FINAL CREDITS FOR TWO SCREEN LEGENDS
Sir Arthur C Clarke, who has died aged 90, was, for many, synonymous with science fiction, and in particular with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's film of his novella The Sentinel; his principal gifts, however, were his ability to popularise science and his genius as one of the most prophetic voices of the space age.
In the 100 or so books he wrote, co-wrote or edited, Clarke predicted, with remarkable accuracy, such developments as the moon landings, space travel, communications satellites, compact computers, cloning, commercial hovercraft and a slew of other scientific developments -- though he was also, inevitably, often wide of the mark.
In many cases, though, that was because Clarke underestimated the speed of technology's advance.
In his first novel, Prelude to Space (written in 1947), he "scored a direct hit by giving 1959 as the date of the first lunar impact", but predicted manned satellites by 1970, and the moon landing no earlier than 1978.
In 1945, while a radar technician with the RAF, Clarke originated the notion of communications satellites, describing in most particulars the machines which control modern telecommunications; he was later to regret that he had not patented the idea (though, as a serving officer, he could not in any case have done so).
He later admitted that he was astounded that experimental models should have been in place while he was still in his forties.
Arthur Charles Clarke was born on December 16 1917 in Minehead, Somerset, and educated at Huish's Grammar School, Taunton, where he produced his first efforts at fiction for the school journal, under the watchful eye of the English master, Captain EB Mitford (to whom Clarke would later dedicate his collection The Nine Billion Names of God). They took the form of letters from Old Boys working in exotic environments, and showed an early preoccupation with the fantastic.
After leaving school in 1936 he moved to London to take a job as a civil service auditor with the Exchequer.
Although he had had stories printed in Amateur Science Fiction Stories as early as 1937, his first professionally published tale, Loophole, appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in April 1946, though his first sale had been Rescue Party, which appeared in the same magazine the following month.
The venture into fiction had been spurred by his deep interest in the frontiers of scientific development; Clarke served as chairman of the British Interplanetary Society in 1946-7, while enrolled at King's College London, from which he took a First in Physics and Mathematics in 1948.
In 1950 he advised the creators of the comic strip Dan Dare on technical matters.
After the publication of his first novel and his second, The Sands of Mars (both in 1951), the following year's Islands in the Sky dealt with the then novel theme of a boy in an orbital space station.
His first real success -- and probably the work for which he was to be best-known -- came with The Sentinel, a short story that had appeared (as Sentinel of Eternity) in 10 Story Fantasy in 1951, and was republished in the collection Expedition to Earth (1953). It is an account of the discovery of a monolithic alien artefact on the Moon, the emanations from which come to indicate significant insights into man's place in the universe, and into the development of the species.
Clarke made a further impact on the field with the novel Childhood's End (1953), based on the short story Guardian Angel, in which the Overlords, who lead humanity benevolently to transcend their ancestors and take their place with the cosmos's motive spirit, are shown to be stereotypical demons, complete with horns and barbed tails.
Rendezvous with Rama (and a number of sequels) explored the scientific and philosophical consequences of first contact with an alien artefact yet again.
The City and The Stars (1956), in which a young man dissatisfied with his technology-bound utopian city leaves to discover an alien spaceship left behind by advanced aliens millennia earlier, again examines a journey towards an almost mystical understanding of the world and the cosmos which contains it.
But despite a steady stream of books, including Imperial Earth (1975) and 3001 (1997), and a number of collaborations with other prominent SF authors, his primary influence on science fiction was as a prophet, rather than a stylist.
Clarke had an abiding interest in diving and underwater exploration, which led him to Sri Lanka, where he lived from 1956. He was a keen ping-pong player.
In 1998 his name appeared on the British honours list, and it was intended that he should be knighted by the Prince of Wales during his visit to Sri Lanka that year. But shortly before the ceremony, the Sunday Mirror published a piece accusing Clarke of a predatory interest in young boys.
Clarke disputed the claims, and announced that he would not compromise the Prince's visit by receiving his knighthood until the allegations had been investigated. He was cleared by the Sri Lankan authorities, the paper published an apology and he was knighted in Colombo in 2000.
The most recent edition of his Collected Stories (2001) included Improving the Neighbourhood, which was the first SF story to be published in the scientific journal Nature.
In it, humanity blows itself, the Earth and the Moon to pieces, much to the relief of more advanced and civilised aliens in a nearby part of the galaxy.
Clarke was patron of the Science Fiction Foundation, Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka, and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Hugo, Nebula and John W Campbell awards.
He himself sponsored the Arthur C Clarke Award for the best SF book published in Britain each year. The prize was £2001, until that year; thereafter the money rose annually by £1. This year's award will be announced on April 30.
Clarke, who became increasingly immobile and was confined to a wheelchair by post-polio syndrome, did not rule out the prospect of resurrection -- cloning by highly advanced aliens being, predictably enough, his favoured method.
In the late 1990s he donated a few of his remaining strands of hair to be launched into space as part of a project that was intended to travel deep into the solar system. Clarke hoped that, "maybe a million years from now, some super-civilisation will capture this primitive artefact from the past. Recreating its biological contents might be an amusing exercise for their equivalent of an infants' class."
He married, in 1953, Marilyn Mayfield; the marriage was dissolved in 1964.
