Just wanted you to know...

Someday we will plant banyan trees on Mars in his memory.

Very sad news. I'm sure many of us here were introduced to science fiction through Arthur C Clarke's books, and have him to thank for our lifelong passion for space exploration. The first science fiction book I ever read, as a kid at school, was a collection of his short stories, and it literally changed my life; I'd always been "into" space, but reading those stories opened my mind to the science in science fiction and showed me that it wasn't just about death rays, drooling aliens and good and evil.

I was lucky enough to correspond with him a couple of times via email - a couple of years ago, when he was still well enough to do that; recently he was too poorly to use the internet much - and also got to speak to him once, not face to face but over a live telephone link in Edinburgh. He was the "absent guest of honour" at a science day thingy, and agreed to take questions from people in the audience. I asked him if he was for or against terraforming... if Mars wasn't a beautiful enough planet already without covering it with trees and lakes... and he replied, tactfully, and with a laugh, that he thought it would be a beautiful world whether it was left red or turned green.

Whenever they are born, the children of the first settlers on Mars will read Clarke's books and feel the same sense of wonder that I did.

A giant, a true prophet of the age, gone. My first thought: Surely that is not the end - there must be a sequel.

The Once and Future Visionary.

"No one dared disturb him or interrupt his thoughts: and presently he turned his back upon the dwindling Sun."

Thanks for everything, ACC.

I am happy that he lived long enough to see "Japetus" (as it was spelled in 2001) revealed.

Rest well, Sir Arthur, and thank you.

My first ACC book was a juvenile titled "Dolphin Island" which I did a book report on in grammar school. I then picked up "Childhood's End" from the library, and thereafter I was hooked. Short stories that come to mind are "The Nine Billion Names of God" in which the protagonists watch the stars winking out to signal the end of the universe, and an awful pun in a story which I don't recall the title but which ended that the only debris found from an American cruiser that passed too close to a black hole or neutron star was a star-mangled spanner.

Thanks and rest in peace, Sir Clarke.

His "Profiles of the Future" probably did more than anything to get me interested in science and space. A true visionary has passed.

I like to think his last thought might have been, "My God, it's full of stars!".

- John Sheff
Cambridge, MA

Thank you Arthur C. Clarke.
Safe passage 'beyond the infinite'.
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Astro0

Wonderful tribute to the man, Astro0!

My first exposure to his work was my father's paperback copy of The Promise of Space with a beautiful picture of Andromeda filling the cover...fascinating to a five-year old. I read every word as soon as I could understand them all, and what a gift...

The visionary of the geostationary satellite orbit... or should we say Clarke orbit?
R.I.P. Arthur

Me too - Christmas 1971. I still have it, dog ears and all. It changed my life.

Jon

Would many of us be here at UMSF without him? Thank you Arthur C. Clarke.

May you rest amongst the stars you allowed us to dream about.

James

Arthur C Clarke: "How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Ultreya et Sus Eia Arcturus!

Thank you for showing the way.

I had a few words with Arthur C. Clarke at the 1970 State University of New York at Buffalo's Spring Arts Festival: "The Universe of Science Fiction", and he autographed my copy of the Promise of Space. I sat beside him for a few minutes in the campus student center's theatre watching a random part of one of the showings of 2001.

We were glad he missed the next part of the festival, where some black activists) deeply offended that a white usher had actually TOUCHED one of their "sisters" while trying to prevent her and some friends from going into the theatre without tickets) held up the projectionist at knifepoint and ripped the running movie from the film projector, demanding firing of the (unpaid volunteer) usher, apologies all around from the university, free passes to blacks to movies for the rest of the season, and assorted groveling and snivelling.

Apologies were duely made by the university's Quisling Administration, and the entire spring semester's film program was cancelled (for student safety), only to be reinstitated shortly after the spring arts festival ended.

I got several life lessons from that sorry little fiasco, but otherwise had a great time with the festival, with Harlan Ellison, Gordy Dickson, Ann McCaffrey and Poul Anderson as guest speakers, besides the lead guest speaker, Arthur C. himself.

