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Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!: Collected Essays, 1934-1998

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Before Carl Sagan (whom, one learns, was himself turned on to science through the words of Sir Arthur), Arthur C. Clarke, in addition to being one of the world's leading and best science fiction writers, was perhaps the most important, and most widely read, science writers of the 20th century. He published several books that are classics in the field of astronomy and physics, such as Interplanetary Flight (the volume that turned on Sagan), The Exploration of Space (the first English language boook to lay out the basic principles, and Clarke's first successful publication), The Promise of Space, Voices From The Sky, Profiles of The Future, and many, many others. Unfortunately, due to the somewhat ephermal nature of these works - as opposed to his science fiction - most of them have been out of print for many years. This is a shame, as Clarke's writing brilliance, smooth of prose, elegant wit, and wry sense of humor come through just as clearly in his non-fiction as in his fiction. He has that great talent of explaining difficult concepts in simple fashion, through analogy, metaphor, and other practible devices, while still remaining informative and literate, and without resorting to condescending. Thankfully, this book has solved much of our problems. Many of Sir Arthur's best and most invigorating essays, covering a nearly 60-year period, are reproduced here, in permanent form - and what a beautiful volume it is, too. A lot of the writing focuses on scientific topics, yes - particularly astronomy and physics - but a good deal of the book deals not with science, but with a variety of other subjects. These include Clarke's numerous postings to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Royal Astronomical Society, and various magazines; personal reminisces (including several documentary-style writings on his scuba diving adventures - unlike many reviewers, who have commented that these essays seemed boring to them, I found them quite a good and fun read, and they led me to decide to go back and read some of Clarke's entire books on this subject, long ignored by me for this same oversight); forwards to books by other people; reviews (it is interesting to see how Clarke views certain classic science fiction movies and books, as well as his fellow science fiction authors and scientific colleagues - many of whom are mentioned, and recounted in loving detail (the book includes tributes to Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Stanley Kubrick, Willy Ley, Jack Williamson, Robert Bloch, among others... in addition to many mentions of other such notables as Ray Bradbury, Stephen Hawking, Werner van Braun, and many others) speeches, television appearances, etc. Most all of these are informative, many of them entertaining, and all of them readable. Better selections could perhaps have been made, it is true: I would rather have seen more of his incredible 1960's essays from Voices From The Sky and Profiles of The Future (several of which, for instance, describe a future computer network - the internet - before Clarke could possibly have known...) in place of some of the earliest essays in this book, which mostly consist of Clarke's postings to the Journal, and are thus rather vengeful and out of character attacks on various peoples. Still, one cannot go wrong with this book. Of particular interest to ACC fans (who will already have much - though by no means all - of this material, it also includes a lot of autobiographical information on Clarke - and background on the essays - in the form of introductions the the various sections, quite a few pictures of the man (there's an insert in the middle of the book), afterwards, and an extensive About The Author section. In the final analysis, I would reccommend unceasingly this book to anyone who is into Clarke's factual writing, or science writing in general, as well as to anybody who loves his fiction and would like to try some of his non-fiction out. This is a good - though perhaps not the best (I would still reccommend Profiles of The Future as the best starting point for ACC's non-fiction works) - place to start, and a nice companion volume to his recently released collection of short fiction, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. It's a fine place to start for his non-fiction in general. However, don't take it as the final word on his science writing, as it doesn't focus specifically on that, and many of his best science articles were left out of this book. If you enjoy this book, and you want to read more of his scientifically oriented stuff, I unceasingly reccommend Profiles of The Future (recently re-published in a beautiful, lavish new updated volume) and The Promise of Space (if you can find it - an out of print masterpiece)... and perhaps Ascent To Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography if you want something a bit more technical.

This books comes highly reccommended from me to all carbon-based bipeds.

This is a good collection of Arthur C. Clarkes essay's on several subjects from over the course of his career. Anybody who reads a lot of Science writing and/or Science Fiction would like to read this book.

Clarke is one of the best writers of Science fact and Science Fiction of the century. Great author. Great book.

In the range of topics and quality of writing, no one surpasses Clarke. What I like about Clarke's writings is that they contain as much science as fiction. As a prophet, he is incomparable. I recommend this book to everyone, especially all Clarke fans and non-fans alike.

Any fan of Clarke doesn't need to read this, or any other review of this book; they will already own it. However, I think that anyone with an interest in the progression of scientific thought over the last 50-60 years would find much of interest here. It is fascinating to read what Clarke thought about particular issues over this period, particularly the way his predictions on astronautics changed over the years. This kind of information can only be learned by reading literature of the time, and this book is a great way of doing so without spending time on large numbers of now hopelessly out of date books.

Although this book covers a lot of non-science material (particularly the essays on skin-diving), I found them a refreshing change, and quite enjoyable. Coming from Australia, where we are taught to be wary of sharks, I was amazed by some of the things Clarke did around them.

