RIP Arthur C Clarke

[btpaul674]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/03/18/obit.clarke/index.html

[david johnson]

i've read and really liked his early short stories and novels, but i didn't care for his late stuff.

dj

[Szykneij]

i've read and really liked his early short stories and novels, but i didn't care for his late stuff.

dj

Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

[david johnson]

 ...that better?   

nothing really against him, i just think his early stuff is his best...same with asimov.

be at peace, arthur.

dj

[karlhenning]

...same with asimov.

Well, it got to a point where he didn't actually write the books bearing his name, right? 

[david johnson]

Well, it got to a point where he didn't actually write the books bearing his name, right? 

i do not know.  who did it?  did later asimov sketch out an idea and someone ghosted it for him?

dj

[DavidW]

i've read and really liked his early short stories and novels, but i didn't care for his late stuff.

dj

Yeah I agree.  My favorite novels (but it's been awhile my tastes could have changed) were Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End.  The later stuff, especially all those sequels to 2001 were boring.

[Joe Barron]

2001 was my favorite movie when i was younger, and Clarke is the only science fiction author I've read, but I wonder if he didn't do more harm than good by selling an entire generation on the idea that the mass of humanity has some kind of future in colonizing space. There are six and a half billion people alive today, and maybe a hundred of them will ever go off world. Of course, we'll continue to have communications satellites and an orbital presence in space, and I favor unmanned probes to the planets, but the earth is the only place we can live comfortably, where we can breathe. We and the the earth evolved together, and Clarke may be ultimately responsible for our giving up on it. Who would want to live in space? It's boring, dangerous and expensive. my mother used to say the money sending men to the moon could have been better spent at home. I thought she was wrong at the time, but I have reconsidered. Vonnegut considered the moon shots a stunt, and I've some to agree with him, too. When Neil Armstrong stepped off the LEM, we who were young believed space was the future, largely because of Clarke's writing and the movie 2001. Then the moon launches stopped, and some us us realized we were wrong, and so was Clarke.

Mark Twain blamed Walter Scott in very a real sense for causing the American Civil War.  By allowing the South to disguise the slave system in chivalric dreams, Scott did more harm than any writer who ever lived, Twain said. (Burning crosses is right out of Scott.). And Wagner directly inspired Hitler, of course. I wouldn't say Clarke is as bad as either, but I've been thinking of him recently, even before he died, as a similar kind of dangerous influence on the 20th century.

[DavidW]

I agree with your mum.  And one thing I can say is that I see a trend in current sf for writers to push biotech as the future and not colonization.  But let's just hope that we're not heading towards Philip K Dick style dystopian futures though.

[karlhenning]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

[DavidW]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Was it pigs in space?

[Ephemerid]

I wonder if his last words were: "My God, its full of stars..."

[Josquin des Prez]

I thought she was wrong at the time, but I have reconsidered.

She's still wrong. If everybody shared that mentality we would still be living in caves.

[Joe Barron]

She's still wrong. If everybody shared that mentality we would still be living in caves.

I disagree. There's a qualitative difference between sailing the seas or moving from one continent to another, or inventing the car, and presuming to leave the earth. Space travel has been hugely expensive and only a few people have taken part directly.

Actually, I misspioke when  io said he was the only science ficton writer I've ever read. After Vonnegut died, I picked up Sirens of Titan for the first time, and I loved it. Much more imaginative than anything Clarke did, even if the technology wasn't as plausible. A terrific book.

[Joe Barron]

Was it pigs in space?

Maybe it was Jews in space ...

[karlhenning]

Mercy!

[karlhenning]

But leave us not forget, Joe, who was the first Jew in space!

[MN Dave]

Yeah I agree.  My favorite novels (but it's been awhile my tastes could have changed) were Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End.  The later stuff, especially all those sequels to 2001 were boring.

Mine as well.

[Lethevich]

I disagree. There's a qualitative difference between sailing the seas or moving from one continent to another, or inventing the car, and presuming to leave the earth. Space travel has been hugely expensive and only a few people have taken part directly.

Cars were initially an absurd plaything for the elite, which then became mass-market through development. There will be no mass-market space travel without a similar process happening (although it will take longer as space is much more difficult). The beginning of "space tourism" is a perfect example of an evolution towards the common man occuring - it's just very slow.

[DavidW]

Cars were initially an absurd plaything for the elite, which then became mass-market through development. There will be no mass-market space travel without a similar process happening (although it will take longer as space is much more difficult). The beginning of "space tourism" is a perfect example of an evolution towards the common man occuring - it's just very slow.

The other planets don't offer breathable atmospheres though, travel to them would take months or even years.  Mass market space tourism doesn't even make sense at any future time.

Cars were never that absurd because it offered horseless fast travel from A to B, like trains did but for individuals and families.  Cars have a utilitarian purpose, even when they were first invented, the same can't be said for space travel.