Pharyngula

This is indeed alarming. Other valuable news sources fail to mention the good long run. One would have hoped that there would be people around him to advise against such carefree activities at his age. I hope that he was not goaded into this foolish attempt at athleticism by someone who stood to profit from his will.

Posted by: Vicus Scurra | March 18, 2008 7:26 PM

I'm sorry to hear the news, although he did have a good and long life. He was one of my formative influences; I'm sad to see him go.

Posted by: thalarctos | March 18, 2008 7:32 PM

Oh, my. His Childhood's End proved to be one of the very first stepping-stones on my path to skepticism.

RIP, Sir Arthur.

Posted by: Kseniya | March 18, 2008 7:40 PM

Sir Arthur's work was a boundless source of delight, from his wonderful science writing (including how he lost billions of dollars by not getting a patent on the idea of geosynchronous communications satellites) to his fiction (especially those with great embedded ideas, like the space elevator of Fountains of Paradise). Sure, his output was uneven, particularly as he turned more of his ideas over to less talented coauthors, but Clarke's work was always worth the time invested in reading and pondering it.

I count myself fortunate to be a child of the Clarke era.

Posted by: Zeno | March 18, 2008 7:42 PM

Bless.

Posted by: Lee Brimmicombe-Wood | March 18, 2008 8:00 PM

'A phrase from an old American novel (he had forgotten the author) kept coming into his mind: "Remember them as they were -- and write them off."' Arthur C. Clarke, meta-quoting Ernest Hemingway, in "The Hammer of God".

I think I liked his novel "The Songs of Distant Earth" best of all, as I found it gently haunting. It would make a wonderful film, if the director were to stay true to the original.

I had the honour to meet Arthur, very briefly, exchanging just a few words, after a lecture he gave at the Royal Insitution in 1980 about the concept of a space elevator.

Posted by: JM | March 18, 2008 8:02 PM

I never got to meet Arthur, but I always felt a special closeness to him. His imagination seemed to be resonant with mine in his marvelous fiction. Together we went to many wonderful places and saw many amazing things.

His broad command of science instructed and informed me about many things I might never have thought of, thereby missing some of the fun of living in this extraordinary place. So he has for many years been not only a good natured teacher he has also been a fellow space cadet, learning with me as we strode among the stars.

I never got to meet Arthur, but there were only two degrees of separation between us. In 1990 I was in a jewelry store in Florida. The pleasant girl on the other side of the counter was in countenance and speech not from Florida so I asked here where she called home.

"I am from Sri Lanka," she said with obvious pride. I told her that I knew a bit of her homeland. (My mother once presented me with a book titled "Zoo Hunt in Ceylon" circa 1960.) I then declared that one of my favorite authors lived there, in Columbo. "His name is Arthur C. Clarke."

"Oh! I know him!" she said with a smile and wide eyes. "I used to see him at the local swimming pool on Saturdays. Early morning. He told me he felt like he needed to swim every day. He was so nice. I miss our morning swims."

I've reconstructed her words but that's the gist of it. There I was, shopping for a very particular piece of jewelry. Something quite specific, it so happened. And without prelude (unless you count all the years I had known Arthur and how much I knew about what he thought of certain things) I am suddenly presented with a treasure of a delightfully different kind by a stranger from a far place, in a small shop I visited only that one time.

She then helped me to find the very piece I was looking for and took great care in preparing a gift box and securing the piece within.

Goodbye, Arthur, old friend.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | March 18, 2008 8:07 PM

Had he only invented the stationary orbiting satellite, he'd have been a hero worthy of great acclamation. But that was just the overture.

Sad day for the rest of us.

Posted by: Ed Darrell | March 18, 2008 8:15 PM

when I was around 10, in the late 60s, I read his story Dog Star, about a dogonaut. being crazy about dogs and space, I wrote him a fan letter, to which he promptly replied. my parents were tremendously impressed that I got a letter from a famous writer, and I think the event really helped legitimize my interests in science and sf for them. he was a gracious man.

my epigram in my high school yearbook was his quote, "The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." not a bad motto for a high school kid.

as it happens, this very morning I finished rereading Childhood's End for the first time in maybe 20 years. It is literally an awesome book.