The only real criticisms I have with this book are the redundancies of information in various places (the virtual doubling of an essay is a shocking display of editing), and a few essays seem to have been truncated, which was a shame. In particular, the essay on fractals just kind of stops, at a really interesting point too. Admittedly, it was nothing that he hadn't already covered in Ghost From The Grand Banks, but it should have been left complete anyway, or at least ended properly.

The fiction of Arthur C. Clarke has educated and enlightened multiple generations of readers with works that brought the future to us at an accessible, understandable level. Some of my favorites include Imperial Earth, The Fall of Moondust, and The Fountains of Paradise. And in this year, one must honor the classic "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Neil McAleer's biography of Sir Arthur C. Clarke is perhaps one of the best books to give a full understanding of this most versatile and visionary thinker of the twentieth century; but it is only through reading the non-fiction writings that one truly gets to know what a brilliant visionary that Arthur C. Clarke truly is. He has put out numerous papers, articles and books--but they generally have been out of print for many years--which is what makes this collection of essays so wonderful. Here is a logically organized anthology that brings together diverse areas of thought including science, science fiction, politics and more. It does not strive to be a complete collection, but more an essential sampler serving as a tribute to this most knowledgeable and witty intellect.

If you have not had the joy of reading Arthur C. Clarke's non-fiction, this is a wonderful place to start. If you have not read any in the last decade, this is a nice rememberance. And if you grew up reading his fiction and non-fiction as I have, it makes for a wonderful tribute to a truly phenomenal man.

Perhaps there is hope for the future of mankind?

There's no question that Arthur C. Clarke is one of the great intellects of the past 100 years, or that his contributions to science and science fiction are immense, or that he can really write. So a book of this sort is completely welcome, and the range of topics this work covers, from the visions of the future past writers offered to the role of technology in the world, is notable by itself.

For the most part, the essays live up to the promise of the premise. Clarke is sharp, funny and generally optimistic. I could have done without the handful of instances where he dismisses religion - why do all sci-fi writers seems to have it in for those of us who still believe in a kind and active God? - but he's not intemperant or intolerant of the differences that make up the world. If all the critics of this world were like Clarke, we'd e in much happier shape.

Two things hurt this book, though. One is the numerous essays about Clarke's adventurues as a deep-sea diver in Sri Lanka. I know that he's proud of his days doing this, but I found such essays both dull and out of place next to the rest of the book. Never mind that I am disappointed that none of his essays address the ongoing cilvil wars in his adopted homeland.

The other trouble is the redundancy of the essays. One essay about computers includes the entire body of another essay in this book. Several observations are repeated, such as the quip about the Apollo 8 astronauts and the monolith (it's funny once, but not three times). If the book could include new intros and closings to the essays, certainly they could have been edited for the package.

In any case, though, this is a worthwhile work to read and enjoy if you're a fan of Clarke's works, or a fan of sci-fi, or a space buff, a technology watcher, or just want to see how some of the great ideas of the past century were born. Clarke gave us the communications satellite, HAL, and an unqiue view of what is and what might be.

As the last of the original "big three" (Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke), the author spans the generation that thought many big ideas and saw some of them happen. It is quite interesting to read the essays where no one thought space travel would happen so quickly. Furthermore, once there were human footprints on the moon, no one thought that at least three decades would pass before new ones would be made. All of which verifies one of the points made in some of the essays. We made the moon a goal for all the wrong reasons of international competition and once those reasons no longer existed the will to continue the search appears to be lacking.
There are several themes that recur in these essays.

1) The inexorable movement of evolution and how it will eventually lead to the replacement of the human species with something else, perhaps entities with silicon chips for a brain.
2) The absurdity of believing that God would be so malicious to create an overwhelming body of evidence for a universe billions of years old just to confuse humans.
3) An unwillingness to suffer fools gladly, which sometimes led to strained relationships with friends, in particular a rift with Robert Heinlein over Heinlein's support for the massive and unworkable Strategic Defense Initiative.
4) A tremendous passion for life and all the promises that it has to offer.

I found the reading of these essays to be an uplifting experience. Even though his frustration at some of the political and prejudicial stupidities we find ourselves in comes through, it is written in such good humor that you don't mind. Perhaps that is the sign of a great writer. Someone who can take a depressing fact and present it in a way that makes you happy you read it.
Although the field of science fiction is more popular now than ever before, it is clear that in some ways things have not changed for the better. Without question, the time when the big three were writing their best work is one that can be described by the biblical phrase, `there were giants in those days.' Many of the footprints are in this book.

Arthur C. Clarke

Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!
Collected Essays, 1934-1998

HarperCollins/Voyager, Hardback, 1999.
8vo. xviii, 558 pp. Edited by Ian T. Macauley. Acknowledgments [xv] and Preface [xvii] by Arthur Clarke, 1999. Sources and Index [pp. 541-555]. A 16-page insert with black-and-white photographs between pp. 270 and 271.

