Clarke, Arthur C.

Clarke, Arthur C. (Arthur Charles Clarke), 1917–, British science fiction writer. During World War II he served as a radar instructor and aviator in the Royal Air Force. After the war he obtained a degree in physics from King's College, London (1949), and in 1956 he emigrated to Sri Lanka. His popular, technologically realistic books and stories blend dread and wonder as they examine the search for meaning in the universe. Among his more than 70 books are Childhood's End (1953), Rendezvous with Rama (1973), and The Songs of Distant Earth (1983). In 1968 he collaborated with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey, a novel that became an extremely successful motion picture. Three novelistic sequels followed, the last in 1997. Appropriately, Clarke's Collected Stories were published in 2001. In 1945, Clarke proposed the concept of positioning an artificial satellite in an orbit in which it circles the earth every 24 hours, thus appearing stationary to the locale below. Today, dozens of such communications satellites orbit the earth.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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