I'm sad at his loss.

Posted by: Hillary Rettig / The Lifelong Activist | March 18, 2008 8:53 PM

"I sort of half expected him to live forever."

Ted, you got it. Not to be too schmaltzy here, but for me, he will. I just dug out my copy of "The City and the Stars." I'm heading off to my local diner for a bittersweet hour.

Posted by: Glen | March 18, 2008 9:00 PM

I diagree with you about the quality of his his later works, PZ. The collaborations with Stephen Baxter are especially good.

Posted by: Willo the Wisp | March 18, 2008 9:06 PM

I'm torn. I appreciate what he did for others, but except for Songs of Distant Earth, I really didn't "get off" on most of his work. It was good, but much like Larry Niven's -- it's too full of technology and engineering and not enough character development and interpersonal relationships.

Still, Science Fiction was better off with him than without him. And if he wasn't the greatest writer in science fiction, he was a good one and I did enjoy his output.

Posted by: Moses | March 18, 2008 9:10 PM

Used to tell people that I was this close --| |-- to being his grandson. My grandfather's name was Arthur D. Clarke.

Despite family loyalty I was never a raving fan, but I do remember reading Childhood's End with some enthusiasm. Moreover, Clarke seemed to be at the most basic level a good person. The world's better for having hosted him.

Posted by: Chris Clarke | March 18, 2008 9:28 PM

How many generations did he inspire? My dad's and mine at least, and I'm fifty. I saw him at the National Geographic Society building in D.C. - he read excerpts from the soon to be published Imperial Earth.
Favorites: Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, Against the Fall of Night, The Fountains of Paradise, but I still think the all time best was the anthology Reach for Tomorrow.
( JM: I liked Songs of Distant Earth too - very Clarke)

Posted by: SeanMcCorkle | March 18, 2008 9:37 PM

more of a writer to engineers.

Good way of putting it. I had thought of it as the "'gee whiz' factor."

Posted by: Chris Clarke | March 18, 2008 10:18 PM

I was never a raving fan of his (my tastes in SF sort of fell into the "non-Campbellian" camp), but I'm glad I got to share the world with him for a while at least. I might not have liked his writing all that much, but I love telecommunications.

Has anyone ever collected a list of current, real-world inventions (et cetera) that were directly inspired by science fiction and/or science fiction writers? I'm just asking because someone upthread mentioned communications satellites, and I can think of a few more off the top of my head, which is great ammo for the next jerk who asks you "Why do you read that crap?"

Posted by: Interrobang | March 18, 2008 10:33 PM

I thought he was a very good science fiction writer. He was also a real scientist. He will be missed.

Posted by: Geoff | March 18, 2008 10:40 PM

actually Childhood's End has pretty good characters. The book is incredibly moving, and perhaps because it's essentially about death - of our species, and of individuals, and of collective and individual dreams - I think I "get" it now, at age 49, much more than I ever did when younger.

Posted by: Hillary Rettig / The Lifelong Activist | March 18, 2008 11:05 PM

Aww c'mon PZ, you could've found something a little bit nicer to say about him. He's not a crazy creationist or anything - he's one of our own! You don't need to wear that same gruff atheist face all the time :-P

Posted by: Cyde Weys | March 18, 2008 11:23 PM

I discovered his books in the British Council Library when I was a teenager. They stunned me. You read them and you think this could happen. The future might be this way.

I'd haunt the library on Saturdays -- go there in the morning grab a book and keep eye the returns bookshelf -- searching for his books. You couldn't find them on the shelves. Too popular. Everyone wanted them.

His writings were so full of optimism. In Baxter's books people are sweaty. They're petty and they shit. But in Clarke's books we're godlings, boundlessly good, eyes bright with wonder, climbing a technological ladder to the sky.

Thanks, ACC

Posted by: David Ratnasabapathy | March 19, 2008 1:12 AM

Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") is always part of my first lecture each semester about why it is important to understand how computers work the way they do. Some students seem a bit taken aback when I state rather categorically (and forcefully) that I have nothing good to say about magic, and that invoking it as an argument does little but stifle inquiry. At least they hear his name, and a few do know it.

