R. I. P. Arthur C. Clarke

[DJofSD]

3/18/2008

A giant: in both fiction and non-fiction writing, scientist and futurist.

[Cangamble]

Clarke with an "e" at the end.
He was always tainted with rumours of being a pedophile.

[ArlJim78]

one of my heroes. his books, both fiction and non-fiction, had a big impact in my formative years. a brilliant man.

[hcap]

The first to envision the practical use of "Artificial Satellites"

[robert99]

Some words of Arthur C Clarke:

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.

I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.

Address to US Congress, 1975
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.

A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.