Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRASwas a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 December 1917
lying sea forever
2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history ; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.
lying knowing trying
Attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as trying to define pornography... In both pornography and SF, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.
lying ocean moving
The Earth would only have to move a few million kilometers sunward-or starward-for the delicate balance of climate to be destroyed. The Antarctic icecap would melt and flood all low-lying land; or the oceans would freeze and the whole world would be locked in eternal winter. Just a nudge in either direction would be enough.
lying future space
Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.
stars lying moon
Even if we never reach the stars by our own efforts, in the millions of years that lie ahead it is almost certain that the stars will come to us. Isolationism is neither a practical policy on the national or cosmic scale. And when the first contact with the outer universe is made, one would like to think that Mankind played an active and not merely a passive role-that we were the discoverers, not the discovered.
heart giving singh
Why, Robert Singh often wondered, did we give our hearts to friends whose life spans are so much shorter than our own?
thinking space sea
We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.
certainly pretend thinking worth
I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.
beyond discover limits
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
sun hundred billions
If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.
mother children farewell
The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
dozen littles imagine
Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little consolation that it was always the thirteenth that actually happened.
long people tangled
If the house is to be demolished tomorrow anyhow, people seem to feel, we may as well burn the furniture today. None of our problems are insoluble...But it seems clear that to prevail we humans will have to act with a smartness and selflessness that has so far eluded us during our long and tangled history.
taken firsts steps
What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.