Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A moment for Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke's soul has moved on to its next step in the great journey. He is best known for writing 2001:A Space Odyssey, which I saw in amazing 70mm Cinerama in 1968. Less well known, he promoted the fact if satellite were placed in orbit around the earth at a height of about 22,000 miles, it's orbital period is about once a day, so appears to be stationery compared to a point on the earth's surface. Now there are so many satellites there for media and rebroadcast (and spying) that they threaten to bump into one another.

For me, I will remember Arthur C. Clarke more for the first book I read of his in school: Childhood's End. I think this book planted the mind-seeds of both my interest in science but also in mysticism. The book alludes to an OverMind, a much less personal conciousness that pervades the universe than I had learned about in Sunday school, and one that continually resonates with me when I see the amazing diversity, complexity and interdependency of the universe.

Thank you, Dr. Clarke, I hope you are part of the OverMind now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I too really enjoyed Arthur C. Clarke's works. My first encounter was 2001 followed by Rendezvous with Rama. Both were exciting to me, firing my imagination with the possibilities of a future where space travel is as common-place as flying to a distant continent, and contact with alien civilizations is really possible. Later I ran into The Hammer of God, another very creative story.

There is a video from him up on YouTube.

I will miss his creativity and story-telling genius.