| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.157.125.4 |
RIP, alas. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
No! | ||
| Mick (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.169.90 |
Yep, just saw this on't news. 90 though... | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
That was my reaction Griff, and actually I was about to lament having missed the toast and transition to the new board...I hadn't even been online to read the news today. Mad busy these weeks. RIP. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 84.43.90.227 |
Captain Birdseye? Arthur C.Clarke? Anthony Minghella? They always go in 3's...Very sad. gcw | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.230.225.100 |
sniff sniff  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.83 |
RIP. Another great one leaves this mortal coil. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.57.67 |
RIP 90 - is a good age to get to though and what achievements! | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.97.200.24 |
I remember getting blown away by his short story The Nine Billion Names of God when I first discovered it in the school library when I was fourteen or fifteen....Also started reading the Bradbury stuff for the first time right around then. It was really the first Science Fiction stuff I had read... Hope Fincher does Rama with Morgan Freeman- they have been developing the project for years and years. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Half a sikh lark. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/science-fiction/3-1.jpg Did he wrtite this one? HOHO. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.214.10 |
Tee hee I've just bought the PS version of 'Tales from the White Hart'. Seems like the most appropriate time to read it | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
I posted this on the old RCMB, when I thought I couldn't get on the new one. I wanted to say it twice: Like Justin, I was infinitely sad to hear of Arthur C Clarke’s passing. He was one of the Gods of my childhood too, and the only one I still paid anything like homage to in adulthood. Just his very name was enough to set my heart racing with excitement as a child. Here was someone who not only wrote about the future, but with his satellite dish and underwater safari business, days in the tropical sun, seemed to be living at the spearhead of the space age. His achievements are too long to list, but some of his major achievements range from proponent of satellite relay stations (incredibly he worked out the technical details in the 1940s) to advocate for a peaceful colonisation of space (he faced down considerable criticism from his more gung-ho SF writers, his good friend Robert A Heinlein especially, to condemn Ronald Reagan’s STAR WARS initiative). Often visionary, his forecasts were startlingly prophetic. His fiction and non-fiction work contained an easy lyricism whilst remaining clear and lucid, so that you had the impression he was not only writing about the future, but very probably living in it also. Of his fiction, for which he will best be remembered, he wrote a number of perfect short stories (on ts recent reissue, the critic Jeremy Jehu noted Clarke's first collection, EXPEDITION TO EARTH, was a lesson in the art of writing the short form), and damn near perfect novels. Robert Silverberg thought THE CITY AND THE STARS “his most perfect work”, while Heinlein and Asimov strongly rated RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA. Quite rightly, his novel CHILDHOOD’S END is often regarded as one of SF’s jewels in the crown, along with HG Wells’s TIME MACHINE and Frank Herbert’s DUNE. Astronomers recently voted it their favourite science fiction novel, most of them citing the saddest of all lines in the book about the stars not being for man. His most "literary" work, is probably THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE, a fictionalised mixture of Sri Lanka's past and future history. 2001 captures, like no book and movie before or since, the immensity of space and mankind’s briefly flickering candle-like existence in the dark. He did not write of wars with the vigour other SF writers too often do; instead Clarke’s wonder at the universe shone through in his work, showing space as the new frontier, with wonders barely imaginable to be found to replace our bloodlust; he did it with an optimism that the human spirit could transcend its ape past and ascend to the angelic. And he did it with good humour too, as apparent in his attitude to life as well as in his fiction. For his 90th birthday celebrations, he wore a T-shirt with the slogan emblazoned across the chest: I don’t feel a day over 80. And when told NASA had decided that when he died his ashes would be carried into space, he replied: “I can hardly wait.” My own personal favourite Clarke book, and the book I would take with me for my Desert Island novel, is THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH. More than any other book, it influenced the way I think and see the universe; I was transformed in the reading, and the book made me a humanist. Colin Wilson wrote of it, that it would change the way the disaffected youth of our age viewed the universe, and he couldn’t have been more right in my case. On a more minor note, Sir Arthur also trail-blazed the fashion of the sarong for men, long before David Beckham had a go at it. He’s gone now, and the world is surely a poorer place for that. Brian Aldiss says that in time he’ll be widely regarded as one of the all time greats, his reputation growing with the passing years, and I daresay that’s true. His name does not seem out of place with Jules Verne and HG Wells. I didn’t know him personally, but his books have affected my life enormously and for the better. Just knowing he was in Sri Lanka, casting a wry eye over the proceedings of humanity, cheered me up in the dark hours of our recent history. I miss you, Arthur. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.83 |
Well said, Lynchy. You can't top that. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Cheers, Zed. Hmm. This is intriguing: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/03/20/kimberly-pearce-gives-the-devil-his-due-in- arthur-c-clarkes-childhoods-end/ Kubrik wanted to film it but couldn't figure out how. I didn't know someone else was having a go. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.189.60 |
I highly recommend the intriguing short story "The Wall of Darkness". It will be with me as long as I live. And 2001, of course. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
"Wall of Darkness" has one of the all time great opening paragraphs of any SF tale. | ||
| Mick (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.154.242.140 |
I don't think I own any of Clarke's work at all. I read his stuff avidly years back, but haven't touched it for probably twenty years. I recall loving FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE and CHILDHOOD'S END, as well as RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and stuff such as TALES FROM THE WHITE HART. Any recommendations from his more recent stuff? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Uh, his more recent stuff is best viewed as an epilogue toa great career, Mick. Which isn't to say you shouldn't read it, but that it's not as well-developed as the stuff in his prime. If AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT, PRELUDE TO SPACE and SANDS OF MARS made up the prologue to his career, then 2061, THE GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS, THE HAMMER OF GOD and 3001 are the books making that epilogue. Of his recent fiction, then, THE COLLECTED STORIES is the one I'd get. But the later novels are still worth a read if you're not expecting too much from them. He was very ill when he wrote them. I'd probably go for GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS of those novels, but they all have something to recommend them, flashes of his old poetry and imagination. Of his collaborative efforts with US writers, where he acted as ideas man and editor, I'd say only GARDEN OF RAMA is worth a read. His books comprising the Time Odyssey Trilogy, written with/by Stephen Baxter are good, mind. TIME'S EYE and SUNSTORM, the as yet unreleased in the UK FIRSTBORN. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Folk may be interested to know there's a look back on ACC's body of work on OPEN BOOK right now, this afternoon, on Radio 4. The show can be listened to again on BBC online, and it's repeated Thursday afternoon. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.154.242.64 |
Cheers for that, Mark - I'll try to record it on thursday | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Muriel Grey was hosting, Mick, and it was short, but sweet, at least. She's a fan, and rightly, I thought, suggested Clarke to be one of the all time great short story writers. Worth a listen. I'm looking forward to THE LAST THEOREM, which I've been promised for my birthday. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 87.102.90.30 |
Did someone mention my pal Muriel? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
She didn't mention you, I'm afraid, matey. But I'm sure she'd be thinking of you . . . |