I got to hear him live around 1970 or so. I liked his talk, but I realized later that it was kind of a ramble and he hadn't really covered the points he said he would cover. That left me somewhat disappointed, but I still read pretty much all the fiction he wrote up through "Rama" and occasional bits and pieces later.

His later novels left me a bit cold, and I never really cared for "Childhood's End". Many of his short stories from the early-to-mid 1960s, however, really packed a punch. I once read "The Star" out loud to a Christian youth group (mostly my close friends) around the campfire nearly 35 years ago. Messed a few of them up for a very long time. They continued to put up with me even after that, and many still do, although at the time it wasn't particularly clear why.

Still and all: thank you, Sir Arthur, for everything you've done.

Posted by: Hairy Doctor Professor | March 19, 2008 1:34 AM

"The Star" - OMG. I'm so glad someone mentioned that. I read it about ten years ago. I'd forgotten the title, but I remember the story. I suppose that was another stepping stone on my path...

Posted by: Kseniya | March 19, 2008 1:43 AM

One thing that doesn't get mentioned about Clarke was that allot of his writing could be quite funny. Especially some of his short stories which functioned as extended shaggy dog stories with wonderful Sci-Fi settings. Anyone here who happens to recognize the line "Star Mangled Spanner" will know what I'm talking about.

Posted by: Grimgrin | March 19, 2008 2:16 AM

Just found it:

"In deference to the next of kin," Commander Cummerbund explained with morbid relish, "the full story of the super-cruiser 'Flatbush's' last mission has never been fully revealed. You know, of course, that she was lost during the war against the Mucoids."

We all shuddered. Even now, the very name of the gelatinous monsters who had come slurping Earthward from the general direction of the Coal Sack aroused vomitive memories.

"I knew her skipper well -- Captain Karl van Rinderpest, hero of the final assault on the unspeakable, but not unshriekable, !!Yeetch."

He paused politely to let us unplug our ears and mop up our spilled drinks.

"'Flatbush' had just launched a salvo of probability inverters against the Mucoid home planet and was heading back toward deep space in formation with three destroyers -- the Russian 'Lieutenant Kizhe', the Israeli 'Chutzpah', and her Majesty's 'Insufferable'. They were still accelerating when a fantastically unlikely accident occurred. 'Flatbush' ran straight into the gravity well of a neutron star."

When our expressions of horror and incredulity had subsided, he continued gravely.

"Yes -- a sphere of ultimately condensed matter, only ten miles across, yet as massive as a sun -- and hence with a surface gravity one hundred billion times that of Earth.

"The other ships were lucky. They only skirted the outer fringe of the field and managed to escape, though their orbits were deflected almost a hundred and eighty degrees. But 'Flatbush', we calculated later, must have passed within a few dozen miles of that unthinkable concentration of mass and so experienced the full violence of its tidal forces.

"Now in any reasonable gravitational field -- even that of a White Dwarf, which may run up to a million Earth g's -- you just swing around the center of attraction and head on out into space again, without feeling a thing. At the closest point you could be accelerating at hundreds or thousands of g's -- but you're still in free fall, so there are no physical effects. Sorry if I'm laboring the obvious, but I realize that everyone here isn't technically orientated."

If this was intended as a crack at Fleet Paymaster General "Sticky Fingers" Geldclutch, he never noticed, being well into his fifth beaker of Martian Joy Juice.

"For a neutron star, however, this is no longer true. Near the center of mass the gravitational gradient -- that is, the rate at which the field changes with distance -- is so enormous that even across the width of a small body like a spaceship there can be a difference of a hundred thousand g's. I need hardly tell you what that sort of field can do to any material object.

"'Flatbush' must have been torn to pieces almost instantly, and the pieces themselves must have flowed like liquid during the few seconds they took to swing around the star. Then the fragments headed on out into space again.

"Months later a radar sweep by the Salvage Corps located some of the debris. I've seen it -- surrealistically shaped lumps of the toughest metals we possess twisted together like taffy. And there was only one item that could even be recognized -- it must have come from some unfortunate engineer's tool kit."

The Commander1s voice dropped almost to inaudibility, and he dashed away a manly tear.

