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BobbyZ
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« on: 22:25:37, 18-03-2008 » |
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Died age 90.
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Dreams, schemes and themes
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martle
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« Reply #1 on: 22:27:01, 18-03-2008 » |
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90? Not bad! But a great thinker and author. Another one gone...
RIP
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Green. Always green.
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pim_derks
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« Reply #2 on: 22:53:45, 18-03-2008 » |
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I loved Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World when I was a little kid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnAG_60QEoIt was just as exciting as Unsolved Mysteries, but Clarke was a sceptic. He sometimes had James Randi as a guest on the programme. Unsolved Mysteries was pure entertainment, but Robert Stack's intonation was priceless.  Needless to say that I have this book on my bookshelf. Arthur C Clarke was a good friend of Alistair Cooke and in November 2001, not long after the 9/11 attacks, Cooke mentioned him in one of his Letters from America: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/letter_from_america/1664088.stmI never read Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, but perhaps I should read it in the near future. R.I.P. Arthur C Clarke |
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« Last Edit: 11:57:46, 19-03-2008 by pim_derks »
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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Jonathan
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« Reply #3 on: 19:38:39, 19-03-2008 » |
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I've read several of his books (not recently though) and perhaps this sad news will persuade me to read more.
A very clever, scientific writer.
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Best regards,
Jonathan
*********************************************
"as the housefly of destiny collides with the windscreen of fate..."
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martle
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« Reply #4 on: 19:43:24, 19-03-2008 » |
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Terry Pratchet was on R4 this morning saying that ACC 'put some science into science-fiction'. I hadn't realised that he'd predicted (and I think advised on the development of) satellite broadcasting technology.
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Green. Always green.
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Antheil
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« Reply #5 on: 20:03:32, 19-03-2008 » |
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Terry Pratchet was on R4 this morning saying that ACC 'put some science into science-fiction'. I hadn't realised that he'd predicted (and I think advised on the development of) satellite broadcasting technology.
Terry Pratchet (who I confess I have never read) has been diagnosed with early Alzheimers and it putting a lot of money into research into it. £500,000 evidently. Off-topic on this thread, but well done him I think. The funding for researching into this illness is evidently woefully neglected. |
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« Last Edit: 20:09:21, 19-03-2008 by Antheil the Termite Lover »
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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John W
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« Reply #6 on: 20:29:03, 19-03-2008 » |
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Terry Pratchet was on R4 this morning saying that ACC 'put some science into science-fiction'. I hadn't realised that he'd predicted (and I think advised on the development of) satellite broadcasting technology.
I recall him being credited with this idea in a physics class at school (in the 1960's) when we were calculating orbits. (Yes we DID that at school in the 1960's!). Back in 1945 apparently, he realised that a rocket could be designed to orbit at the same speed as the rotation speed of the earth, so relative to us on the ground it would appear stationary and therefore could transmit/broadcast continuously to a wide area of earth. |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #7 on: 20:32:27, 19-03-2008 » |
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He certainly had a lot to do with the development of the idea of geostationary orbit even though he didn't exactly invent it. Over to wiki: The idea of a geosynchronous satellite for communication purposes was first published in 1928 by Herman Potočnik. The geostationary orbit was first popularised in a paper entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" by Arthur C. Clarke, published in Wireless World in 1945. In the paper, Clarke described it as a useful orbit for communications satellites. As a result this is sometimes referred to as the Clarke orbit. Similarly, the Clarke Belt is the part of space approximately 35,786 km above mean sea level in the plane of the equator where near-geostationary orbits may be achieved. |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #8 on: 23:21:34, 19-03-2008 » |
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That's interesting, although in my copy of Rendezvous with Rama the date Cooke gives as 2007 is actually 2077. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #9 on: 23:32:47, 19-03-2008 » |
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Is it just me who reads Cooke with the voice of Eric Idle (Alistair Cooke being attacked by ducks - he may have been behind the sofa at the time)?
Oh. It's just me then.
It rather surprises me to note that I think I've only read a short story collection by Clarke (and I can't remember which one it was either) but I have read an awful lot of Sci Fi that claims that it would have been impossible without him.
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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pim_derks
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« Reply #10 on: 08:35:01, 20-03-2008 » |
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That's interesting, although in my copy of Rendezvous with Rama the date Cooke gives as 2007 is actually 2077. I think it should be 2077, t-i-n. I don't remember what Cooke actually said when he read this Letter for radio. I see that the listen again option for this Letter isn't working. Perhaps I have the broadcast somewhere on tape. A moment please. |
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« Last Edit: 15:52:34, 20-03-2008 by pim_derks »
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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Peter Grimes
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« Reply #11 on: 10:05:47, 20-03-2008 » |
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I like his theory that crop circles were made by "half-witted extra-terrestrials".
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"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #12 on: 12:23:17, 20-03-2008 » |
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Clarke was an engineer as well as a writer. There is a discussion of his proposal for geo-stationary communications satellites (and his failure to patent the idea) in his essay "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time". And so the world's second-greatest science writer * leaves us, as the world's second-greatest science fiction writer * already has... there are precious few of that generation of visionaries left  * As agreed in the terms of the Clarke-Asimov pact. |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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time_is_now
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« Reply #13 on: 15:38:38, 20-03-2008 » |
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"How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time" ... There's no success like failure
And failure's no success at all. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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