NoelC wrote:A good friend and collaborator from England informed me tonight that we have lost a great man, inventor/writer/visionary Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, born in 1917 and died today, March 18, 2008, at age 90.
I see the APOD folks have included a link to Sir Arthur's Wikipedia bio on
today's APOD page.
Just yesterday on this very forum I mentioned something from "2001 a Space Odyssey" (adapted from a story Sir Arthur wrote). I have only just received a Foreward written by Sir Arthur for inclusion in my upcoming book. I was so looking forward to providing him some copies.
We have lost a great man. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, we will miss you.
-Noel
A tad eccentric in his old age perhaps:
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Enigma Issue 16: News Roundup
by Paul Vigay | Spring 1998
<<Arthur C. Clarke recently commented on NASA spacecraft Galileo's photos of Jupiter's moon Europa: "Running right across one of the pictures is an absolutely straight narrow line, and if you saw this you'd say, well, that's obviously a highway or a railroad track, and no-one can explain it - it's about 200 km long and its dead straight except for a slight wriggle where there's sort of a change of terrain, and we're all very, very puzzled about this and in fact I'm beginning to think the unthinkable.">>
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http://www.enterprisemission.com/images/arthur.jpg
http://www.enterprisemission.com/images/sir-Clarke2.jpg
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The Sixth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor
<<"My soul yearned for travel and traffic." Sinbad falls asleep as he journeys through the darkness and awakens in the city of the king of Serendib (Ceylon, Sri Lanka), "diamonds are in its rivers and pearls are in its valleys." The king marvels at what Sinbad tells him of the great Haroun al-Rashid, and asks that he take a present back to Baghdad on his behalf, a cup carved from a single ruby, with other gifts including a bed made from the skin of the serpent that swallowed the elephant ("and whoso sitteth upon it never sickeneth"),
![Image](http://photos.ronamber.com/Images/France1999/ElephantInSnake.jpg)
and a slave-girl "like a shining moon [Europa? Enceladus?] ". And so Sinbad returns to Baghdad, where the Caliph wonders greatly at the reports Sinbad gives of the land of Ceylon.>>