One of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clarke, has died at his home in Sri Lanka. His most famous work--thanks to the Stanley Kubrick movie--was "2001: A Space Odyssey."It should be noted, however, that the book actually came out AFTER the movie and was adapted from the screenplay. The movie itself was based on a short story Clarke had written back in 1948 called "The Sentinel."
But of all of Clarke's fiction, my favorite was a book called "Rendezvous with Rama." It's the story of a mysterious 30 mile long spaceship that passes through our solar system. An Earth ship is sent to take a close look at it, and the humans are able to gain entry. What they find is essentially a world built on its cylindrical interior. Gravity is provided by the vessel's constant spin. There are no life forms, but this small world is hardly dead. As Rama draws closer to our sun, various robots begin to emerge to perform maintenance.
It's been perhaps 20 years since I read the book, so my memory on the rest of it is fuzzy. Clarke's passing serves as a reminder that maybe it's time to read it again.
But Clarke was also much more than a science fiction writer. During World War II he helped develop radars. And in 1945, he came up with the wacky idea that communications satellites could be launched and put into Geosynchronous orbits. To this day, they are also called Clarke orbits.
But Clarke's greatest achievement may have been in the timing of his death. By dying at 1:30 A.M. on Wednesday in Sri Lanka, most of the world actually learned of his death the day before he died. If that's not a grand exit for a science fiction writer, I don't know what is.
The fact that the news was able to travel around the globe so fast is largely due to those very same communications satellites he first proposed 63 years ago.
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