"I really hate to say this." He sighed. "But the only identifiable fragment of the pride of the United States Space Navy was . . . one star-mangled spanner."

Posted by: Grimgrin | March 19, 2008 2:20 AM

Childhood's End, lawd a'mighty, I remember devouring that one in one time-suspended afternoon when I was 13 or so. Afterwards I was in a daze for hours, so strong was its impact. I wanted so badly for it to be real.

Posted by: Steven Sullivan | March 19, 2008 3:06 AM

Cheers, Arthur, for the many fantabulous ideas, and we'll just have to forgive you for the somewhat less than human characters by which those ideas were expressed.

And what a sad indictment of our culture that your love of the young men of Sri Lanka has to be oh so carefully elided by the journalistic organs of record on this sad occasion of your passing

Posted by: Andre Tardoz | March 19, 2008 5:17 AM

I don't know if it's good or bad news, but there is a Rendezvous with Rama movie in the works, produced by Morgan Freeman. Although a couple of quotes from him seem fairly promising, at least as far as his intentions:
"These things, they always want to make it into an action film, You can't do it with this. And we've been having trouble getting someone to see the science aspect of this, the exploratory aspects of it, rather than the blood and guts and stuff."
"It's a very intellectual science fiction film, a very difficult book to translate cinematically. [At least] we have found it very difficult to translate, to get ready for film."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134933/

Posted by: Ted D | March 19, 2008 5:37 AM

Kevin #21

And we wonder how myths get cross-pollinated into different religions...

Posted by: Jit | March 19, 2008 5:40 AM

I don't think there's any doubt that if ACC was still in his prime right now, he'd be out there batting away for the good guys.

"The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods."

"There is the possibility that humankind can outgrown its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in Childhood's End. But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are. There are, for example, so many different religions -- each of them claiming to have the truth, each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths of others -- how can someone possibly take any of them seriously? I mean, that's insane. ...Though I sometimes call myself a crypto-Buddhist, Buddhism is not a religion. Of those around at the moment, Islam is the only one that has any appeal to me. But, of course, Islam has been tainted by other influences. The Muslims are behaving like Christians, I'm afraid."

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

R

Posted by: Rupert Goodwins | March 19, 2008 7:13 AM

Paulh, the correct quote is:

"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

One star has gone out for the world, and he will be missed.

Posted by: Sergeant Zim | March 19, 2008 8:27 AM

"The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God" rank very high in my personal journey toward atheism, as they undoubtedly do for many, many others. Goodbye, Sir Arthur.

Posted by: Faithful Reader | March 19, 2008 8:35 AM

I didn't read SF for the characters, I read it for the ideas. In this regard, Clarke, along with Asimov, Heinlein and many others expanded my horizons much like a Hubble telescope. I don't really care if literature majors don't consider these works literature. To some of us, these works are much more valuable than all the personal character stories they admire.

One recent work, 'The Light of Other Days', co-authored with Stephen Baxter, was one I found quite readable. It concerns a technology that, at its start, allows one to peer into the past. Once the technology is developed and enhanced, those who possess it can also use it to view the present, but remotely. Clarke and Baxter work out the possible implications to privacy and society of such technology.

Rather than muse over whether his last work was as good as his first or his tenth, I'd rather look at the whole body of work. It's then that I wonder who among the living can compare.

Posted by: Ray S. | March 19, 2008 8:55 AM

I could feel my mind expanding as I first read The City and the Stars. In my dotage, my tastes have changed to prefer better characters, and even Heinlein has paled a bit, but I'll never forget the impact ACC had on me. (Vernor Vinge comes closest to ressurecting that feeling.)

Posted by: JimV | March 19, 2008 9:12 AM

One nit-pick: I hardly see how "The Nine Billion Names of God" in any way supports an atheistic worldview. :-p

Re: "The Light of Other Days" (2000). I haven't read this, but from Ray's description, it sounds like this book builds on the work of two great time-viewing stories written quite some time ago: Asimov's "The Dead Past" (1956) and "'E' for Effort" (1947) by T.L. Sherred - particularly the former.

While the two stories are quite different from each other, they each touch (in differing degrees) on the privacy issues which stem from the fact that the past trails behind us constantly, like a shadow that begins precisely where the present leaves off.

