1917-2008: a space odysseyThe late sci fi great Arthur C. Clarke believed that everything he imagined had to be feasible -- ultimately.
He was ninety and he looked it, having been confined to a wheelchair for a number of years. But his mind remained free to roam until the end, rather like some of his characters who underwent a passage from humanity into a new stage. Perhaps it was his contact with the culture of Sri Lanka that gave him the theme that appeared in many of his most famous novels (2001: a Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, Rendezvous with Rama, Childhood's End), -- that the current human race may be only a link in a chain, and that sooner or later it would transcend into something else, perhaps not corporeal at all. Thus, in 2001, David Bowman, after committing cybercide on HAL 9000 and descending into a huge Jovian (in the movie; Saturnian, in the book) monolith, becomes the "Star Child" who became free to play around with the cosmos (and, of course, with the crew of the next mission launched to rescue him). The last generation of children in Childhood's End are the ones who take humanity to the next level. Unfortunately the obliterate old humanity in the process, much as the Vogons would do a few years later to build a new inter-galactic highway that happened to go right through the middle of this little blue planet... But that is a totally different story (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) by a totally different subject (Douglas Adams) of Her Majesty. Adams didn't get knighted for it, as Arthur did, though he did retain his UK address. But I digress... I really like Clarke's writing, perhaps because I am an engineer by training. You see, Clarke believed that everything he described (except, perhaps, the transcendent mind thing) had to work, at least in principle. He described how artificial satellites might be used for communications across oceans and worked out the details so well that people actually followed up on it and gave us what we have today. If you look at the film version of 2001, you'll see a spacecraft sporting nuclear propulsion and artificial gravity, pretty much exactly like one that would be built today for that mission. If you read The Fountains of Paradise you'll find an elevator stretching out into orbit. And he tells you, almost bolt by bolt, how to build it, and what might go wrong in the process (as it does, of course). And his prose style must be the most deceptively simple in all of science-fiction. Not a fancy word in sight, and not an extra word -- yet impossible to improve upon. It is an English teacher's dream. The ornamentation was as absent as the vacuum of space, but it sucked you in with just as much power and made you believe you might also be able to write, too, someday. And it did. I think I might owe to Arthur my attempt to write science-fiction. I haven't yet reached the transcendent stage, but what if he was right after all... In the meantime, I pray for his soul. Arthur, like so many sci fi authors of the old school (not so much the next generation), didn't seem to think transcendence might have already arrived on this earth, in the form of religious faith. But he didn't make himself a jerk about it (unlike others). And I've found his writing helps me to be awestruck with the magnificence of the Creator of the universe. When he's not inventing things that may or may not violate the laws of physics, Paco Ruiz works as a professor of aerospace engineering in a major American university. His first novel, Guardians of the Past, is to be published this year.
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Arthur C. Clarke, who was the closest a man could get to reincarnating Leonardo da Vinci, finally joined the ages last March 19th. He took off from Sri Lanka, where he had lived for almost fifty years -- though not in an elevator into space
Comments (3)
Jim Cole said...Well, actually, he came close to “being a jerk about it.” One of his stories from the 50’s or 60’s--I’ll have to look it up if need be--featured a Jesuit astronomer/astronaut who helps explore a formerly-inhabited world, the crust of which was somewhat melted by its sun exploding as a nova. All the alien persons were killed, although certain of their artifacts survived, allowing the Jesuit scientist to speculate on such aspects of their society as their religious faith. The punch line is that the nova was the Star of Bethlehem. I believe Mr. Clark later admitted that he wrote the story specifically to attack religious faith.
Jim Cole
United States | Saturday, 5 April 2008 at 3:05 am
angela shanahan said...Wasn’t Arthur c clarke involved in some way in a scandal about a child sex ring in sri lanka ?
-- | Tuesday, 8 April 2008 at 6:48 pm
Walter Pless said...In response to Angela Shanahan, a London newspaper accused Arthur C CLarke of being a paedophile. There was no shred of evidence and it was merely malicious gossip.
Clarke was about to be knighted by Prince Charles, who was visiting Sri Lanka on other business at the time, when the story broke. He was too ill and frail to travel to London to be knighted by the Queen. Clarke himself asked that the ceremony at which he was to be knighted be postponed until he could defend himself and refute the allegations. He did not want to embarrass Prince Charles.
The Sri Lanka police investigated the claims by the London paper and found them to be unsubstantiated. Not one complainant came forward at the time, and not one has come forward since. A special commission has since been formed by the government of Sri Lanka to look into paedophilia on the island and that may be one good thing that came out of these attempts to discredit Clarke.
Clarke was once married, but after the divorce, he never remarried. He lived with his adopted Sri Lankan family for 50 or so years. Why do some people immediately assume, therefore, that a man that chooses such a lifestyle has to be a deviant of some kind?
Unfortunately, whenever mud is slung, sone of it tends to stick, hence Angela Shanahan’s recollection.
Clarke should be remembered for his contribution to science, literature and the arts, not for malicious gossip that had no basis in fact.
Australia | Tuesday, 8 April 2008 at 10:01 pm
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