Arthur C. Clarke Makes His Last Orbit Around the Sun

My Arthur C. Clarke collection.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clarke's Third Law. Arthur C. Clarke, 1973.

Harken the words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke! What a fascinating man, indeed. The hard science fiction writer, futurist and inventor has been a giant in the scientific community for decades. A beacon of science and technology, Sir Clarke's influence on the scientific community, and humanity in general, is unparalleled. I was fortunate enough to run across Clarke's writings during college. I'd always known and loved 2001: A Space Odyssey because of the film by Stanley Kubrick. Most of all, I enjoyed his writings for their relevance and ofttimes prophetic nature. In 1962, Profiles of the Future was published in book-form. Here's what my Bantam paperback edition published in 1964 says on the back cover:

"'Contact with extra-terrestrials.'
'Artificial breeding of intelligent animals.'
'Machines which can duplicate everything including themselves.'
'Human imortality.'

No! This is not the world of science fiction! This is how we will actually live in the year 2100 A.D. when gravity will be controlled by man, when robots will probe the secrets of earth's interior, when machines will be more intelligent that the most intelligent human beings!

This is the wonder world of the future as seen by Arthur C. Clarke, the distinguished author and scientist. Here is a brilliant, fascinating prediction of the next one hundred fifty years of Man."

In the above mentioned work, Clarke refers to a "global library" to be available to all by 2005. Whether or not Google directly references Clarke in their Google Books Library Project, he's ostensibly in the background, providing inspiration for new paradigm shifts in thinking.

Most importantly, he inspires mankind to strive for something greater. There is nothing impossible! Whether his predictions were off-the-mark, or right-on is not as important as his vast influence on the scientific and literary communities, and humankind in general.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Sri Lanka of breathing complications on 19 March 2008; merely days after he'd reviewed the final manuscript of his latest work, The Last Theorem, co-written with Frederik Pohl.