An interesting article In Honour of Arthur C. Clarke.

This a neat list of the most prophetic sci-fi films ever made. A couple of these I haven't seen.

2001: a Space Odyssey rates #1 as it should. It's a great film but so slow moving as to be almost boring. It's one of those films I had never seen that I was waiting for a chance to see on the big screen. We tried to show it at Western Film ages ago but the print was one of the worst I have ever seen, most of the first sequence was missing!
Unfortunately we studied it in one of my film courses so I had to watch it, at least it was projected on a screen by a fairly good video projector.

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke.

My favorite author died not too long ago. Arthur C. Clarke wrote some of the most famous sci-fi novels of the last century. He also wrote the short story 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on and co-wrote the full novel. I really liked his novels, they were full of interesting ideas, exciting and fun to read. They were also written in a way that was easy to understand. He wasn't one of those writers who writes in an abstract matter just to seem intellectual. Issac Asimov is one of those.
One thing I always was disappointed about was so little of his work was filmed. There was 2001 and it's sequel 2010.

My favorite book of his is Rendezvous with Rama about a huge interstellar spaceship that swings through our solar system and the astronauts that explore it. I must have read the book about 10 times. It's finally being made into a movie that's supposed to come out in 2009. It stars Morgan Freeman and is being directed by one of my favorite directors David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac). I'll be there opening night.

I came across this short film made by a film student in 2001 which is kind of a fake trailer for a film version. I hope the makers of the film hire this guy to work on the real film. He captures the feel of the book amazingly well. Seeing this in a theatre as a trailer would give me goosebumps.

Clark's later work wasn't as good as his early stuff, especially when he started working more with other writers. I think in many cases he just came up with the idea and helped, the other person did most of the writing. The later books lacked the simplicity I loved about his early stuff. He was a unique person who was not only a great writer but a scientist and mathematician as well. He was the first person to come up with the idea of telecommunications satellites in geosynchronous orbit although he envisioned them as manned space stations. He also popularized the concept of the Space Elevator, basically an elevator between the ground and a space station. He built at least one book around it. I tried to read one of non-fiction books about it once, he had the math all worked out. It could be built but not until we have the proper technology and building materials.

Arthur C. Clarke was one of the most important people of the 20th Century and he will be sorely missed.