Arthur C. Clarke, RIP

“
Childhood's end: Arthur C. Clarke passes away at age 90
By Ben Kuchera | Published: March 18, 2008 - 06:40PM CT

Arthur C. Clarke is perhaps best known for his three laws of prediction. These laws may not have been perfectly planned, and the second one was added by his readers; it simply appeared in the same essay as the first. The third was added by Clarke 11 years later, making an even set. The laws state:

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.

These are simple words, but in them exists a very singular hope: science can do anything that strong and able minds ask it to, and that a faith in science doesn't remove one from a sense of wonder. This is still an important message, that science doesn't mean magic doesn't exist, it just means that magic is something that takes discipline and time to learn and wield. Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at the age of 90 but, in these simple laws, he gave something we'll never lose: a blueprint for dreaming.

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanly Kubrick launched a novel experiment in storytelling when they began to work on 2001: a Space Odyssey together. The movie and the novel, both based on a short story called "The Sentinel," would be created at the same time. Due to circumstances, the book ended up being released well past the release of the movie, but science fiction fans know that both can be enjoyed singly, or together. The movie is an amazingly visual journey that exists as a sort of cerebral puzzle, open to many interpretations. The book is a much more fully conceptualized piece of literature. Both are worth your time.

Do yourself a favor and find a friend who hasn't seen the movie or read the book in a while, and launch into your own experiment. One of you read the book, and then watch the movie. The other watch the movie, and then read the book. Get together and discuss the journey that both take you on, and how they influenced each other. These days, science fiction movies wrap up their endings in small little packages, this movie and novel will give you the stars. Show a gamer the film, and you'll realize how these visions still resonate with modern audiences. Would we really have had a scene where our nameless protagonist destroys a rogue AI in Portal by destroying her piece by piece as she tries to talk you out of it without Clarke's HAL?

Clarke didn't just give us great fiction, although that will be a major part of his legacy. He had degrees in science and mathematics, and his nonfiction work is important in a way that's hard to overestimate. While Clarke didn't invent the idea of geosynchronous orbit—that honor belongs to Herman Potočnik—Clarke did see the promise of this idea for communication and wrote extensive about the idea. Most broadcast satellites orbit the earth in geosynchronous orbits, sometimes called Clarke orbits. With Clarke's love of differing mediums, from the printed word to his television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers and his fascination with instant communication such as e-mail, this must have been a satisfying legacy indeed: the idea that his work has increased our connection with each other.

Clarke was also a believer in the technology of space elevators, with the idea that an object in geostationary orbit with Earth, connected to a terrestrial location via a number of possible materials, could be a cheap and effective way to place objects into space. Arthur C. Clarke died before this technology matured, but work continues on the concept. It's very possible in the next decade we'll see space elevators being used to cheaply deliver payloads into orbit.

George Whitesides was the executive director of the National Space Society. He said that Clarke's enthusiasm "was what I think made him so popular in many way..

"He was always thinking about what could come next but also about how life could be improved in the future," Whitesides told the BBC. "It's a vision that I think we could use more of today."

One of the striking themes of Clarke's work was the moment where we made contact with another intelligence, and what it might do to us. This lead to powerful scenes, but the thought behind it was almost plaintive. Technology is getting more powerful, and yet we're still our normal, violent and hateful messes. Clarke seemed sometimes to be looking into the stars and wishing for help. What he may not have realized is that with his fierce intelligence and limitless imagination he was helping us, and in the work he left behind he will continue to help us. He knew that technology can make the world better, and that a rational mind was no less beautiful than any other.

”

“Where ya been, Small Town?”

“
The Nine Billion Names of God

by Arthur Clarke

"This is a slightly unusual request," said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. "As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone’s been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly thought that your --ah-- establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?"

"Gladly," replied the lama, readjusting his silk robe and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. "Your Mark V computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing words, not columns of figures."

"I don’t understand . . ."

"This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries -- since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it."

"Naturally."

"It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We have reason to believe," continued the lama imperturbably, "that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised."

"And you have been doing this for three centuries?"

"Yes. We expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task."

"Oh." Dr. Wagner looked a little dazed. "Now I see why you wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what is the purpose of this project?"

