Sir Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008

Posted by Stropp on March 19, 2008

Earlier today Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away at his Sri Lankan home at the age of 90.

Sir Arthur is best known as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first SciFi book that I ever read. At age eight I was on an outing with my Grandmother in the Rundle Mall in Adelaide, perhaps on an occasion when I wasn’t switching off escalators in department stores, and we went into a bookstore. Standish books I think it was called. We browsed around for a while and she asked me which book I’d like to get.

Well there was this book with a picture of a wheeled space station on the cover. Good picture I thought, so I chose that.

And thus began my life long love affair with science fiction. Well, maybe not begun, I did already enjoy television shows like Lost in Space, and all the Saturday afternoon movies with aliens, giant Japanese-city-trashing monsters, and giant robots that fired missile out their fingertips. But as far as reading goes, I credit Sir Arthur for starting me on the journey of imagination that only books can give.

I still have that first book somewhere. I read it so much over the years that the covers have fallen off and a lot of pages are hanging loose. It’s looking pretty tattered but I still have it.

Sir Arthur didn’t just constrain himself to fiction. He was a scientist. Early in his career he wrote a paper outlining the feasibility of using Satellites as a communication tool. Later he wrote an article where he joked that by not patenting the idea he had given away a billion dollars.

He moved to Sri Lanka in 1956 and lived there until his passing. One of his final birthday wishes was that Sri Lanka would know peace.

Apart from authoring numerous novels and short stories, Sir Arthur is known for his three laws. The third you most likely are familiar with

1. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
2. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
3. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Farewell, Sir Arthur.

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