First published thus, 1999.

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I wish I could give this book six stars out of five. Another impossibility is to count to sleepless nights I have spent over it. Never mind.

"Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!" is a formidable collection of 110 non-fiction pieces spanning the nearly unimaginable period of 55 years (1944-1999) and ranging from a single page to, seldom, ten pages or so. The range of subjects and forms is another matter. Arthur Clarke's interests may not be as staggeringly catholic as those of Isaac Asimov, but they are still quite impressive. There are here book reviews, obituaries, appreciations, scientific papers (simplified), addresses, or just essays on subjects than range from science fiction and space exploration to underwater adventures around Sri Lanka to human nature, mankind and the future of planet Earth. Now, obviously, book of such stupendous scope clearly and completely defies anything as mundane as a review. What follows are some random thoughts, reflections and observations, in no particular order and pretending to be nothing more than personal.

One of the most beautiful things about this book is that it was Arthur Clarke, nearly 82 years old in 1999, who made the selection himself: so mammoth a task, that he wonders how he was persuaded ever to undertake it. In addition to the general preface, Clarke also wrote introductions to each part save the postscript. These are gems of conciseness, putting the major events in the author's life against the background of the zeitgeist of each decade. Indeed, most of the essays also have few newly written introductory paragraphs (or concluding ones) in which Clarke deals with publication and personal history as well as, more interestingly, with what he was right about and what (and why) he got wrong. The editorial work of Ian Macauley, a lifelong friend of the author to whom the early novel "Islands in the Sky" (1952) was dedicated, is apparently limited to very short, but erudite and pithy, notes printed in italics before each piece. They give an excellent idea what you are about to read in the next few pages.

One of the many ways to read this book is paying attention to Arthur Clarke himself. As every great writer, he has a very personal, and deceptively simple, writing style. Moreover, most of his introductions and notes are largely concerned with events from his own life; quite a few of these occur in many of the essays as well. I daresay some people may find this appallingly self-serving - but I am not one of them. For my part, I am fascinated to read about Clarke's love for Sri Lanka, where he lived for more than half a century, yet no more than six months each year for otherwise the income tax would have ruined him, or about the closest meeting with death in his life when he once panicked underwater. In the aforementioned introductions there are many poignant passages about, for instance, the death of his mother or the horrible 1986 when he was wrongly diagnosed and told that he had just two years more to live. He refused to believe and, as it turned out, the diagnosis was plain wrong and Clarke was to live, not 2, but 22 years more. In the last introduction he is naturally occupied with old age, which he had to spend in a wheelchair due to post-polio syndrome (the right diagnosis), but his mind remained as nimble and insatiable until his death as it was during all his life.

There are tons of charming Clarke-trivia between these pages, too. My favourite bit is his claim that "annoyingly large number of people" still consider "Childhood's End" (1953) his best novel. Since I don't, I can't help mentioning that I am as pleased as Punch that Clarke agrees with my assessment of this fine but somewhat immature work.

Clarke's opinions and beliefs are always clearly stated and there are at least two major and often recurring motifs: his great optimism in the future of mankind as a space race, so to say, and his implacable atheism. A fine illustration of both, coupled with another eternal conundrum, occurs in the "Space and the Spirit of Man":

"Space will, sooner or later, present us with facts that are much more stubborn, and even more disconcerting. There can be little reasonable doubt that, ultimately, we will come into contact with races more intelligent than our own. That contact may be one-way, through the discovery of ruins or artifacts; it may be two-way, over radio or laser circuits; it may even be face-to-face. But it will occur, and it may be the most devastating event in the history of mankind. The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods."

The essay "Credo" is perhaps the most powerful exposition of Clarke's lack of belief in anything that might safely be called God; it is probably safe, too, to call it atheism, not agnosticism, tenuous as the line between them may be, because Clarke seems perfectly convinced that the Almighty simply does not exist. This naturally leads to scornful dismissal of Creationism as well - and rightly so. Clarke addresses the subject but a few times, yet each one of them is totally devastating. Probably the greatest lashing occurs in the foreword to James Randi's "Encyclopedia of Frauds" where the author is a little disappointed that his colleague does not tackle Creationism. But Arthur does, calling the notion "blasphemy" and "the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public". Did these people, Clarke asks, think that God hoaxed the fossil record? Needless to say, Clarke is merciless towards all junk about reincarnation, UFO, psychic powers, etc. that is constantly poured over televisions and in pulp writings. He doesn't even bother to deal critically with such nonsense, and I quite agree with such approach.