The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance in the reply.

"Call it ritual, if you like, but it’s a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being -- God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on -- they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters, which can occur, are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all."

"I see. You’ve been starting at AAAAAAAAA . . . and working up to ZZZZZZZZZ . . ."

"Exactly -- though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is, of course, trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession."

"Three? Surely you mean two."

"Three is correct. I am afraid it would take too long to explain why, even if you understood our language."

"I’m sure it would," said Wagner hastily. "Go on."

"Luckily it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic sequence computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a thousand days."

Dr. Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made, mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been patiently at work, generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any limit to the follies of mankind? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right . . .

"There’s no doubt," replied the doctor, "that we can modify the Mark V to print lists of this nature. I’m much more worried about the problem of installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not going to be easy."

"We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air -- that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India, we will provide transport from there."

"And you want to hire two of our engineers?"

"Yes, for the three months which the project should occupy."

"I’ve no doubt that Personnel can manage that." Dr. Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. "There are just two other points--"

Before he could finish the sentence, the lama had produced a small slip of paper.

"This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank."

"Thank you. It appears to be--ah--adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it -- but it’s surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy have you?"

"A diesel generator providing 50 kilowatts at 110 volts. It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. It’s made life at the lamasery much more comfortable, but of course it was really installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels."

"Of course," echoed Dr. Wagner. "I should have thought of that."

The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to anything. After three months George Hanley was not impressed by the two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose names he had never bothered to discover.

This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. "Project Shangri-La," some wit at the labs had christened it. For weeks now, Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books. In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn’t bother to go on to words of ten, twenty, or a hundred letters, George didn’t know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan and that the High Lama (whom they’d naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn’t look a bit like him) would suddenly announce that the project would be extended to approximately 2060 A.D. They were quite capable of it.

George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks -- who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in their favor: they might be crazy, but they weren’t bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village, for instance . . ." "Listen, George," said Chuck urgently. "I’ve learned something that means trouble."

"What’s wrong? Isn’t the machine behaving?" That was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay his return, than which nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would be some link from home.

"No -- it’s nothing like that." Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual, because normally he was scared of the drop.

"I’ve just found out what all this is about."

"What d’ya mean -- I thought we knew."

"Sure -- we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn’t know why. It’s the craziest thing --"

"Tell me something new," growled George.

" . . . but old Sam’s just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he’ll ever get to it. When I told him we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I’d ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, ‘Sure’ -- and he told me."

"Go on, I’ll buy it."

"Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names -- and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them -- God’s purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy."

"Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?"

"There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply winds things up . . . bingo!"

"Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world."

Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.

"That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ‘It’s nothing as trivial as that’."

George thought this over for a moment.

"That’s what I call taking the Wide View," he said presently.

"But what d’ya suppose we should do about it? I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference to us. After all, we already knew that they were crazy."

"Yes -- but don’t you see what may happen? When the list’s complete and the Last Trump doesn’t blow -- or whatever it is that they expect -- we may get the blame. It’s our machine they’ve been using. I don’t like the situation one little bit."

"I see," said George slowly. "You’ve got a point there. But this sort of thing’s happened here before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him-- even sold their homes. Yet nothing happened; they didn’t turn nasty, as you’d expect. They just decided that he’d made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do."

"Well, this isn’t Louisiana, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I’ll be sorry for old Sam when his lifework backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else."

"I’ve been wishing that for weeks. But there’s nothing we can do until the contract’s finished and the transport arrives to fly us out."

"Of course," said Chuck thoughtfully, "we could always try a bit of sabotage."

"Like hell we could! That would make things worse."

"Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. O.K., then all we need to do is to find something that wants replacing during one of the overhaul periods -- something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We’ll fix it, of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register. They won’t be able to catch us then."

"I don’t like it," said George. "It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I’ll sit tight and take what comes."

"I still don’t like it," he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. "And don’t you think I’m running away because I’m afraid. I’m just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don’t want to be around when they find what suckers they’ve been. Wonder how Sam will take
it?"

"It’s funny," replied Chuck, "but when I said goodbye I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him -- and that he didn’t care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After that -- well, of course, for him there just isn’t any After That . . ."

