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[[File:Arthur C. Clarke 1965.jpg|thumb|450px|Arthur C. Clarke in 1965, on the set of [[2001: A Space Odyssey|some movie he was involved with]].]]
One of the world's most famous science fiction writers, '''Arthur C.
▲One of the world's most famous science fiction writers. Responsible for works such as ''[[Childhoods End]]'', the ''[[Two Thousand and One A Space Odyssey]]'' series, ''[[Rendezvous With Rama]]'' and ''[[The Songs of Distant Earth]]''. Has influenced almost all the science fiction that has arrived in his wake, from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' to ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''. Much of his fiction features [[O Henry]] style [[Twist Ending|twist endings]] at the end of each story or chapter. He is considered one of the "Big Three" of [[Science Fiction]] along with [[Isaac Asimov]] and [[Robert A. Heinlein]]. He was the last of the Big Three to leave us, after Heinlein and Asimov, in that order.
He is often credited with inventing the geostationary communications satellite, although in fact he did not originate the idea.
Formulated "Clarke's three laws", the third being the most famous and oft cited:
# When [[The Professor|a distinguished but elderly scientist]] [[Lecture
# The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
# [[Clarke's Third Law|Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.]]
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He wrote the ''Space Odyssey'' sequels himself, without the input of [[Stanley Kubrick]] -- each instalment gets increasingly more literal and with less left to the imagination, up till ''3001'' which retcons all the fantastical elements out of the original story (and only has its actual [[Independence Day|plot]] start two-thirds of the way through the book, the preceding chapters consisting entirely of the literary equivalent of [[Scenery Porn]]). The ''Time Odyssey'' series was likewise "co-written with" Stephen Baxter. It shows there, too.
Has [[Arthur C. Clarke Award|an award]] named after him.
A 1981 episode of ''[[
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{{bibliography}}
* ''[[Childhood's End]]''
* ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[Rendezvous With Rama]]''
* ''[[The Songs of Distant Earth]]''
{{creatortropes}}
* [[Author Appeal]]:
** Communications satellites.
** In a somewhat sad example, rarely do love interests work out for the good. A common phrase used in his collections of short stories is "married another man." In the ''Space Odyssey'' series, Heywood Floyd is divorced twice with the second time being on his way to Jupiter. In ''3001'' the first woman Poole falls for ends up horrified due to a 'deformation', and the second relationship falls apart romantically
* [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]: Or Soviet Russia in stories set after 1990.▼
* [[Ironic Echo]]: Pretty much all of the ''Harry Purvis'' tales.▼
* [[
* [[Local Hangout]]: The ''White Hart''.▼
* [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]]: Clarke's works, for the most part, lie firmly on the "hard" side of this sliding scale. Hardly surprising, given that he had been a radar operator in [[World War II]] and that training was in mathematics and physics (he was the first to propose communications satellites). In ''[[The Songs of Distant Earth]]'', for example, he had to invoke the rather speculative possibility of zero-point energy just so he'd have a power source for a ''slower''-than-light starship.▼
** ''Jupiter Five'' was dedicated to Professor G. C. McVitte as writing the story involved having twenty to thirty pages of orbital calculations drawn up.▼
▲* [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]]: Clarke's works, for the most part, lie firmly on the "hard" side of this sliding scale. Hardly surprising, given that he had been a radar operator in [[World War II]] and that training was in mathematics and physics (he was one of the first to propose communications satellites). In ''[[The Songs of Distant Earth]]'', for example, he had to invoke the rather speculative possibility of zero-point energy just so he'd have a power source for a ''slower''-than-light starship.
* [[No Poverty]]: In ''The City and the Stars.''▼
▲**
* [[Reclusive Artist]]: Was famously hard to access in his later years.
▲* [[Straight Gay]]: According to [[Michael Moorcock]]. Others placed him as [[Ambiguously Gay]]; he himself, when asked whether or not he was gay, said, "no, merely [[Exact Words|mildly]] [[Have a Gay Old Time|cheerful]]."
* [[Technology Marches On]]:
** If you read his collected short stories, many of his
** Stories involving manned planetary/lunar expeditions/colonies.
** The British having anything to do with the above lunar expeditions.
** One of his most famous short stories, "The Nine Billion Names of God", goes for a while into the extensive technological contortions required to print out the titular names in the specialized language and alphabet used by the monks -- something that could probably be arranged within a day on a dot-matrix or laser printer.
▲* [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]: Or Soviet Russia in stories set after 1990.
* [[Tomato Surprise]]: Most of Clarke's short stories, and many chapters of his novels, end with a big twist (or a big reveal) in the ''very last sentence.''
**
* [[Twist Ending]]: Used in many of his short stories, many times the ''final'' sentence is all that's required for the twist. What exactly version of the various twist's will depend on the story.
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{{reflist}}
{{Robert A. Heinlein Award Winners}}
{{Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Awards}}
[[Category:Authors]]
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▲[[Category:Creator]]
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