RIP: Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Mar. 19th, 2008 07:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seawaspI SAID STOP WITH THE DYING ALREADY!!!
Arthur C. Clarke, probably best known to the world for the novelization of "2001: A Space Odyssey" (which unlike most novelizations was written in parallel with the script, and which was based on the idea suggested by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel"), has died.
Clarke was the last surviving member of the classic Big Three of what were considered the first modern Science Fiction authors: Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. He was best known for writing harder-edged (though not always, strictly speaking, hard) SF stories with big ideas. While he wrote a fair number of novels, including Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End, The City and the Stars (possibly my favorite of his novels), and several sequels to 2001, in my opinion his very best work was in his short stories, which included the classic "The Nine Billion Names of God", "A Walk in the Dark" (one of the creepiest stories ever written), "The Star", "Summertime on Icarus", and "Sunjammer", a story of a solar-sailing race.
Clarke is credited with the concept of the geosynchronous satellite, among others, and was the first or one of the first to write stories about SF staples such as space elevators and solar sails. Like many of his era, a lot of his stories were "idea stories", in which the central point was to get across a neat idea rather than create characters; what made him one of the greats was the variety of ideas, and the clarity with which he could portray them.
An era has ended; the last of the Great Names from my childhood is now gone. There are other great SF writers out there -- no doubt of it -- but the last of the names that towered over the entirety of the SF field, the final member of the Golden Age Trinity, has passed away.
He often expressed in his writings doubts of the validity of any religion; I hope, in this case, that he's wrong and that there's a good afterlife waiting for men and women who have shaped the world as he and others have done. But at the least he will live on in his books, and in the influence he had on others. Specifically for me, Boundary was a conscious and clear attempt on my part to write a Clarkeian novel of scientific exploration, inspired to a considerable extent by Rendezvous With Rama. And I know that I am far from the only SF writer who thinks of that and other classic Clarke works when we set out to write that kind of story.
Godspeed, Sir Arthur.
Arthur C. Clarke, probably best known to the world for the novelization of "2001: A Space Odyssey" (which unlike most novelizations was written in parallel with the script, and which was based on the idea suggested by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel"), has died.
Clarke was the last surviving member of the classic Big Three of what were considered the first modern Science Fiction authors: Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. He was best known for writing harder-edged (though not always, strictly speaking, hard) SF stories with big ideas. While he wrote a fair number of novels, including Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End, The City and the Stars (possibly my favorite of his novels), and several sequels to 2001, in my opinion his very best work was in his short stories, which included the classic "The Nine Billion Names of God", "A Walk in the Dark" (one of the creepiest stories ever written), "The Star", "Summertime on Icarus", and "Sunjammer", a story of a solar-sailing race.
Clarke is credited with the concept of the geosynchronous satellite, among others, and was the first or one of the first to write stories about SF staples such as space elevators and solar sails. Like many of his era, a lot of his stories were "idea stories", in which the central point was to get across a neat idea rather than create characters; what made him one of the greats was the variety of ideas, and the clarity with which he could portray them.
An era has ended; the last of the Great Names from my childhood is now gone. There are other great SF writers out there -- no doubt of it -- but the last of the names that towered over the entirety of the SF field, the final member of the Golden Age Trinity, has passed away.
He often expressed in his writings doubts of the validity of any religion; I hope, in this case, that he's wrong and that there's a good afterlife waiting for men and women who have shaped the world as he and others have done. But at the least he will live on in his books, and in the influence he had on others. Specifically for me, Boundary was a conscious and clear attempt on my part to write a Clarkeian novel of scientific exploration, inspired to a considerable extent by Rendezvous With Rama. And I know that I am far from the only SF writer who thinks of that and other classic Clarke works when we set out to write that kind of story.
Godspeed, Sir Arthur.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 01:40 pm (UTC)Arthur Clarke was a friend of his. I don't remember whether I met him in person, but I clearly remember answering the phone when he called. He had a lovely, rich voice with an English accent. 'Arthur Clarke here. Could I speak to Albert?'
no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 05:56 pm (UTC)Umm...
