart brought a lot of this stuff to the real. Sturgeon (and
Henderson) gave me a sense of the incredible.
Clarke, a sense of the conrete; and all of it wonderful. Everything
was magnificet: the world in a grain of sand, and the stars like dust
across the universe.
You write one helluva eulogy Patrick.
No, Jo Walton is the one who writes a hell of a eulogy. #73:
IThat's the truth. That's our lives.
can remember sitting in the back of the car by the sea in the rain
while my grandparents dozed off in the front and the windows slowly
steamed up, reading "The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God" and
"If I forget thee, O Earth" and having the top of my head blow off
again and again.
You made the cutting room floor.
Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot
Prête-moi ta plume, pour écrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte, je n'ai plus de feu.
Ouvre-moi ta porte, pour l'amour de Dieu.
That is the song that HAL sings, in the French version of 2001, as his mind is shutting down.
By the moonlight, my friend Pierrot
Lend me your pen, to write a few words.
My candle is dead, I have no more fire.
Open your door to me, for the love of God.
WOW. While 'Daisy, Daisy' makes a very poignant scene, the French version is so incredibly better a choice.
Daniel, #108: You can get all of Clarke's short fiction here,
in one handy volume. I'd recommend beginning with "The Star" and "The
Nine Billion Names of God", then go to the White Hart stories, then
just skip around as you feel like it.
In the novels, you've had some good recs already. To those, let me add Imperial Earth and The Songs of Distant Earth
-- the latter of which is an expansion from an earlier short story.
They're not the ones everyone talks about, but both of them hit me over
the head with "godDAMN, that man can write!"
Clifton @ 113... I wonder if Clarke and/or Kubrick knew about that. Probably. Still, I wonder.
Thanks everyone for the recommendations. The Tor collection should
have been a no brainer. I'm getting that, and as far as novels go,
Childhood's End sounds good. I hate it when an author has to die to get
my attention, but there's so much stuff I haven't read yet.
Thanks again for the recommendations.
The three great science fiction novels of my youth were Childhood's End, Sturgeon's More Than Human, and Anderson's Brain Wave. And now that I think of it, they all had a transhumanist theme...
My tribute, such as it can be written. I owe him more than I can put into words.
http://texasbestgrok.mu.nu/archives/258063.php
#99: Tim Kyger is right. (This sometimes happens.)
And he got an early start. As I posted elsewhere, here is Arthur C. Clarke, age twenty:
Go out beneath the stars on a clear winter night, and look up at the Milky Way spanning the heavens like a bridge of glowing mist. Up there, ranged one beyond the other ot the end of the Universe, suns without number burn in the loneliness of space. Down to the South hang the brilliant, unwinking lanterns of other worlds-- the electric blue of Jupiter, the glowing ember of Mars. Across the zenith, a meteor leaves a trail of fading incandescence, and a tiny voyager of space has come to a flaming end.Looking out across immensity to the great suns and circling
planets, to worlds of infinite mystery and promise, can you believe
that man is to spend all his days cooped and crawling on the surface of
this tiny earth-- this moist pebble with its clinging film of air? Or
do you, on the other hand, believe that his destiny is indeed among the
stars, and that one day our descendants will bridge the seas of space?
From a 1938 brochure promoting the British Interplanetary Society, quoted by Neil McAleer in Arthur C. Clarke: The Authorized Biography.
>There's a posthuman chilliness to Stapledon
There's a posthuman chilliness to humanity nowadays.
>“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Y'know, I always viewed that sentiment as more of a curse than a statement of conjecture.
Can I just say: fuck The Times for this so very timely story.
Dave 121: Notice how they carefully state that the accusations were
vigorously denied later, and how it's all alleged, said, discussed, and
then they go on to talk about all the great things he did. This is so
they can claim to be even-handed,* while titillating the readers with
scandal.
Bastards. Does no one have any respect for anything any more? It's
not like he was tried and convicted. Dirty fucking bastards.
*In America this is called "fair and balanced," and it's bullshit here too.
Dave Langford #121: One concurs, fuck The Times.
Xopher #122: It is not a coincidence that the slogan 'fair and
balanced' is used by a network owned by the same robber baron who owns The Times.
The backs of recently dead people make great riding paths for people
with chronically over-exercised hobby horses. If you do a search on
"arthur c. clarke" and "homosexuality" you can find a veritable 35,000
acre ranch, including at least one very bitterly re-written obituary of
Sir Arthur, excoriating him for not Coming Out during his lifetime.
Me, I try to think of this sort of thing as a reason to admire even
more those writers who manage, fitfully maybe, to help us bring
ourselves closer to our common humanity. We are plunked down into a
world where we are encouraged to feed off each other for our own
advancement, as this sort of thing demonstrates. Any writer who
manages, either through sensawunda or whatever, to help us in some way
counteract these forces gets my vote.
Me, I look forward to an authoritative, carefully researched
biography. No substitute for knowing Sir Arthur personally, of course,
but it's probably the best I can do. I think it will be a life worth
reading about in detail.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Take a Deep Breath", which I think is an absolute gem of a short story. And truly science fiction - the physiology works. (I presume I don't need to summarize for this thread?)
The first thing I read that Clarke wrote, was _The Star_. I was 12
or 13, I think, and the story was a translation, of course. (At that
tender age I would not have even _contemplated_ reading anything that
was not translated into Norwegian!).
In the years that have passed since then Clarke has become a
cornerstone in my private definition of "what is worth bothering with
in SF". That doesn't mean I have enjoyed everything he has written. Far
from it!. But the basic concept of "SF has to be grounded in SCIENCE
(or at least _logic_)" hasn't been altered since Sir Arthur conditioned
me.
Joann @86 The thing that always struck me about his work ... was
a dry, understated, totally Brit sense of humor, that I had never
encountered before.
I remember reading Doc Smith and Asimov from my Dad's bookshelves at
an early age; a year or two later I came across Clarke and now I
realise it was his slightly British voice that I noted but couldn't
place at the time. It's not that stuff written in American seemed
strange (I'd grown up watching TV after all) but Clarke's writing felt
instantly familiar, like something that might exist in life rather than
on a page or screen.
I may have, um, borrowed a copy of A Fall of Moondust and never given it back at a the age of 9.
...excoriating him for not Coming Out during his lifetime
But... what? Wasn't it obvious from... well, reading between the
lines of everything I could get my hands for 7 or 8 years by him? I
thought he was openly gay. Well, another suprising thing I've learnt.
(I'd somehow never thought of Clarke and Lewis* as contemporaries,
despite reading them at the same age; it's like finding out that Elvis
was a Monty Python fan - two things you thought were separate turn out
to have connections)
* Not Lewis and Clark, who I suspect did indeed know each other
Re: dry British humor.
Alfred Bester described attending a meeting of a British SF group
while he was living in England. Clarke was attending, and offered to
bring some slides of his underwater photography to the next meeting.
True to his word, at the next meeting he presented a slideshow. After
about the third slide, Bester protested "Arthur, this isn't underwater
photography! You took those pictures at an aquarium. I can see the
reflections in the glass". Bester complained that the rest of the
meeting devolved into a discussion of whether it was necessary for the
photographer to be underwater as well as the subject to be considered
underwater photography.
I read "2001" when I was a 14 or so. I think it was the first "real"
science fiction I'd ever read. At the time, I was a nerd
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