George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset; here and there lights gleamed like portholes in the sides of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again?

He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm, of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall.

"There she is!" called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. "Ain’t she beautiful!"

She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC-3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll around in his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.

The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately the road was very good, as roads went in this region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.

"Should be there in an hour," he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought, "Wonder if the computer’s finished its run? It was due about now."

Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck’s face, a white oval turned toward the sky.

"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

”

“Arthur C. Clarke
“http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3579120.ece

co-authored the script/book for my favorite movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

R.I.P.”
Sarge
5:07:01 PM
3/18/08


Scooped tiltypoo
How many dead threads do we need?”

“Three threads to say he died?

Get real people.”

“Salud Arthur C.”

“Well Sarge, you know tiltypoo has this great need to appear "smart".”

“
Science Fiction Legend Arthur C. Clarke, 90, Dies

Clarke died at a hospital near his home in Sri Lanka early Wednesday. His science fiction married Western scientific tradition with Eastern mysticism.

By Mitch Wagner
InformationWeek
March 18, 2008 07:44 PM



Arthur C. Clarke, the science-fiction writer who co-authored the screenplay and book 2001: A Space Odyssey and who came up with the idea for the communications satellite in the 1940s, died at a hospital near his home in Sri Lanka early Wednesday. He was 90.
"He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit," said Scott Chase, secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke foundation, in a statement on the author's Web site.

Clarke's science-fiction married the Western scientific tradition with Eastern mysticism. His stories and novels frequently revolved around how advancing technology pushes the human race to the next stage of human evolution, often overseen by kindly, godlike aliens.

He coined Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel," about the discovery of an ancient, alien artifact on the moon, was loosely adapted into the movie and novel 2001 more than a decade later. He wrote three sequel novels.

Other famous Clarke novels include Childhood's End (1953), a story about alien invaders of Earth who serve as benevolent overlords of the human race, and Rendezvous With Rama, in which a research team is sent to investigate a giant, cylindrical spaceship hurtling through the solar system, which, like 2001, spawned sequels.

In his short-story "The Star," a group of astronauts visits a planet revolving around the star that was the Star of Bethlehem, and a minister in the group is shaken by what he finds there. And in "The Nine Billion Names Of God," a group of monks buys a mainframe computer to transcribe God's 9 billion names.

Clarke was born in the coastal town of Minehead, England, the eldest of four children, according to the biography on his Web site. His father died when he was 14 and his mother gave riding lessons to support the family.

Clarke served from 1941 to 1946 in the Royal Air Force, specializing in radar, and sold his first science-fiction stories then, and developed the idea for communications satellites in a 1945 technical paper.

After the war he entered King's College in London and took his B.Sc. with honors in physics and mathematics in 1948. He wrote his first published novel, Prelude To Space, during three weeks in the summer of 1947. He was a full-time writer since 1952, and moved to Sri Lanka in the 1950s following his interest in undersea exploration.

In 1962, Clarke became completely paralyzed after an accidental blow to the head, but he recovered.

He started using a word processor to write in 1982.

”

“Thanks for the info Tilt. The internet is cool. The information just flies in your face, no search necessary. Can we get a USB 2.0 link to Trailtalk, and you could just copy and paste right into our brains.”

“
                The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

”

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March 19, 2008

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

RELEASE: 08-083

NASA STATEMENT ON THE DEATH OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE

WASHINGTON - The following is a statement from Alan Stern, NASA
associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at
Headquarters in Washington, regarding the death of Arthur C. Clarke:

"Arthur Clarke was a gifted writer of science and science fiction, and
an unparalleled visionary of the future, inspiring countless young
people throughout the middle and later 20th century with his hopeful
vision of how spaceflight would transform societies, economies, and
humankind itself.

"Although his personal odyssey here on Earth is now over, his vision
lives on through his writing; he will be sorely missed."

”

“Still RIPPIN' on A.C. Clarke?”

“
      He was......   The Man.

”

“OK...................but Elvis was still The King.”

“.....and Kirby Grant was Sky King!”

“


        Wow.



Dat pig's got too many leggs.

”