Clarke, Sir Arthur C(harles)

Clarke, Sir Arthur C(harles) (1917-2008), English science-fiction writer, who in his prolific career predicted many of the most significant scientific advances of the 20th century. Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, on December 16, 1917, and attended Huish's Grammar School, Taunton. As a child he mapped the Moon through a home-made telescope and, after serving as a radar instructor in the Royal Air Force (RAF), studied at King's College, London, where he gained a first-class degree in physics and mathematics in 1948. In 1945 Clarke wrote an article that proposed the idea of a geostationary satellite (one that completes one orbit of the Earth in 24 hours, so stays above the same spot on the Earth’s surface), which has been the basis of the satellite communications industry. His non-fiction book The Exploration of Space (1951) established him as a bestselling author.

His first stories appeared in the late 1940s, followed by several novels mainly championing technological progress; his first novel Prelude to Space was published in 1951. “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is impossible,” he wrote, “he is very probably wrong.” His short-story collection Expedition to Earth (1953) contained “The Sentinel”, later the basis for the film 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick. The success of Kubrick's film brought fame, and Clarke wrote three bestselling novels during the 1970s, Rendezvous with Rama (1972), Imperial Earth (1975), and The Fountains of Paradise (1979), but by the mid-1980s a disease of the nervous system made writing unaided almost impossible. In 1989 he published Astounding Days—a Science Fictional Autobiography. Other works included the sequels 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1988), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). An interest in undersea exploration and photography took Clarke to Sri Lanka in the 1950s, where he lived until his death in Colombo on March 19, 2008. He was made a CBE in 1989 and received a knighthood in 1998.