Arthur C. Clarke Dies

Gerald Jonas - International Herald Tribune

Mar 20, 2008

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

The author of almost 100 books, 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 was more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight.

Clarke's influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Clarke's writings with encouraging him to pursue his "Star Trek" project in the face of indifference from television executives.

In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Clarke played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communication satellites. "No one can predict the future," he always maintained. But as a science fiction writer he could not resist drawing up timelines for what he called "possible futures." Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology - from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that "clean, safe power" from "cold fusion" would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium.

Arthur Charles Clarke was born on Dec. 16, 1917, in Minehead, England. While still in school, he joined the newly formed British Interplanetary Society, a small band of science fiction enthusiasts who held the view that space travel was not only possible but could be achieved in the not-so-distant future.

Clarke spent World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force. In 1943 he was assigned to work with a team of U.S. scientist- engineers who had developed the first radar-controlled system for landing airplanes in bad weather. That led to Clarke's only non- science fiction novel, "Glide Path" (1963), and, in 1945, to a technical paper, published in the journal Wireless World, establishing the feasibility of artificial satellites as relay stations for Earth-based communications.

The year 1945 also saw the start of Clarke's career as a fiction writer. He sold a short story called "Rescue Party" to a magazine - now retitled Astounding Science Fiction - that had captured his imagination 15 years earlier.

Over the next two decades he wrote a series of nonfiction best sellers as well as his best-known novels, including "Childhood's End" (1953) and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). For a scientifically trained writer whose optimism about technology seemed boundless, Clarke delighted in confronting his characters with obstacles they could not overcome without help from forces beyond their comprehension.

In 1964, Kubrick and Clarke agreed to make the "proverbial really good science fiction movie" based on "The Sentinel." This led to a four-year collaboration; Clarke wrote the novel and Kubrick produced and directed the film. They are jointly credited with the screenplay.

As a fiction writer, Clarke was often criticized for failing to create fully realized characters. HAL, the mutinous computer in "2001," is probably his most "human" creation: a self-satisfied know- it-all with a touching but misguided faith in its own infallibility.

If Clarke's heroes are less than memorable, it's also true that there are no out-and-out villains in his work; his characters are generally too busy struggling to make sense of an implacable universe to engage in petty schemes of dominance or revenge.

In 1962 he suffered a severe attack of poliomyelitis from which he recovered. But in 1984 he developed post-polio syndrome, a progressive condition characterized by muscle weakness and extreme fatigue. He spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair.

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