Clarke's attitude to the numerous people he mentions on these pages ranges from deep affection and great generosity to gentle criticism and good-natured barbs, but it never ventures in the realms of personal animosity. Indeed, this attitude of his has won him accusations of name-dropping. This is really very silly, to say the least. Clarke is at least as famous as his illustrious colleagues in the genre Asimov and Heinlein, with both of whom, but particularly with the former, he enjoyed firm friendships for many years. I guess a good case can be made that Arthur Clarke is actually more famous than the two most famous men in the history of space age, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, both of whom take prominent place in the piece "Close Encounters with Cosmonauts". Who else - Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg? Both are mentioned several times and rather casually, but in his own field Clark was - and is - every bit as successful as these legendary directors. The small army of illustrators, scientists, literary agents and who not would actually have been much less well-known, if not entirely forgotten, had they not been mentioned by Clarke, here or at many other places. The bottom line is that Clarke's mentioning of names, much more often than not, is actually "name-lifting".

Although for many pieces in the collection this is first publication in book form, or ever, a substantial number of essays had previously appeared in other collections. Just another fascinating aspect of "Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!" is that it gives an excellent overview of Clarke's nearly forgotten today non-fiction writings. It is a startling contrast indeed. His voluminous fiction - including some 19 novels (excluding co-authorships!) and over 100 short stories - is still very much in print and quite a few works have become classics. On the other hand, Clarke's non-fiction is almost completely and hopelessly out-of-print. Yet if you check ISFDB (Internet Speculative Fiction Database), you will find a formidable list of more than 20 (!) titles, excluding collaborations and minor publications.

Now Arthur Clarke never was a scientist, that's for sure, but he did have a solid education, tremendous erudition and awe-inspiring ability to explain complex concepts in a simple way. Above all, he had a scientific outlook, for science (like art, incidentally, though in a very different manner!) really is much more concerned with the way one looks at the world, rather than with such mundane stuff like experiments or data. Clarke did have that rational outlook, and coupled with his lucid and amusing style, it has made him a major figure in the field of popular science. Besides, Clarke lived through the most astounding times in the human history, at least as far space exploration is concerned: he was there long before Gagarin and the first orbital satellites, and remained there through the Moon landing, the robot missions to Mars and Jupiter, and many, many more. And he was not just there. He observed closely, analyzed thoroughly and wrote immediately about all these landmark events. Significantly, this collection of essays contains excerpts from no fewer than nine major non-fiction works:

Interplanetary Flight (1950)
The Exploration of Space (1951)
The Exploration of the Moon (1954)
The Reefs of Taprobane (1957)
The Challenge of the Spaceship (1959)
Profiles of the Future (1962)
The Treasure of the Great Reef (1964)
Voices from the Sky (1965)
The View From Serendip (1977)

Two of these titles can immediately be set apart as they are quite untypical of Clarke. I didn't even know he had written so much about the other vastly unexplored area, almost as unknown and dangerous as the space but lying in precisely the opposite direction: the depths of the sea. Clarke never went deeper than several tens of meters actually, for pretty much all of his life he was a passionate scuba-diver - just another reason, among many others, why he found his home "ten thousand kilometers from the place I was born".

Especially during the 1950s, together with the photographer Mike Wilson, Clarke spent a great deal of time underwater exploring either the Great Barrier Reef or the smaller, but by no means poorer, coral formations around Sri Lanka (then still Ceylon, or Taprobane or Serendip if you prefer more exotic names). The result was a series of three lavishly illustrated and beautifully written books, and I am truly amazed that the chapters selected for reprinting here have been described by some readers as "tedious" and "dull". They are neither. Clarke's style is as readable and entertaining as always. And his scope is typically wide: from shark shooting (with camera) and fishing with dynamite (by the natives) to exploring of shipwrecks (one of them with real treasure aboard!) and getting the best living conditions in Sri Lanka (a tricky business indeed). One thing is certain: the complete books are definitely worth reading. Apart from the two already mentioned, these also include "The Coast Of Coral" (1956) and "The Challenge of the Sea" (1960).

But Arthur Clarke, of course, is at his element when he reflects on space exploration. Interestingly enough, he appears to have achieved a conspicuously high level in this field with his very first book. "Interplanetary Flight" (1950) was quite a success for non-fiction writing on a subject considered more or less pure science fiction at the time. Reportedly, by his own admission, it was a turning point in the scientific development of Carl Sagan himself. Somewhat disappointingly, though, Clarke has chosen to reprint here but the last few paragraphs of the book. But these are quite impressive indeed. He finely says that the author of technical works should avoid purple prose, but he makes - rightly - no apologies for these passages. I am probably the last man in the Solar System who would enjoy purple patch, yet I find the last two paragraphs of "Interplanetary Flight" deeply moving.

