March 18, 2008
R.I.P.
To Arthur C. Clarke who died today. Thank you Mr. Clarke for years of reading enjoyment.
Too bad the MSM as usual can't get their facts straight.
Clarke's best-known novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey," became the basis of the 1968 film of the same name, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film and the book elevated the plot's mentally unbalanced computer, HAL 9000, into the pantheon of great fictional characters.
Sorry it was a short story and it was called "The Sentinel.
Via Jeffrey Overstreet.
Posted by Jeff Miller at March 18, 2008 07:03 PM | TrackBackClarke did write a novelization of the movie, though.
Posted by Maureen email at March 18, 2008 07:09 PM2001 was also one of my favourite books. But Clarke degenerated into an anti-Catholic crank in his old age, and I'd just love to see the look on his face now in (hopefully) purgatory as he see's all the truths of the Catholic faith manifest before him.
Posted by BillyHW email at March 18, 2008 08:49 PMI hope he enjoyed his fame because Arthur C. Clarke is burning in Hell now.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/clarke_19_2.html
LMAO @ The Muslims are behaving like Christians. Wow, even I am not that trollish.
Posted by UAB email at March 18, 2008 08:51 PMUAB (a.k.a Hoodlum)
Sometimes I think you are a parody of an atheist. Or maybe that is the most charitable thought that comes to mind to explain your comments. It might be helpful to actually know what the Church teaches before you set your flamethrower to max. But most atheists turn out to have a more fundamentalist attitude than the most extreme Bible thumper.
Posted by Jeff Miller email at March 18, 2008 09:03 PMBy the way, the CNN story states that Clarke requested absolutely no religious ritual of any sort from any faith. In the next paragraph it tells us that he will be buried in Sri Lanka, burial being, of course, one of the most ancient and common religious rituals associated to death. Oh well..., I guess you cannot be a competent Sci-Fi writer and a comptent atheist a the same time :)
Posted by Roberto email at March 19, 2008 10:30 AMClarke may have died not believing in God, but he definitely did believe in Truth and he did his bit to work for it. He also worked for peace in Sri Lanka, and did other good works. Since Truth is a Person, I have hope that it will work out all right.
And of course I'm praying for him. Pretty much everybody who's been a fan of him is. I was impressed by the reverent reaction of even the Slashdot crowd.
Posted by Maureen email at March 19, 2008 12:14 PMSad. I have enjoyed everything I have read by him.
Posted by Paul Cat email at March 19, 2008 07:18 PMOne interesting thing is that Clarke grew to be ambivalent at best about "The Sentinel" and himself being best-known to non-scifi folks for the 2001 connection. He constantly pointed out that "The Sentinel" only has anything even superficially to do with the second of the four sections of 2001, the monolith on the moon. The dawn of man, the Discovery voyage, and Jupiter and beyond, are Kubrick, whole-cloth. "The Sentinel" ends open-endedly with the astronauts on the moon waiting for the aliens to arrive they know not when.
Anthony Burgess and Stephen King had similar attitudes toward being adapted by Stanley Kubrick. Thankfully Nabokov did his own adaptation, and Schnitzler and Thackeray were already dead, or rather "all equal now."
