Arthur C Clarke, 1917 - 2008.

Arthur C Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90....

The author of almost 100 books, Mr Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity's destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by 2001: A Space Odyssey, the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project.

His work was also prophetic: his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight.

Gerald Jonas, New York Times.

Updated through 3/20.

The paradox of Clarke's fiction is that the writer most associated in the public mind with accurate "hard sf" predictions, based upon existing and potential technology and grounded in "real" science, returns again and again to themes of an almost mystical or metaphysical sort, in which advanced cultures, often benevolent, allow humanity to transcend its Earth-bound beginnings.

These were expressed in Clarke's laws, of which the best-known was his dictum that "any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic".

The Telegraph.

The news of Clarke's death... sent me scurrying to see what memories I could elicit.... Curious, I peeled open Tales of Ten Worlds and started reading the first story: "I Remember Babylon." It begins:

My name is Arthur C Clarke, and I wish I had no connection with this whole sordid business. But as the moral - repeat, moral - integrity of the United States is involved, I must first establish my credentials. Only thus will you understand how, with the aide of the late Dr Alfred Kinsey, I have unwittingly triggered an avalanche that may sweep away much of Western civilization.

Believe it or not, "I Remember Babylon" is a bizarre mix of fact and paranoid fantasy in which Clarke's breakthrough conception of the geosynchronous communications satellite is foully coopted into a Cold War plot in which the technologically superior Soviets seek to destroy the West by interlacing propaganda with broadcasts of Tantric pornography filmed on location from the walls of ancient Indian temples....

Literarily speaking, returning to some of these authors decades later can be a painful experience - Heinlein, sad to say, has not held up well under the ravages of time. Clarke, I think, does better - there's an intellectual playfulness to his prose that is more lasting.

Andrew Leonard, Salon.

Despite his track record as a futurist, Clarke remained humble about his work when he was interviewed for a 1993 Q&A with Wired magazine.

"I've never predicted the future," Clarke said. "Or hardly ever. I extrapolate. Look, I've written six stories about the end of the Earth; they can't all be true!"

Lewis Wallace, Wired News.

See also: The Arthur C Clarke Foundation, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and Wikpedia.

Updates, 3/19: The Guardian's Andrew Pulver looks back on Clarke and Kubrick's collaboration.

"It also speaks well of him that he was so selective about his film projects," notes Glenn Kenny.

Dave Itzkoff has a bit of online viewing: Clarke on his 90th birthday.

Update, 3/20: "Whatever attitude comes through — and it is almost always fraught with ambiguity - religion suffuses Mr Clarke's realm," writes Edward Rothstein in the NYT. "He demands the canvas of Genesis and upon it he enacts experiments in thought."

Posted by dwhudson at March 18, 2008 8:53 PM