Going back to Clarke's space-orientated non-fiction, the main treasure in this collection are the four chapters/essays from "Profiles of the Future" (1962), all of them gems with tons of provocative reflections. Apparently, it is not for nothing that Clarke calls this book "what may be my most important work of non-fiction". On the basis of the three excerpts from it, I would certainly put in this category "Voices from the Sky" (1966) and, judging by the early but magnificent eponymous essay, "The Challenge of Spaceship" (1959) as well. It is devilishly difficult to summarize the immense scope and the cornucopia of stirring reflections that each of these pieces contain. But since they are, so to say, the heart of the book, I feel compelled at least to try to give any idea about their contents.

"The Challenge of the Spaceship" is an exceptional piece, surely one of the highlights of the volume, and the fact that Clarke wrote it when he was not yet thirty, and more than a decade before Gagarin, makes it all the more amazing. Its only "drawback" is the very misleading title - unless "spaceship" is taken to be analogous to "seamanship". Clarke doesn't waste any time on the physical aspects of our future spaceships, but he goes and catches the bull directly for - the horns. He concentrates entirely on the individual and social driving force behind space exploration, and how the latter will affect us profoundly in every aspect: personal, economic, artistic, you name it.

Unfortunately, quotations are impossible. There is hardly anything not worth quoting. Therefore, short and inept summaries will have to do.

As a general rule, as far as our venture into space is concerned, the later the piece, the more qualified Arthur's optimism becomes. Yet he never wavered much from the above until the end of his life - well over half a century later. However, I cannot help thinking that Arthur did overestimate human nature. History since has made a "world outlook" today virtually an impossibility, and the space exploration didn't help the matter at all. Indeed, the situation with the latter is much worse than it seems. More than forty years have passed since man first walked on the Moon, yet we still don't have a single permanent resident there. Our technological progress seems to have been scaled down rather painfully. Our PCs become more versatile, our Internet faster and our mobile phones smaller, but the stars remain totally unaccessible. Could it be that we just need more time to develop in this direction? Let us hope so, for the alternative is chilling. Could it be that the mind-numbing vastness of the universe has proven much too much for man? I hope not, but I don't really believe so.

In the excerpts from the 1960s Clarke has a number of powerful arguments to support his theory that future cannot really be predicted, by science fiction writers or anybody else. And it is good to keep in mind Bradbury's remark that he doesn't try to predict the future but to prevent it; if Clarke didn't agree completely, he wouldn't have quoted it himself. This is the subject of "Failures of Nerve and Imagination". Although the difference between both types of failures is somewhat tenuous, Clarke eloquently shows that speculating about the future is a dangerous business indeed. He obviously relishes poking fun at all those fellows who used to claim, all through the first half of the twentieth century, that nothing heavier than air would ever fly and that space exploration is the purest form of fantasy there is. Amazingly, the future proved these guys wrong, not just within their lifetimes, but "sometimes while the ink was scarcely dry from their pens".

(Speaking of alternative futures, the essay "A Choice of Futures", first published in 1992, is a most absorbing thing to read. Clarke's method, as usual, is compelling: let us go back a century and a half and try to predict our future, relying as much as we can on reasonable speculation upon the most advanced science at the time. The results are startling, to say the very least. Of course it is easy to "predict" great expansion for the steam in terms of ships and trains, and that strange thing in the labs - "electricity" they called it, I think - may well turn out to be of some use. But how could one, Clarke asks, reasonably speculate - in 1842, if I may remind you - about such amazing things as telephone, automobile or airplane - to say nothing of more modern wonders like atomic power and Internet. Speculation, after all, must be based at least on some scientific ground, tenuous as it might be; but without any, it degenerates into mere fantasy. Well, let's see how we will look back in 2111 - if we survive until then.)

One legitimate, but mild, accusation against Clarke, as confirmed by history so far, is that sometimes he is slightly too optimistic as far as human exploration of space is concerned. However, his optimism never degenerates into mere fantasizing. In this respect, "We'll Never Conquer Space" makes a poignant and sobering read. Here Clarke examines the tremendous social impact of deep space exploration. Just imagine - if you can! - travelling to the nearest star (other than the Sun, of course), then sending a message to your family and waiting for an answer - well, waiting for ten years, unless the signal travels faster than light (perhaps not impossible, but surely very unlikely). Small wonder that the space may well turn out to be the limit of our civilization, rather than the beginning of a new one. Clarke makes a very good case that even if we could travel faster than light, we would never conquer space all the same. Imagine for the sake of the argument, Clarke invites us, that we can travel instantaneously to every place in the whole universe. This will reduce the size, certainly, but not in the least the complexity of the system. Roughly speaking, and assuming optimistically low numbers, our telescopes can observe something like 10 to the power of 20 stars, the closest one being nearly five light years away. Space really is unimaginably huge and, it seems, perfectly unconquerable for now, and for us. Yet Clarke finishes the essay with an inspiring speculation that mankind, in very distant future, might at least give rise to as many different interstellar societies as groups of people venture into deep space, never to return.

