Arthur C Clarke

Mar 20 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS the bespectacled and bald prophet with a beaming smile, who travelled a distant land in a wheelchair, but had taken people on journeys way beyond our puny world.

And, in his person, science fact and science fiction often touched fingers.

Inevitably he will be remembered for his short story, The Sentinel, a failed entry in a BBC competition, which was finally published in 1951.

At the story’s heart was the discovery of a pyramidical object surrounded by a forcefield. Apparently it had been left on Earth's Moon eons ago by aliens, suggesting “a technology that lies beyond our horizons, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces”.

The idea was developed by Stanley Kubrick into his film fantasy of floating ships, apes and classical waltz music – 2001: a Space Odyssey.

By then Arthur C Clarke was known to those for whom earthly existence was rather humdrum.

He was born in Minehead. His farming father died when he was 13. Unable to afford university, Clarke worked for the Board of Education in London.

During the war he served with the RAF as a radar specialist, leaving as a flight-lieutenant. Then he graduated in physics and maths from King’s College, London.

The possibilities of space exploration were all the rage in the public imagination and Clarke joined the British Interplanetary Society.

In 1945, Wireless World published his paper Extra-terrestrial Relays, in which he first set out the principles of remote communication with satellites in geostationary orbits, a speculation that was realised 25 years later. He was paid £15 for the article. The geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres above the Equator is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

His first published short story was Rescue Party (1945). From then on, he became the tireless author of more than 100 books, most fiction.

In 1968, he shared an Oscar nomination with Kubrick at the Hollywood Academy Awards for A Space Odyssey.

Clarke worked with Walter Cronkite on American TV coverage of the Apollo 12 and 15 missions. His 13-part TV series Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World (1981) and World of Strange Powers (1984) were screened internationally.

Clarke, briefly married, settled in Sri Lanka in 1956. In 1998, he was knighted. Recently, he had been confined to a wheelchair by post-polio syndrome.

Arthur C Clarke, writer, born December 16, 1917; died March 19, 2008.