.

Childhood ends.

That's a damn shame (but at 90, I guess he's had a pretty good run).

As cliche as it might be, 2001 is still one of my favourite books.

Ahhhhh, crap.

....overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

"In deference to the next of kin," Commander Cummerbund explained with morbid relish, "the full story of the super-cruiser 'Flatbush's' last mission has never been fully revealed. You know, of course, that she was lost during the war against the Mucoids."

We all shuddered. Even now, the very name of the gelatinous monsters who had come slurping Earthward from the general direction of the Coal Sack aroused vomitive memories.

"I knew her skipper well -- Captain Karl van Rinderpest, hero of the final assault on the unspeakable, but not unshriekable, !!Yeetch."

He paused politely to let us unplug our ears and mop up our spilled drinks.

"'Flatbush' had just launched a salvo of probability inverters against the Mucoid home planet and was heading back toward deep space in formation with three destroyers -- the Russian 'Lieutenant Kizhe', the Israeli 'Chutzpah', and her Majesty's 'Insufferable'. They were still accelerating when a fantastically unlikely accident occurred. 'Flatbush' ran straight into the gravity well of a neutron star."

When our expressions of horror and incredulity had subsided, he continued gravely.

"Yes -- a sphere of ultimately condensed matter, only ten miles across, yet as massive as a sun -- and hence with a surface gravity one hundred billion times that of Earth.

"The other ships were lucky. They only skirted the outer fringe of the field and managed to escape, though their orbits were deflected almost a hundred and eighty degrees. But 'Flatbush', we calculated later, must have passed within a few dozen miles of that unthinkable concentration of mass and so experienced the full violence of its tidal forces.

"Now in any reasonable gravitational field -- even that of a White Dwarf, which may run up to a million Earth g's -- you just swing around the center of attraction and head on out into space again, without feeling a thing. At the closest point you could be accelerating at hundreds or thousands of g's -- but you're still in free fall, so there are no physical effects. Sorry if I'm laboring the obvious, but I realize that everyone here isn't technically orientated."

If this was intended as a crack at Fleet Paymaster General "Sticky Fingers" Geldclutch, he never noticed, being well into his fifth beaker of Martian Joy Juice.

"For a neutron star, however, this is no longer true. Near the center of mass the gravitational gradient -- that is, the rate at which the field changes with distance -- is so enormous that even across the width of a small body like a spaceship there can be a difference of a hundred thousand g's. I need hardly tell you what that sort of field can do to any material object.

"'Flatbush' must have been torn to pieces almost instantly, and the pieces themselves must have flowed like liquid during the few seconds they took to swing around the star. Then the fragments headed on out into space again.

"Months later a radar sweep by the Salvage Corps located some of the debris. I've seen it -- surrealistically shaped lumps of the toughest metals we possess twisted together like taffy. And there was only one item that could even be recognized -- it must have come from some unfortunate engineer's tool kit."

The Commander's voice dropped almost to inaudibility, and he dashed away a manly tear.

"I really hate to say this." He sighed. "But the only identifiable fragment of the pride of the United States Space Navy was . . . one star-mangled spanner."

Monty Stein, in the year 3047, committed quite a heist and made off with quite a tidy sum. He was eventually caught, and the judge sentenced him to seven years imprisonment. However, the night before his impending incarceration, he calmly set his time machine for seven years and one day, and stepped through.

When he emerged in 3054, there was quite an uproar. Prosecution maintained that Monty Stein never actually served the sentence, since effectively no time passed for him. Defense stated that the effect was basically the same, since he lost seven years of living in society, or something to that effect. Both sides called each other names (as lawyers are wont to do).

Eventually, Stein was set free. Some say that the judge succumbed to peer pressure; others said that he simply couldn't resist the temptation. For his decision, in full, was:

"A niche in time saves Stein."

Man I loved Rendezvous with Rama.

The only SF writer I've enjoyed completely and without any reservations.

A great writer and thinker.

The Drudgereport seems to have really mellowed out lately. He has a nice little tribute to Clarke at the top, and some pictures from Tibet below that. He's completely in the tank for Obama as well. Aside from his traditional hysteria about the Clintons and an irrefutable belief that heavy snows somehow disprove global warming, he's almost a respectable news source - in a News of the Weird sort of way.

Just sayin'

A couple of years ago, BBC Radio 4 ran a show about Arthur C. Clarke. It's still available for streaming at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/arthurcclarke.shtml

Childhoods End really and truly changed the way I thought about the universe, which is something you can say about very few books.

Clarke was more than a novelist - being very prescient about a number of disciplines including the use of satellites in communication and living in space. Few people in history can leave their mark in as many ways as Clarke did.

Goddammit.

max
['.']

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

what Deflator said.

Very sad indeed but what a life he got to live!

