RIP Arthur C. Clarke

When many people hear the name of Arthur C. Clarke, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which ironically opened in theaters forty years ago, next month, comes to mind. But the impact of Sir Arthur on-well--everything in the past sixty years was so much more.

Shortly after World War II, Clarke published a paper in Wireless World describing the concept of the Communication Satellite. If he had done nothing else in his life, this very insight which eventually revolutionized telecommunications would have been enough to bring Clarke ever-lasting fame.

Clarke would also write nonfiction, mostly about the promise of space exploration. But it was Clarke's stories and novels, touching again and again on the themes of the wonder and majesty of space travel and of the prospect of human transcendence that earned him the title of Poet Laureate of the Space Age.

One of his earliest stories, Rescue Party, depicts an alien space ship arriving at an Earth on the brink of total destruction, but oddly enough with no people present. When the aliens find where the people have gone, the bold daring of what the former inhabitants of the doomed Earth is heart lifting.

A personal favorite is a novel called The City and the Stars, which is set on a dying Earth billions of years in the future where humankind has retreated from the stars to cower in the last city on Earth, a technological paradise. But one young man is discontented enough to break free from the city, which he finds a prison, and seek once again fulfillment, at first in the outside world, and then out to the stars.

Childhood's End, an atypical Clarke novel, is set on a near future Earth in which aliens have arrived and have established a benign dictatorship. The problems of war, poverty, disease, and so on are eliminated. But the aliens have a hidden agenda, one that involves fostering the next step in human evolution.

Other novels in Clarke's early years included Prelude to Space (written in the early 50s about the first expedition to the Moon), The Sands of Mars, Earthlight, and A Fall of Moondust.

Of course Clarke is best known for the film and the book 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on an early short story of his, The Sentinel. 2001, directed by Stanley Kubrick, was released in April, 1968 and it was a marvel. A full year before the voyage of Apollo 11, 2001 was a vision of the future that depicted giant, wheeled space stations, lunar colonies, and nuclear powered space craft exploring the deepest reaches of space. The final third of the film, very much misunderstood at the time, returned to Clarke's theme of human transcendence as an astronaut is hurtled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy by an unknown, alien intelligence and becomes the next step of evolution.

Few people alive at the time of 2001's release can view the film now without a certain twinge of regret and sadness. While people in 1968 were certain that 2001 depicted pretty much what was going to be, the reality of 2001 did not quite measure up to the film version. Our 2001 was not the year of space exploration or human transcendence. It was the year of terror, the beginning of the long war.

2001 spawned three sequels, which constitute Clarke's greatest work. Even though many consider 2001 the apex of Clarke's career, he wrote many worthy stories in subsequent years. These include Imperial Earth, Rendezvous with Rama (also in development for a film), The Fountains of Paradise (which popularized the concept of the space elevator), and Songs of Distant Earth.

Arthur C. Clarke was bestowed innumerable honors in his lifetime, including a knighthood. The one award he did not get, but so richly deserved, was a Nobel Peace Prize, for which he was several times nominated. Not only did his literary works illuminate and educate, but the communication satellite helped to make the dissemination of information easier and thus undermined the bedrock of tyranny in whatever form.

Arthur C. Clarke died far too soon at the age of 90 in his beloved Sri Lanka, where he had lived the past fifty years. There should be some kind of monument to his memory and his achievements, other of course his many literary works. A most appropriate place for such a monument might be on the surface of the Moon, at or near the first community of human beings off this planet, living what Clarke wrote and dreamed about.