Arthur C. Clarke, the discoverer of geosynchronus orbits (and thus the creator of the communications satellite) and the last surviving member of the “Big Three” of science fiction, died early 19 March 2008. His aide, Rohan De Silva, said that Clarke, who had suffered a severe polio attack in 1962, and battled post-polio syndrome since 1984, died at 1:30AM after suffering breathing problems. He died after four days in the Apollo Hospital in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956.
Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Minehead, England, on 16 December 1917. His interest in science fiction was piqued when he bought his first copies of American pulp sf magazines at Woolworth’s. He also read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens. After high school (he didn’t earn his BS in physics and mathematics until after World War II), Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty’s Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.
In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system, but it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications—an idea whose time had decidedly not come. Clarke later sent the letter for publication to Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.
The meat of the paper was a series of diagrams and equations showing that “space stations” parked in a circular orbit roughly 22,240 miles above the equator would exactly match the Earth’s rotation period of 24 hours. In such an orbit, a satellite would remain above the same spot on the ground, providing a “stationary” target for transmitted signals, which could then be retransmitted to wide swaths of territory below. This so-called geostationary orbit has been officially designated the Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.
Later in life, Clarke called that paper “the most important thing I ever wrote.” In a wry piece entitled, “A Short Pre-History of Comsats, Or: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time,” he claimed that a lawyer had dissuaded him from applying for a patent. The lawyer, he said, thought the notion of relaying signals from space was too farfetched to be taken seriously.
But Clarke also said that nothing in the paper—from the notion of artificial satellites to the mathematics of the geostationary orbit—was new. His chief contribution was to clarify and publicize an idea whose time had almost come—a feat of consciousness-raising that he would continue to excel at throughout his career.
Clarke’s first science fiction story, “Rescue Party,” was published in the May 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction (now Analog). His first novel, Prelude to Space, was published in 1951. It was followed by several dozen more, including Against the Fall of Night (1953), Childhood’s End (1953), A Fall of Moondust (1961), The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), and The Hammer of God (1994).
Among his award-winning books and stories are:
“The Nine Billion Names of God” (published in 1953) won the 2004 Retro Hugo for Best Short Story
“The Star” won the 1956 Hugo for Best Short Story
“A Meeting with Medusa” with the 1973 Nebula for Best Novella
Rendezvous with Rama won the 1974 Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel
Imperial Earth (published in 1975) won the 2001 Gaylactic Spectrum Hall of Fame Award
The Fountains of Paradise won the 1980 Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel
Clarke was named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1986
Clarke was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1997
In time Clarke, along with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, became known as the Big Three of science fiction. The Asimov-Clarke Agreement, concluded in a taxi, stated that each would, when asked, claim the other was the greatest science fiction writer, and that he was number 2.
Clarke met film director Stanley Kubrick in 1964, and they decided to collaborate on a film based on his short story “The Sentinel,” which had been written in 1948. The result of that collaboration was 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the science fiction classic in which the self-aware computer HAL-9000 goes insane and kills his human crew on a mission to Jupiter. Clarke wrote the novel of the same name, and also its sequels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), which became the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact (released in 1984, Clarke had an uncredited cameo role); 2061: Odyssey Three (1988); and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997).
In television, Clarke worked with Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra as a commentator for CBS television’s coverage of the Apollo 12 and 15 space missions. His thirteen-part series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, aired in 1981. Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers followed in 1985, and in 1994, he hosted Mysterious Universe.
Not unlike Asimov, Clarke, too, will be remembered for his three laws, which were published in his Profiles of the Future (1962):
1. “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.”
2. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
3. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Among Clarke’s other legacies are:
* The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation which “was formed to promote the work and life of Sir Arthur in the country of his birth and childhood”
* The Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction
* The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards, which recognize UK achievements in space
Some of his non-writing awards include:
* a British knighthood: he was named a Knight Bachelor in 2000
* he received the Sri Lankabhimanya (“The Pride of Sri Lanka”), the nation’s highest civilian award, in 2005
* asteroid 4923 Clarke is named for him
* a species of ceratopsian dinosaur, Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei, is named for him
* the Mars Odyssey probe is named for his work
* the Apollo 13 command module, Odyssey, was named for his work
* he was the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving 1989-2004
* he was Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002
Edited 20 March 2008 to include this link to a Google search which returns a truly awesome number of articles about Clarke. The only thing that would have made it more impressive would be if he were alive to see what a world-wide impact his death has had.