"Rocket to the Renaissance" continues to explore the social impact from every possible point of view you may think of. Clarke starts with the obvious statement, but well supplied with arguments nonetheless, that colonization of the Solar System, no matter how complete, is very unlikely to ever solve the problem of overpopulation. He then goes on a highly speculative but incredibly fascinating discussion about the impact on arts that space must inevitably have. Imagine "Swan Lake" on Mars when the gravity is just one third of Earth's - or still better on the Moon, where it is twice lower than that. (For once the dance may just match the grandeur of the music, I should think.) If that is a trifle fanciful, Clarke's tackling of the eternal question about the first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence certainly is not. Instead of close encounters, the speculation here is mostly concerned with "lectronic archeology", which is of course by far the most likely variant of the first "contact". I cannot but be reminded of that great movie "Contact" (yes, it's high time to read Carl Sagan's book!) and I am pretty sure that Arthur Clarke would have had the same one-and-only question to ask the aliens as the character played by Jodi Foster: "How did you do it? How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?"

"The Obsolescence of Man" is a compelling discussion of the inevitable collision between man and intelligent machines that is bound to happen one day. Continuing the movie analogy, we are speaking of "The Matrix" and "Terminator 2" now. Well, not quite. Clarke, for one, is convinced that man and machine can live together and to mutual benefit - particularly ours, including everything from taking photographs to carrying dangerous missions in space. Of course Clarke goes way deeper than that, exploring the nature of the mental process often vaguely described as "thinking" and why he himself has no doubt that one day machines may well replace humans in (almost) everything. For better or for worse, half a century later this speculation is still very much in the realms of science fiction. It must be added that Clarke is positive that if the often encountered in the literature scenario about a war between man and machine really happened one day, it would be "easy to guess who will start it." Ironically enough, only a few years later Clarke draw the (")character(") (with or without quotation marks, take your choice) of the most famous mutinous machine in fiction: the board computer HAL9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey". To Clarke's credit, though, just as in "Terminator 2" it remains obscure who started the war, it is never made clear in the novel whether HAL's behaviour is due to deliberately planned mutiny or simply to an inherent mistake in his/its programming. The point is well worth reflecting upon.

The three excerpts from "Voices from the Sky" (1965) have even greater scope. "Space and the Spirit of Man" is yet another psychological study of the huge impact that space must have when our race evolves from "space-conscious" to "space-minded". Even though today this is very far from the case, I do not hesitate to describe the essay as profound. Sadly, "The Uses of the Moon" is just as far from reality. Here Clarke makes a spectacular case how the numerous uses of the Moon - from meteorological predictions to space exploration - can easily override any technical or financial objection. Just imagine - if you can! - spaceships leaving the Moon without burning any fuel at all, just accelerating to ten gravities on a nineteen miles long horizontal track. The same thing on Earth would require 400 miles long track and this of course makes it unthinkable. But on the Moon - with nearly perfect vacuum instead of atmosphere and six times weaker gravity - it all sounds awfully plausible. Although such low gravity and airlessness are very difficult to imagine, Clarke's calculations look very convincing. Finally, to have some fun, "The Playing Fields of Space" expounds the "anathema" that the space is not only hard and dangerous, but it can be terrific fun as well. Clarke's speculations about stupendous records in athletics on the Moon or space yachting are not as far-fetched or flippant as you may think.

Sad to say, but some half a century or so later, though at first glance the wildest dreams of the 1940s have been achieved, virtually none of Clarke's daring speculations about colonizing of the Solar System (the inner planets at any rate) or the cultivation of much more mature, space-inspired outlook, in which severe mental diseases like superstition or bigotry have no place, is nowhere near reality as he thought. This often brings condescending remarks from conceited folk that he is "dated", or "obsolete" to use a heavier word. I myself sometimes mentally exclaim "Come off it, Artie! This is tosh, and you know damn well it is!" But I do wonder if this really is the case. It is only too easy to criticize harshly with the benefit of hindsight - so easy it is, indeed, that one easily gets carried away and forgets how utterly pointless it really is. And there is another point of view that need be kept in mind.

After all, even if Clarke's predictions are far from reality today, very few of them, if any indeed, have been proven wrong or exchanged for alternative solutions. So, it all boils down to one rather difficult question: is Clarke really obsolete or is he simply still ahead of our time? There is some evidence in both directions: in either case we are in trouble. If the former concept is true, we are indeed in a huge trouble, for that would simply mean that our space quest has come to an end; for all of our glorious technological progress during the last few decades, space has turned out to be too big - almost, but not quite, literally - a lump for mankind to swallow. Had he been alive today, Sir Arthur, I am absolutely sure, would have taken issue with such a view, declaring that we simply need more time. Or would he?

So much for the "heart" of the book. Now few words about the other "organs".