Get me virtually drunk enough on ginger beer and I'll tell the story of what happened when one of my best friends went to the airport in his VW Beetle with Ann McCaffrey to pick up Harlan Ellision.... (only wish we had a physical documentation of the event, not just my friend's recollection)

This is a great loss. I was already depressed by the death of my father, less than one month ago...
Clarke was a fantastic writer, scientist and divulgator, his stories and the 2001 movie deeply influenced me.
I will soon make a tribute to such great personality and to S.Kubrik too.

RIP, Arthur!

Arthur C. Clark inspired generations as an engineer, writer, screenwriter, and visionary.

The scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the proto-human throws a bone-tool into the sky in triumph and it morphs into an orbiting space station captures the essence of humanity's accomplishments and inspiration.

The impact of his contribution to mankind is beyond measure.

-Mike


[Here is a link to the final 24 minute sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey set to Pink Floyd's Echoes. It is rumored that this was the score originally set for the final sequence, but that Pink Floyd decided not to be associated with the movie. Reportedly, not having Pink Floyd's score in 2001 was Roger Waters's biggest regret.] http://video.aol.com/video-detail/pink-flo...scene/823783537

Arthur C. Clarke once said, "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." (source: IMDb)

The world will miss him. I hope we can do his memory proud.

My favorite science fiction story of all time has always been his Rescue Party. The inspirational vision of humanity given in that story has always caused me to tear up. The story is available for free on the Internet at http://www.webscription.net/chapters/07434...3498747___1.htm

You shouldn't.....
Herman Oberth or Herman Potočnik's orbit maybe...

I red "First Born" (coautored Stephen Baxter) 2 months ago and the same inspiration was still there. He was a giant.

Oberth wrote about communications satellites (using heliographs). They were not in geostationary orbit (AFAIK), not were they using radio, which was the thrust of Clarke's paper. Noordung did tak about geostationary radio communications, but did not do a rigorous technical study of the issues, which Clarke did.

Jon

One of mine, too... ...amazingly, also his first published SF story. The thought of fossilized radios in billion-year old strata on another world always fascinated me...

R.I.P. Arthur Clarke, may your next destination be "full of stars"

Interesting, very illuminating portrait of him:

http://www.wired.com/culture/art/news/2008...arthur_c_clarke

It's thirty years and more since I read it, but I vaguely remember a line in The Sentinel where - upon the initial discovery of the alien artifact emplaced on the Moon - one of the characters burns the breakfast sausages.

Everytime I destroy something in the kitchen, and render the edible inedible, I find myself thinking, in that Clarkesian accent "these pancakes/potatoes/lasagne/whatever have made their trip in vain..."

Andy

I know that this might not be consensual (who likes consensus anyway?...) but wouldn't it be a fair tribute to ACC to have the Phoenix landing site named after him? The Sir Arthur Charles Clarke Memorial Station? Is it the right time and place for such naming?
I'm curious about your opinion here...

I'm wondering how featureless the Phoenix landing site will be, will it be worthy of such a name? Someone mentioned the idea a Europa mission should bear his name. I don't know, I think it would probably be more fitting to name the landing site of the first Europa lander (if there ever is one) after him.

He already has an asteroid. A lunar crater is a must - you need to be deceased to get one of those.

I have an idea to remember Arthur C. Clarke. Could the IAU dump the "Song Of Roland" naming convention on Iapetus and name all the features on the moon after names and places that appear in his books.

Name a Europa lander after ACC? After he specifically told us to attempt no landings there???



-the other Doug

Well, technically, it was not him who told us that!

Sad new
He had a great life and bring many many things to SF.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke.

I've been inspired by Arthur's writing since my late teens and feel the world has truly lost one in 6.5 billion.

It's a shame Arthur never got to experience space travel first hand or to walk on the Moon but I feel it was fitting that at the time of his death, day was breaking over Mare Imbrium; the backdrop to so many of his works.

Farewell Arthur.

