posted
That was my reaction, too. "Wait—he was still alive?"
Tara: I thought the ending of the book made sense. It was only the ending of the movie that was a nonsensical acid trip, in my opinion.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Tara: I thought the ending of the book made sense. It was only the ending of the movie that was a nonsensical acid trip, in my opinion.
My brother reminds me that I had to patiently explain what the ending meant to the rest of my family after we saw the movie (I was 9). I didn't read the book until years later.
And the nonsensical acid trip also made perfect sense to me, Bowman's brain was operating on overload as he made the transition. Shock the monkey.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
It's that whole out of sight out of mind thing. The number of books published by him wasn't a lot of late.
I remember telling me mom VC Andrews was dead like 5 years ago. She was a huge a huge fan and never realized because the books never stopped coming out.
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posted
I read the book, but I couldn't finish the movie. Maybe I'll go back and just watch the ending... There just doesn't seem to be enough dialog for it to make a good movie (as is evident). I was actually kinda disappointed in the ending of the book myself. It spent the whole time developing the character to the reader, then at the end... he just... changes...
It reminded me of the movie AI. The ending had NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie.
Posts: 636 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
We knew he was still alive since Fahim was in contact with him. I guess that won't happen anymore... I hope...
ETA: And we'd seen him at book launches and such. There's another book launch we're going to in a week, and if he wasn't dead, he would have been at that one, too, most likely, since he was at that author's last one. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:He is widely credited with introducing the idea of the communications satellite, the first of which were launched in the early 1960s. But he never patented the idea, prompting a 1965 essay that he subtitled, "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time."
Yeah, I know the feeling.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Hrm, well I had nowhere else to go and say I'm sad about this. So... I'm sad about this. I really should start to write letters to people whose work I have admired.
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posted
Hmmmm, rather depressing. His books are some of the first science fiction books I can remember reading. Definitely worth a toast to a life well lived.
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And I just started reading some of his short stories. He's already, in the last few months, brought me much joy.
If I'd have known he was still alive, and would be dead so soon, I would have sent him a letter, both cursing him for already writing half the stories I ever would have wanted to write, and thanking him for entertaining me so much in the meantime.
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: "Any sufficiently rigorous rules of magic are indistinguishable from science."--Lyndon Hardy's corollary to Clarke's Law.
Hmm! I'm a fan of Hardy's rigorous rules of magic, but had never seen this particular statement before. Did he actually say this?
(I think it's nicely put either way; I'm just curious.)
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
That's so sad. He was a great man. Did anyone else ever see a show called "Arthur C. Clarke's Astonishing Universe" or something like that? It was so good. I remember the episode I saw was about weird stuff falling out of the sky. It was really scientific, but it was about unexplained stuff that just didn't seem to make sense. Weird and wonderful! In the end, after all these first person stories about fish or pecans or other odd things just falling from nowhere out of the sky, it showed Arthur Clarke walking on the beach, and he was carrying an umbrella. It was awesome.
I miss him already.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: "Any sufficiently rigorous rules of magic are indistinguishable from science."--Lyndon Hardy's corollary to Clarke's Law.
Hmm! I'm a fan of Hardy's rigorous rules of magic, but had never seen this particular statement before. Did he actually say this?
(I think it's nicely put either way; I'm just curious.)
I don't believe he did. But he should have.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by sylvrdragon: It reminded me of the movie AI. The ending had NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie.
I have to disagree here. At the beginning, humans create a machine to fulfill the longing needs of a human. At the end, machines create a human to fulfill the longing needs of a machine.
EDIT: And I think it's an interesting comparison to 2001, because I see a similar link between the beginning and end of that movie. The apes encounter the monolith, and then begin displaying characteristics of increased intelligence, as though their evolution has been jump-started. At the end, David Bowman encounters the monolith and evolves into the Star-child.
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quote:Astronomers are familiar with seeing amazing things through their telescopes. But nothing prepared them for an incredible explosion detected early Wednesday morning by NASA’s Swift satellite. At 2:12 a.m. EDT, Swift detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful that its afterglow was briefly visible to the naked eye. Even more astonishing, the explosion itself took place halfway across the visible universe! Never before has anything so far away come even close to naked-eye visibility. The explosion was so far away that it took its light 7,500,000,000 (7.5 billion) years to reach Earth! In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that Earth had not yet come into existence. [snip--Morbo] Swift normally detects about two gamma ray bursts per week. But March 19 was a special day. The satellite detected four bursts on that day, which is a Swift record for one day. “Coincidentally, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke the day before seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts,” says Swift science team member Judith Racusin of Penn State University. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/brightest_grb.html
A fitting tribute for the passing of Sir Arthur! This reminds me of one of my favorite Clarke stories, The Star SPOILERS at the wiki link.
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It was awesome.