One of the hallmarks of every great writer is that he can make every subject, no matter how abstruse or alien to you, absorbing and inspiring. This is certainly the case with Arthur Clarke. Even when he writes of Indian politics ("Satellites and Saris") or mathematics ("The Joy of Maths"), or some rather untypical for him subjects such as somewhat unusual sensory systems ("More Than Five Senses"), or legendary sci-fi illustrators I have never heard of (say, Chesley Bonestell), Clarke is only very slightly less amusing and stimulating than when he is in his forte.

Arthur has another precious quality that I firmly associate with great writers, too: he says a lot with very few words. Many of the pieces in the book are very short, yet hardly any is entirely without value. Perhaps the shortest one is the obituary to Asimov ("Good-bye, Isaac"), but the fact that it is merely half page long only makes it all the more poignant. My favourite in this category is the little over one page long "God and Einstein". Now this is a very thought-provoking piece, especially coming from a confirmed atheist. If we assume that God does exist and, moreover, is not hampered by the sluggish speed of light, he is everywhere, and this would mean that Einstein was very wrong indeed. But if we assume the far more probable idea that God does exist but is limited to the mere 300 000 km/s, than he may well be late when he is needed on Earth.

A word about the photographs. There are sixteen pages of them, all in black-and-white and ranging in quality from good to excellent. The range in time is impressive: from 1943, when the 26 years old Clarke was a RAF radar officer, to 1998, when he met Prince Charles, on the latter's visit to Clarke's beloved island and in the company of the president of Sri Lanka (a swarthy and sultry lady indeed). There are quite a few charming photos. Some of my personal favourites include Arthur Clarke and Neil Armstrong shaking hands and laughing their heads off. Another hilarious shot shows Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov, the latter with his trademark whiskers, both wearing horn-rimmed glasses and grinning like - well, like sci-fi masters; Clarke is actually measuring on Asimov a T-shirt with the charming slogan "Underwater Safari" (actually the name of his own scuba-diving company). This may be (not) a little fanciful of me, but I find the photographs rather illuminating. Arthur Clarke looks exactly as he writes: almost always benignly smiling or grinning, sometimes with mischievous twinkle but more often with profound seriousness in his eyes.

Last but certainly not least, an example must be given what huge fun that book is. Clarke in general is almost constantly highly entertaining, even in the most cases when he is dead serious. Occasionally, however, he indulges, no doubt deliberately, in tongue-in-cheek tone or unabashed flippancy that can almost choke me with laughter. Now let me make this clear before any misunderstanding arises. Clarke is a very serious author. But he is also extremely clever one. He knows perfectly well when, how and to what degree to introduce some fun into the narrative, or when to treat a whole subject facetiously. Of course he is also smart enough to realise that too much fun easily becomes tedious and even more unreadable than the painful dryness of an entirely humourless prose. That said, I find it difficult to imagine a better combination of flippancy and profoundness. I hope I have given enough examples about the latter above, therefore one quote as regards to the former follow bellow:

[One of my greatest favourites: a delicious, good-natured fun at the expense of Asimov's stupendous productivity and versatility. From the beginning of Writing to Sell.]

"I'll tell you exactly how it happened. It began with a phone call to Scott [Clarke's literary agent] from my dear friend Isaac Asimov. "Scott," he said desperately, "I'm only one hundred fifty books ahead of Arthur - he's catching up. If you can slow him down just a bit, I'll give you the Lower Slobovian Second Serial Rights of Asimov's Guide to Cricket - without TV residuals, of course."
"Throw in that illustrated braille Kama Sutra I know you're working on," Scott replied instantly, "and you have a deal."
"Done," said Isaac, whereupon Scott merely threatened to give my address to 589 people who want to know the real and secret message in 2001: A Space Odyssey and here I am..."

My qualms about "Greetings,..." are so minor that they are hardly worth mentioning at all. Still, it is good to be prepared for some things, even though I do consider degrading the value of book because of them to be one of the purest forms of idiocy there is.

The chief caveat one should be warned about are quite a few repetitions, sometimes even in the very same words. For my part, I would rather have a writer who often repeats his best lines (cf Somerset Maugham), than a fellow who constantly tries to be original, often at the expense of lucidity and almost always at the expense of substance. Besides, pretty much all of Clarke's repetitions are well worth re-reading and pondering upon.

Another minor caveat is that a few articles are slightly more technical than they should have been. These include even the final and most simplified version of "Extraterrestrial Relays", the paper in which Clarke presciently expounded the concept of orbital satellites and which he flatly, and not without some wry irony I think, calls "the most important thing I have ever written." Another fine example about certain obscurity is "Possible, that is!" which is actually a friendly fencing with Isaac over the eternal conundrum about the speed of light: can it be exceeded, or can it not? It may be that my obtuseness as regards to Einstein's revolutionary theory is the reason to find this piece unsatisfactory.

