Doctor Strange
I'll Lock Up
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I'm surprised that nobody has started a thread about this yet: I know I'm not the only old-school SF fan here...
Arthur C. Clarke wrote some of the very best science fiction stories and novels - "The Star", "The Nine Billion Names of God", Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezous With Rama, and plenty of others.
He's often grouped with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein as the "big three" of classic SF, but his work was unique. His books didn't offer the intricate plots and concepts of Asimov, nor the full-bodied swagger of Heinlein's characters, but they were filled with a sense of cosmic wonder quite unlike anyone else's. They combined excellent scientific ideas with a prose style that was more than serviceable, bordering on the poetic, and he thought big: big machines, big ships, big ideas. His most common theme was evolution, most familiarly in 2001's Ape-to-Man-to-Starchild, but it's all over his work.
For myself, I devoured his books in my teen years and later, and loved nearly all of them, from the tense trapped-ship potboiler A Fall of Moondust to the amazingly imagined, beautiful, deserted far-future city of Diaspar in The City and the Stars. More than a great science fiction author, he was a great author. And his nonfiction science books are great too...
And the next time that you pull out your cell phone, consider that Clarke wrote the 1946 scientific paper that introduced the concept of geosynchronous communications satellites. This man changed the world in far more ways than just being a "science fiction writer".
One of Clarke's famous "laws" brilliantly observes that: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
It also somehow perfectly describes his writings and influence.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote some of the very best science fiction stories and novels - "The Star", "The Nine Billion Names of God", Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezous With Rama, and plenty of others.
He's often grouped with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein as the "big three" of classic SF, but his work was unique. His books didn't offer the intricate plots and concepts of Asimov, nor the full-bodied swagger of Heinlein's characters, but they were filled with a sense of cosmic wonder quite unlike anyone else's. They combined excellent scientific ideas with a prose style that was more than serviceable, bordering on the poetic, and he thought big: big machines, big ships, big ideas. His most common theme was evolution, most familiarly in 2001's Ape-to-Man-to-Starchild, but it's all over his work.
For myself, I devoured his books in my teen years and later, and loved nearly all of them, from the tense trapped-ship potboiler A Fall of Moondust to the amazingly imagined, beautiful, deserted far-future city of Diaspar in The City and the Stars. More than a great science fiction author, he was a great author. And his nonfiction science books are great too...
And the next time that you pull out your cell phone, consider that Clarke wrote the 1946 scientific paper that introduced the concept of geosynchronous communications satellites. This man changed the world in far more ways than just being a "science fiction writer".
One of Clarke's famous "laws" brilliantly observes that: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
It also somehow perfectly describes his writings and influence.
