"Like a glowing jewel, the city lay upon the breast of the desert. Once it had known change and alteration, but now time passed it by. Night and day fled across the desert's face, but in Diaspar it was always afternoon, and darkness never came." -- Arthur C. Clarke (1917-20080, The City and the Stars
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
-- Eliot
Of the ABC's, only Bradbury remains.
Posted by: Chris at March 19, 2008 7:47 AMGod bless you, Arthur C. Clarke. Though your life was troubled, may your repose be peaceful.
And perhaps a little more Eliot to see the old master off:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
God bless you, Arthur C. Clarke. Though your life was troubled, may your repose be peaceful.
And perhaps a little more Eliot to see the old master off:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Oh, this isn't going to win me any literary friends:
I've read science fiction extensively. I'm an engineer and I work on programs that were foreseen in science fiction.
I never liked him; either as a person or a writer.
I loathed "Childhood's End" wherein the demonic totalitarian aliens terrorize and infantilize all mankind and then abduct all Earth's children giving rise to a glorious re-birth of mankind as energy beings to serve the Overmind. WTF? How is that a good thing?
2001? Trippy and nonsensical....
2010? Jupiter a star? You think Global Warming was bad, imagine another sun heating things up.
Humans, human invention and humankind always got the shitty end of the shitty stick in his books and stories.
Posted by: Gray at March 20, 2008 12:39 PMNow, Gray, be fair. Lots of other scenarios came from his projector. Any development or trend line, extended more than a few decades, leads to pretty wild outcomes. It won't take many of those decades before everything you now think of as "advanced" will be seen as amusingly primitive, unless the Global Ummah comes, in which case it will be remembered as Satanically advanced.
Posted by: Brian H at March 21, 2008 12:57 PM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.