'Questions worth thinking about'

 

“I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.”  – Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke, a native of Great Britain who lived 60 years in Sri Lanka, was born on this date in 1917.  Besides co-writing the screenplay for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered one of the most influential films of all time, he earned many Hugo and Nebula writing awards and a massive readership for his works.

He started writing as a journalist, focusing on science.  A lifelong proponent of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability, he was one of the early “pushers” for nations to “get into that business.”  In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, and as early as 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system remarkably similar to the one we use today. 

He wrote over a dozen books about space and space travel proposing ideas that have become reality in today’s scientific world.  Those books along with myriad essays in popular and scientific journals and magazines earned him the moniker “Prophet of the Space Age.” “Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories,” he once said.  “Then maybe we’d get some things done.”

 

Arthur C. Clarke was 90

when he died in 2008.  His shirt reads:  "I invented the satellite and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

"Look at the impossible," Clarke said, "and then find ways to make it possible."