Man I loved Rendezvous with Rama.

My favorite as well, and last I heard David Fincher was flagged to direct a film version, which I think he would do justice.

And in spite of having outlived most of the giants of his generation, he never became an embarrassing parody of himself, as some of them did.

Thanks, Arthur.

But would you have liked to have a beer with him???

They're only frickin' geo-synchronous satellites, fer cryin' out loud... frickin' nerds...

*sarcasm*

Well, if he had been some dumb rich kid who succeeded by virtue of his inherited money and connections, instead of some farm boy who pulled himself up with his exceptional talents, maybe we would have let him become the President of the United States. Stupid cell phones and Internet...

[on Dave's return to the ship, after HAL has killed the rest of the crew]
HAL: Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly
think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
HAL: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.
[HAL's shutdown]
HAL: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid.

The Democrats need to make an awesome political commercial for the general election using this somehow...

In The Songs of Distant Earth, Clarke described a future where the Presidency is awarded by lottery, and people who truly want the position are identified and excluded from said lottery.

This sounds better and better every year.

Poor Arthur. No orbiting hotels, no giant lunar colonies. Instead, 2001 turned out to be the year that a grotesque bunch of fanatics tried to use modern technology to return the world to 1001.

What HAL 9000 said. Fuck you Dave!

HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!

Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has a wonderful eulogy, expanding on an interview to be aired on NPR's Morning Edition tomorrow.

saw it on jerry pournelle's site http://www.jerrypournelle.com (chaos manor). guess we're gettin to be of an age...
if i remember right, it's been many a yr since i read it, most stories were actually fantasy (!) but 'tales of the white hart' was a really good book of short stories by him. o/t, but spider robinson is pretty good.

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm on my break."

asimov never became a parody of himself, altho it could possibly be argued that heinlein did...but he had health problems that could have affected his thinking. altho asimov did die of aids. :-( bad transfusion, in the early 80's. i learned more from asimov than any schoolteacher i ever had.
asimov, clarke, and heinlein...the 'big 3', in pulp science fiction. a lot of good ones came later...van vogt, harrison, dick (man, he had the kind of luck i do...1/2 his novels were made into movies...after he fucking died...)

a parody of himself Actually I was thinking of Heinlein, when I said that.

Asimov was a class act right to the end.

Block Swan's IP Address, Hal.

Block Swan's IP Address, Hal.

Nah, I think Hal's on Swan's side... my last post from my main computer before I started getting "You are not allowed to post" messages was an offer a week or so back to pass Swan a lead weight in lieu of the parachute he'd requested. Next day, access blocked.

A good man. He practically introduced me to science fiction. Although I have to say, he was wildly innocent and over-optimistic, and most of his characters were solid wood. And also, frankly, after Rama he didn't really produce much work of interest.

Also, bloody impressive to become so prominent in the 1940s and 1950s considering the prejudice against homosexuals back then (of course he was deep in the closet, but so was Allan Turing). I never guessed, although I did notice the odd absence of significant female characters from his works.

But would you have liked to have a beer with him???

No. Rather, several. Or whatever else he was drinking.

What Gregory and max said.

I picked him up at the airport when he spoke at my college in 1969. I was nervous for two days, assuming I'd blow my chance to talk scifi with the great man. Then a student from Sri Lanka (was it still Ceylon then?) asked to come along, and I foolishly said, "Yes." I think I got in one question, about A. E. van Vogt, who lived nearby, during the hour drive; otherwise, it was all Ceylon all the time.

It's a great joy that my older son is also a fan and feels that Clarke is a part of his life.

Clarke had great insights into the vicissitudes of the Pentagon's ways of deciding on new weapons systems. "Superiority" is a great demonstration of the hazard of reliance on a single super weapon - such as "Star Wars".

Does anyone else find it odd that commenters would post comments taking cracks at me when my only two comments on this thread were making fun of Bush, and of people who recognize people like him- for the reasons they do- instead of people like Arthur C. Clarke?

Not really. You are imminently mockable.

The City and the Stars was his best, as demonstrated by the number of times it was ripped off by other authors.

When will there be a movie of Childhood's End?

"Asimov was a class act right to the end."

Damn straight.

I never cared much for Clarke's work, apart from Childhood's End, though the final line of "Nine Billion Names of God" is classic: "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

And they've just about all gone out. Who's left, Bradbury, Vance, Ellison?

I was eleven, and attending Lunacon 1964.
I stood there, awestruck, as Isaac Asimov stood chatting with Arthur C. Clarke.
"THrill of a lifetime' kind of sums it up.
(I still have the program, autographed not only by them, but by Robert Silverberg, Anne McCaffrey, Alexei Panshin, and, oh yess, Forrest J. Ackerman.)

I had the same reaction as when I heard that Gene Autry had died. You mean that guy was still alive?