It was with sadness that I heard of the death of the science-fiction writer and inventor Arthur C. Clarke yesterday.
Clarke was a revolutionary, who wasn’t afraid to suggest ideas that sounded utterly insane to his contemporaries. He continued to back the space elevator right up until his death, and his book (and the screenplay he co-authored with the late Stanley Kubrick) 2001: A Space Odyssey brought the concept of space travel to the public, without wacky stories of aliens invading from the planet Zarg XVII.
In addition to his sci-fi work, he managed to weave into this a fascinating and thoughtful philosophy. Often, he would leave us to formulate our own images of characters in our head, only describing them as trained professionals. This caused some to scold that he was awful at development of characters; yet, in my opinion, they give his books a certain charm and enigma about them.
In a way, the monolith from the Odyssey series could be considered symbolic of Clarke’s work: mysterious, fascinating, enigmatic, gripping, and dangerous to certain sectors of society. Clarke was fascinated by religion, and yet considered it one of the worst anarchronisms remaining from pre-history: he pointed out that religion was often a justification for war, which it is: something which offended many people.
He also explored religion in his stories: for example, in The Nine Billion Names of God, a group of Buddhist monks attempts to discover the name of God, by hiring two Westerners to install a mainframe that can develop nine million possible permutations of sound, one of which is likely to be the name of God. It is said in the book that when this happens, the world will end. Clarke’s books hardly made for light reading, but they had a rich, tangible quality about them that was his hallmark.
I’d like to conclude this post by linking to a rather extraordinary video of Clarke’s 90th birthday reflections, recorded only in December. It shows how forward-thinking he really was: and, more excitingly, how accurate he was in his predictions.
What is particularly poignant is that Clarke had only just finished reviewing the final manuscript of his last novel, The Last Theorem.
Whilst losing Clarke is (while not surprising, considering his age) a travesty, let us not forget that his works will surely live on for many, many years to come.
