Arthur C. Clarke was born 1917 Dec 16,
in Minehead, UK. He was the first child of Mary Nora (Willis) Clarke and
Charles Wright Clarke. During the Second World War, he served in the
Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early
warning radar defense system which contributed to the RAF's success
during the Battle of Britain.
Unable to afford a college degree in his early years, he obtained a
first class degree in mathematics and physics at King's College London
in 1948. Prior to his career as a science fiction author, his writings
still made it into most university libraries as he was an assistant
editor for the IEE's Science Abstracts.
The first story he sold professionally was "Rescue Party", written in
March 1945 and appearing in Astounding Science in May 1946. He went on
to become a prolific writer of science fiction, renowned worldwide and
with more than 70 titles to his name. Among his many non-fiction works,
Profiles of the Future (1962) looked at the probable shape of tomorrow's
world and stated his "Three Laws".
#1 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.
#2 The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture
a little way past them into the impossible.
#3 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The director, Stanley Kubrick, (Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove) and Clarke
met in 1964 to discuss a possible film. Clarke suggested that the story
for the film should be loosely based on his short story The Sentinel,
written in 1948 as an entry in a BBC short story competition.
Originally, Clarke was simply to adapt this as the screenplay for the
film. Instead, Kubrick and Clarke decided it would be best to write a
novel first and then adapt it for the film upon its completion. That
novel would be titled
2001: A Space Odyssey.
Arthur C. Clarke passed away in Sri Lanka on March 19, 2008.
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Clarke titles are held by the Escondido Public Library.
