Arthur C. Clarke
born Dec. 16, 1917, Minehead,
Somerset, Eng.
died March 19, 2008,
Colombo, Sri L.
English writer who
is notable for both his science fiction and
his nonfiction.
Clarke was
interested in science from childhood, but he
lacked the means for higher education. He
worked as a government auditor from 1936 to
1941 and joined a small, advanced group that
called itself the British Interplanetary
Society. From 1941 to 1946 Clarke served in
the Royal Air Force, becoming a radar
instructor and technician. While in the
service he published his first
science-fiction stories and in 1945 wrote an
article entitled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays”
for Wireless World. The article envisioned a
communications satellite system that would
relay radio and television signals
throughout the world; this system was in
operation two decades later.
In 1948 Clarke
secured a bachelor of science degree from
King’s College in London. He went on to
write more than 20 novels and 30 nonfiction
books and is especially known for such
novels as Against the Fall of Night (1953),
Childhood’s End (1953), The City and the
Stars (1956), Rendezvous with Rama (1973;
winner of Nebula and Hugo awards), The
Fountains of Paradise (1979; winner of
Nebula and Hugo awards), and The Songs of
Distant Earth (1986). Collections of
Clarke’s essays and lectures include Voices
from the Sky (1965), The View from Serendip
(1977), Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific
Autobiography (1984), Astounding Days: A
Science Fictional Autobiography (1989), and
By Space Possessed (1993).
In the 1950s Clarke
developed an interest in undersea
exploration and moved to Sri Lanka, where he
embarked on a second career combining skin
diving and photography; he produced a
succession of books, the first of which was
The Coast of Coral (1956).
Stanley Kubrick’s
hugely successful film 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) was based on Clarke’s short story The
Sentinel (1951), which Clarke and Kubrick
subsequently developed into a novel (1968),
published under the same name as the movie.
A sequel novel, 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), by
Clarke alone, was released as a film in
1984. In 1997 he published 3001: The Final
Odyssey. Clarke was knighted in 2000.