Date: 2008-03-20 01:19 pm (UTC)Any more is a spoiler. Though I could say that it would be a contender for the "Best Last Lines" thread over in r.a.sf.w . If "creepy" is "best".
Re: Umm...
Date: 2008-03-20 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 07:05 pm (UTC)I hope someday we do get an orbital elevator, and that it's named after Clarke.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 08:31 pm (UTC)I dunno..
Date: 2008-03-20 01:22 pm (UTC)I don't think I could hit 300 books, given that I'm starting way later, but I could, if I wrote full time, manage 5-10 books a year for quite a while.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-20 06:07 am (UTC)and CHildhood's End is one of my favoritist books ever.
at least the torch passes, no?
I'm not sure...
Date: 2008-03-20 01:23 pm (UTC)... the torch DOES pass, or at least that I can tell to whom it passes. There aren't, as far as I can tell, any current writers who cast the looming shadow over the field that Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein did. There are many excellent writers out there, but none so iconic and singular as they.
Re: I'm not sure...
Date: 2008-03-20 07:26 pm (UTC)but yes, i do see your point... to a large extent, AC&H defined SF as we know it; and in that vein, everything is derived from them.
but on the other hand... a large bit of what is being written now (or at least has been) is so far ahead of where the Three stopped... i mean, its like saying no one has been able to write definitive music since Bach died (or Elvis). yes, definitive, but more definitions follow.
look to the new variations by Flint, Webber and Ringo (as a beginning). Or Turtledove and Stirling and Card.
and you have some pretty damned nifty stuff of your own coming too, right?
it passes, and changes, but still flames.
Re: I'm not sure...
Date: 2008-03-21 11:55 am (UTC)The flame is split up, perhaps. I think the point of the "torch passes" concept is that it goes from one person to another person who fills roughly the same position, and I don't think there is anyone who CAN fill the same position as Clarke, Heinlein, or Asimov, any more than there's anyone who could have taken the torch, so to speak, from Doc Smith, or any fantasy writer can equal the stature of J.R.R. Tolkien.
There are many excellent SF/F writers currently out there, but I really cannot think of one, or even two or three, who dominate the field in any way like the Big Three did. If he wrote more, and more often, it's *Possible* Vinge could have. Gibson *almost* made it. Niven/Pournelle.
But none really equal the stature of the prior giants, in my view, nor are any likely to.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-20 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 08:03 pm (UTC)Sure...
Date: 2008-03-29 06:26 pm (UTC)You can e-mail me at seawasp(at)sgeinc(dot)com
Re: Sure...
Date: 2008-03-31 06:06 pm (UTC)One of the tales of Clarke was about how a tourist trip by one of the sandy surfaces of a moon crater went down several meters and how the rescue team strives to help them out. The magic touch here was how the reader felt he was on a real sand - ship, traveling by a white landscape while overhead the sky was bright with a million stars. I also read almost everyone of his tales, and I have almost everyone of his books; the time has yellowed the paper, but I guess they are going to survive me.
The Earth colony on Mars was ten years old, and never in the history of mankind had the struggle for existence been so cruel. The atmosphere was unfit to breathe. Every drop of water might be the last. The entire colony lived i constant danger of extinction.
The time came when the struggle seemed lost, the Earthmen doomed to defeat.
Then a discovery was made. A group of Martians were living in a remote corner of the planet, remnants of a once bountiful civilization. Somehow they had managed to survive.
But how ? Would they be friendly ? And could the colonists from Earth find their secret of survival ?
...
With a new briskness in his step, Martin Gibso, writer, late of Earth, resumed his walk towards the city. His shadow merged with Squeak's as the little martian hopped beside him; while overhead the last hues of night drained from the sky, and all around, the tall flowerless plants wer unfolding to face the sun.
The End.