h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

read the view from serendip by the great man you'll find it v. informative

hypatia xx

His latest non-fiction collection "Greetings Carbon Based Life Forms"(definitly out in paper back in the UK)also seems to have a lot of good biographical material (although I haven't got round to reading it yet).

Zathras

Hmmm - straight on my wish list at Amazon!

Well I've read the book now and can heartly recommend it to all Clarke fans and anyone else with an interest in science or science fiction.

Z

Lose the last two paragraphs and write in the third person. Do a bibliography at the end (with criticisms...?).
In other words concentrate on the subject *Arthur C Clarke*, where he lives, how he came up with the idea of a geostationary satellite before "satellites" came to be. His collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on 2001....
That *help* or do you want to kick me to Uranus? Please don't (I have namechecked you on my homepage...grovel!!!).

Blimey.....

I have been a bit busy recently what with the Myth, the Paperchase, Work, And all the other fun things to do on H2G2 (spot the odd one out) I WILL get back to this at some stage though - although it does look as if there are others out there with better knowledge about him than me....

In those immortal words (almost), "You've started so you can finish". I'll look forward to reading the finished Entry.

Gaaahh!

Ok - I WILL get around to it eventually!

I'll have to get those books you mentioned first though....

my two pence worth - starts out good, then gets WAY to specific.
Split it into sections: Biography, Satellite Inventor, Writer of 2001, Grand Old Man of sf, Clarke's Laws (if you can remember them, I know two: 1. Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, 2. When an elderly but distinguished scientist says something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he says something is impossible he is almost certainly wrong. I'll get the other one from somewhere. He apparently came up with three because he didn't want Asimov to be the only unbelievably prolific sf author with three laws!)
Hope this helps....

The Only Way to Discover The Limits of The Possible Is to Go Beyond
Them Into The Impossible.

Sources disagree on which is the first and second, but agreement seems pretty universal that "Sufficiently advanced" etc. is the third law.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really complicated card game.

Ah, (or should that be Aaargh) Cheers!

This means I'll have to actually do somehting with this Article then!

A few things that might help you out:

Slow Glass was a concept created by the late SF giant Bob Shaw (who wrote Orbitsville and the Ragged Astronauts).

Rendezvous with Rama published in about 1973 won the 5 major SF book awards including the Hugo and Nebula and John Campbell (?).

Recently his books "The Fountains of Paradise" (this book is important as it champions the idea of a space elevator which other SF writers have used extensively though it was actually a Russian scientist's idea first and is credited in the novel somewhere) and "The City and the Stars" (voted one of the top four SF/fantasy novels of all time by SFX - though I'm not to certain of this as Lord of the Rings came in 4th and Gene Wolfe was first and they said Star Trek was better than Doctor Who) have been reissued as part of the Millenium SF Masterpieces.

He has recently been involved with launching a computer called HAL though I'm not too sure of the details of this.

He commentated (with Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov(?)) on various NASA missions including the Apollo Moon Landings.

He got a first class degree from King's College London in Mathematics and Physics. (You may have this one already)

He is/was chancellor of Colombo University in Sri Lanka - they even made chancellor before he even knew about it.

I think you included he was knighted in 1998.

Um...

If you want more info let me know and I'll see what I can do though I can't garantee anything. I can be contacted at [email protected]

If you find any of this useful could I be given a brief credit, please?

PS - His book the Hammer of God originally written for TIME magazine was the inspiration behind the film Deep Impact though he wasn't given any on screen credit and possibly no money either though the film was rather pathetic anyway.

Mike Oldfield recorded an album "Songs of Distant Earth" inspired by Clarke's book of the same name.

There's a reference to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide in Rama Revealed when someone says something along the lines of: "So the answer's not 42 then" - though I'm not sure how correct my paraphrasing is.

Rendezvous with Rama is the only book to have won all 5 major SF awards - not sure if it was a bad year for SF though many would argue that this is his greatest work.

Actually, it surprises me to admit, I knew most of that already - except the bit about Rama (and the 42 bit, though I do remember the bit about the "mannekins" which were based on Shakespearian characters.