As I have said in the beginning: never mind.

If there is but one message to "take home" after reading Clarke, it is this one: think twice before using words like "impossible" or phrases like "it can't be done". He is often quoted that he wishes to be remembered as a writer who has entertained his readers and stretched their imagination at least a bit. Well, he does both in this book. I do not claim to have read every single piece, but I do claim to have read something between 80 and 90% of them. They are not all of equal merit, of course, but I cannot recall a single piece that is entirely valueless - and this includes the deliberately light and flippant ones. Indeed, most essays here are minor masterpieces. They are "minor" because they are short and "masterpieces" because they entertain immensely and stretch the imagination to an amazing degree.

The book is out of print but second-hand copies in excellent condition are embarrassingly cheap. So what are you waiting for?

I have avoided reviewing this massive failure for quite a while, since Sir Arthur was one of my childhood heroes. I still recall the thrill when I found some paperback collections of his short stories at a local drug store in the early 1950s... here was a science fiction writer who knew science and also knew the future of mankind lay in space exploration!

Well, my idol soon developed feet of clay, so to speak. Becoming a physics major, I soon discovered Clarke's actual knowledge of physics was nothing to write home about. And as the 1960s wore on, into the 1970s, and then the 1980s, I found him more and more frequently lending his name to unworthy but presumably profitable undertakings in which he himself all-too-obviously had no involvement whatsoever, including an increasingly unreadable and apparently interminable series of "novels."

The present anthology is almost all clay, and endlessly padded and repetitive clay at that. There is no visible editing, and misprints are everywhere (my favorite is "brass bar" where Clarke wrote "brass bra"! You can bet that he never read, or reread, a word of the text printed here.) Most vexing is that the entire tome is a shameless and absolutely relentless display of egotism and name-dropping that makes Forrest J. Ackerman look humble! Many of the contributions are brief notes or tributes dashed off hastily on various occasions and quite unworthy of being preserved in this way. Inspirational evocations of the wonders of the space frontier are cheek-by-jowl with unreadably dull travelogues and tediously written, utterly trivial underwater "adventures".

Worst of all, while a young Clarke fought against pseudoscience, an elderly, ailing Clarke has shamelessly and incomprehensibly embraced it and there are some really, really embarrassing testimonials to the wonders of the long-forgotten "cold fusion" and to the "zero-point" variant of perpetual motion.

Finally, I'd like to note that the early Clarke has a lot to say about what it means if world society turns its face from the endless promises of infinity and instead gazes at its navel Eastern style--- it means, he says bluntly, cultural death. The elder Clarke, living in just such a culture, and receiving rich (but token) rewards from it, has fallen strangely silent. Some of Clarke's fellow science fiction writers (virtually none of whom he mentions at all in the course of the book) knew what this meant as early as the 1970s--- see for example fellow British author John Brunner's STAND ON ZANZIBAR, in which the crazed inhabitants of an overpopulated earth tear at one another senselessly in mass-murders of ever-increasing scale, like a hundred rats in a laboratory cage built for three --- and precisely what you read about with ever-increasing frequency and severity in your daily newspapers! Coincidence? This is one science-fictional scenario I desperately wish had remained fictional!

Anyway, save your money, folks. This volume is unworthy of your attention, and quite unworthly of the Arthur C. Clarke we used to know and admire.

This is a book of collected essays of Clarke, edited by Ian T. Macauley. The essays cover the period 1934 to 1998. Some of the essays are preceded by a freshly added introductory note.

I didn't like the title of the book. It sounds pretentious.

The book is divided into seven parts, all appropriately titled and dated. Part I - Rockets and Radars - covers the 30's and 40's. Part II - Beneath the Seas of Ceylon - covers the 50's. Part III - Kubrick and Cape Kennedy - covers the 60's and the making of 2001 a Space Odyssey. Part IV - Tomorrow's Worlds - covers the 70's. Part V - Stay of Execution - covers the 80's. Part VI - Countdown to 2000 - covers the 90's and is the longest part of the book. Part VII is titled Postscript: 2000 and Beyond. The book ends with a bibliography, an index and bios of the author and the editor.

Arthur C. Clarke is a prolific author, both of science fact and science fiction and both these fields, he has produced quality stuff. The best and most significant of his short non-fiction has already been collected in several books like Profiles of the Future, Voices from the Sky, 1984: Spring, etc. This book presents his short non-fiction that had not been previously collected. After reading the book, it becomes evident why. Most of the essays here are either too short to be informative or the topic is too slight to be of significance. The best essays here are obituaries to Clarke's contemporary scientists, writers and friends like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, etc. This doesn't mean that the book is boring, which it is not for the most part. But vintage Clarke it is not.

The book would be very useful to completionists - those who collect Clarke's writings. Another useful feature of the book is index. I hate it when I come across non-fiction books that do not have an index

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