And that a colossal GRB took place 7.5 billion light years away from Earth...looks like Arthur's way of telling is that the journey went just perfectly...

Some people at least paid attention to the book at the time. Excavated from from my collection of notable quotations:

"Our picture of the current state of Iapetus has, to some extent, been anticipated on rather different grounds by Clarke (1968). We are, however, unable to substantiate his claim that the center of the bright region contains a curious dark structure."[A.F. Cook and F.A. Franklin, An explanation of the light curve of Iapetus, Icarus 13, 282 (1970)]

I am impressed... also italian press highlighted the coincidence.
Would be great to rename this GRB after him!
Byebye Arthur!

I'd heard of this, but honestly can't remember ever seeing the actual quote or the paper title before now. Thanks, NGC!

IIRC, one of the Apollo 8 crew members was strongly tempted to radio back discovery of a black monolith on the lunar farside, but (wisely) decided against it...

(For anyone who is a true aficionado of 2001, both the movie and the book, highly recommend The Lost Worlds of 2001 by ACC. Long out of print, of course, probably a bit hard to find, but worth it if you can. Lots of anecdotes about the development of the whole concept, and also several chapters that were ultimately not included in the book. One memorable passage describes the first Mars rover approaching a cluster of boulders...one of which stands up on numerous legs & moves out of the rover's way...)

This is a planned imaging sequence to be taken by the Spirit rover during sol 1513 (Apr 5, 2008).



A small tribute from the MER Project to one of the greatest SF writers and a man who contributed to start/increase the interest on science and space in many of us.

Is it the square rock, a la monolyth, to the left?

No, it isn't.
Here's the image taken after him. It points in the general direction of El Dorado but I have no idea which feature is the focus of attention.

That'll be the usual El Dorado monitoring scheme.

Doug

Forget what I've said, I was thinking about Oppy when we are talking about Spirit here...

I'm not so sure that it is part of the 'usual' El Dorado monitoring. That doesn't usually require super-res does it?

It does however look awfully like El Dorado was the target of the sequence. I really have no idea what, if anything, has been named after ACC at Gusev.

Perhaps they're targeting the collapse/lanslide near the top of the frame?

Note: I just got a high speed line and so could watch this video.

If you are a fan of pink floyd and 2001, this is a must see video. Go to a quiet dark place, turn off the lights and fire this thing up!
It's amazing the sensibilities of the two works mesh perfectly and it held my interest more than the original movie ending.
that was a wonderous era.
R.I.P Stanley kubrick and Arthur Clark

Brian

Juramike: 'Arthur C. Clarke once said, "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." (source: IMDb)'

Yep; and that really is the point of true SF. Everytime we explore, we raise at least as many questions as we find answers. Keeps us interested, keeps us curious, keeps us going farther and farther and farther...and, oh by the way, the answers we DO find somehow improve our lives and our civilization. Weird; but fundamental.

Here's some hubris: I understand the end of 2001. The Starchild, reborn from a mortal modern man, is the next step in our evolution. He contemplates the Earth in its apparent placidity from orbit, yet comprehends the chaos below. To paraphrase the novel and in order to progress us beyond our current state:

He will think of something.

(Best damn SF novel & movie ever!)

My understanding has always been that Kubrick edited 2001 against a temp music track composed of classical music, and after the film was mostly complete it was shipped off to one Alex North, who wrote a complete symphonic score for the film. Kubrick looked at the film with North's score and rejected it, having fallen in love with the temp score he used to edit against. No Pink Floyd contribution was ever mentioned in these accounts.

Also, recall that this was mid- to late-1967 when the scoring decisions were being made. Pink Floyd wasn't really generating a lot of "noise" in the music industry yet. I get the feeling that this is an apocryphal story, born more out of the coincidental musical confluences drug-addled minds found between PF's "The Wall" and "The Wizard of Oz" more than anything else... and of course, stories that PF was originally going to score Oz would be so self-obviously ridiculous that the story migrated on to 2001.

As with most things, of course, I could be wrong...

-the other Doug