«Any sufficiently advanced technology is

indistinguishable from magic»

Arthur C. Clarke
Born on 1917, in England, Arthur C. Clarke
established himself as a preeminent science
fiction and nonfiction writer during the mid-20th
century. The eldest of four children born into a
farming family, Clarke became fascinated with
science and astronomy at an early age,
scanning the stars with a homemade
telescope and filling his head with
sci-fi tales from magazines like
Astounding Stories.
After graduating from middle school in
nearby Taunton, Clarke left home to find
work in 1936. Arriving in London, he
took on a job as a government
bureaucrat. He had not lost his
fascination with the stars, however, and
he soon became a member of the British
Interplanetary Society.
• During World War II, he served in the Royal Air
Force (RAF) as a radar specialist and was
involved in the early warning radar defense
system which contributed to the Royal Air
Force's success during the Battle of Britain. After
the war, he obtained a first class degree in
mathematics and physics at King's College,
London. His most important contribution may be
the conception that geostationary
satellites would be ideal telecommu-
nications relays. He proposed this
concept in a scientific paper titled
"Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide
Radio Coverage?"
While working as an assistant editor
for Science Abstracts magazine, Clarke
published the nonfiction
book Interplanetary Flight (1950), in
which he discussed the possibilities of
space travel. In 1951, his first full-
length novel, Prelude to Space, was
published, followed two years later by
the science-fiction works Against the
Fall of Night and Childhood’s End (the
latter being Clarke’s first true success
and eventually adapted into a 2015 TV
miniseries)
Clarke’s growing reputation as an
expert in all things space led to
the collaboration for which he is
perhaps best known. In 1964,
with director Stanley Kubrick,
Clarke began work on a
screenplay adaption of his 1951
short story “The Sentinel.” It
would evolve into the 1968
Kubrick-directed classic 2001: A
Space Odyssey, widely considered
to be among the greatest movies
ever made. Clarke and Kubrick
received an Academy Award
nomination for their script and
also collaborated on developing
the story into a novel published
the same year.
• “Space Odyssey ”is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant
past, someone or something nudged evolution by placing a
monolith on Earth. Evolution then enabled humankind to reach the
moon's surface, where yet another monolith is found, one that
signals the monolith placers that humankind has evolved that far.
Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and human (Bowman)
to reach the monolith placers. The winner will achieve the next step
in evolution, whatever that may be.
 Awarded the Knight
Bachelor of the Order of
the BE for his services to
literature and astronomy

Wrote more than 100 books Former member of the

including fiction non-fiction, British Interplanetary
on the topics of space, science, Society.
technology and computers

Arthur
C.
Clarke
Together with Isaac
Asimov and Robert He lived in Colombo, Sri
Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke Lanka, from 1956 until
was known as one of the his death in 2008.
"Big Three" 20th century
science fiction writers.

Inducted into the Space

and Satellite Hall of Fame
in 1987