When Arthur C. Clarke died this week, many people must have thought of the strange, transformative monolith in 2001, or of the Lot-like look back at imperfect humanity as it is cast off like an old cocoon in Childhood’s End. How many people thought of communications satellites?
Yet Clarke, Leonardo-like, conceived of them long before they were possible, as computer scientist and screenwriter Charlie Martin chronicles in this affectionately geeky obit, focused on the stunning scientific and technological advances Clarke saw—and contributed to—in his 90-year lifetime. The geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometers above the equator is called the Clarke Orbit, an honor bestowed by the International Astronomical Union. Clarke seems to have viewed technology as a big evolutionary bootstrap, a leg up on our journey towards inner stars as well as the outer ones.
Arthur C. Clarke is perhaps best known for his three laws of prediction:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
These are simple words, but in them exists a very singular hope: science can do anything that strong and able minds ask it to, and a faith in science doesn’t remove one from a sense of wonder. This is still an important message: science doesn’t mean magic doesn’t exist, it just means that magic is something that takes discipline and time to learn and wield. Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at the age of 90, but in these simple laws, he gave something we’ll never lose: a blueprint for dreaming.
And now, presto, shazam: Arthur himself.
UPDATE: Rereading this, struck by the resemblance and proximity of two words, I thought: When you’ve made your last orbit, and you no longer “R,” you go into obit.