Otherwise, "'E' for Effort" is a much more substantial read (it is a novella, not a short story). The capabilities of its time-viewing technology is quite different, as is the scope of the tale itself. It's a great story, but seems to be unknown outside the ranks of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame fans such as myself. I wouldn't hesitate to say that it's one of my favorite S/F stories of all time.

Posted by: Kseniya | March 19, 2008 10:00 AM

Damn, I just started reading the Rama series, and I have to read in in section slowly because I dont want the first book to end. I am glad I get to continue his legacy (sort of?)though. And common PZ, could not you say anything nice, geez? Great man, great author, if I ever have kids I will for sure give them a copy of his books.

Posted by: greg | March 19, 2008 10:20 AM

I remember the original 2001 movie well. The girl I took to see it (in 1969) with me was not nearly as enthralled by it as I was, and she got mad at me for paying more attention to the movie than to her.

Some of his predictions were klunkers, but many were way too conservative. Others are likely to come to pass, albeit later than he projected. The last book of his that I read was "How the World was One". After the dust settles, I will be going back to see if there are any that I missed.

Posted by: TX CHL Instructor | March 19, 2008 10:39 AM

I think his later books were awful and the flaws of his earlier ones were colored over by my own youth

Never cared for his books, either. I found them a bit depressing.

Posted by: Greg Esres | March 19, 2008 10:55 AM

A fun story, nevertheless.

Yes, of course! I was reacting to an earlier comment:

The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God" rank very high in my personal journey toward atheism,

However, now that I think about it, though the story itself is as "theisty as you can get," I do see how it can promote an atheistic view: The story suggests how absurd such a reality would be. The entire universe and everything in it, created solely for the purpose of having a bunch of apes squatting on a pale blue dot figure out all its creator's names? Riiiighhhht!

One of my other favorites was "A Walk in the Dark," which I read at age seven or eight.

LOL... yeah I know that one, too. My parents have a lot of old paperbacks on their bookshelf, some going back to their own childhood and adolescence, and I read most of them by the time I turned 14. Three of them were short story collections by Clarke. Reach for Tomorrow, The Sentinel, and... heck, I forget the other title.

Did I say two or three? Sorry - I meant four. The other was Tales from the White Hart, which has been alluded to here, but not named. I loved how Clarke so gleefully turned his own genre on its head. It's also worth mentioning that Spider Robinson's Callahan's stories owe a huge debt to the tradition of The White Hart.

As for offering honest criticisms of Clarke's work in a thread about his life, his work, his influence, and his passing... well, nobody's taken any gratuitous or excessively nasty shots at the old boy. I think it's ok. Maybe Sir Arthur does - sorry, would - too. I dunno. :-)

Posted by: Kseniya | March 19, 2008 11:01 AM

the Jan-Mar. issue of Answers in Genesis, there is an article decrying the evils of science fiction because it is a source of dangerous ideas- and the prime example they cite is ACC's 'The Star.'

Wow. I love how they so readily and willing expose their motives and priorities. "Dangerous ideas." Oh, yes. These heresies and blasphemies must be suppressed! (Oh, and burn the witches while you're at it. That's a good fellow.)

If anything presents a danger to our society, it's not S/F - it's the likes of AIG.

Posted by: Kseniya | March 19, 2008 11:09 AM

Jeez, I'm just amazed at how many people are taking the time to sign on and pop off with comments about how much they didn't like the man's work.

Speaking as one of those who had a negative thing or two to say in my tribute, I think you're missing the larger picture we're trying to get at. In purely literary terms, Sir Arthur was not the equal of his contemporaries in SF (Heinlein and Asimov to be sure, but also, for instance, Theodore Sturgeon, James Blish, A.E. Van Vogt, etc.), nor of the generation of literary SF writers that followed. As a former high-school English teacher, I once taught Childhood's End, but it was one of only a small handful of his works that I could have justified teaching as literature.

That he became such a beloved figure (beloved by me, despite these comments) even so is a tribute to his broad greatness as a human being and a man of ideas. In fact, one of the things that I and others have criticized about his writing -- that it was