Most people don't know there's a cadre of science fiction writers who are scientists...especially physicists and mathematicians. Their old books read like oracles of the future as their themes become true in later eras.In the case of Clarke, he wrote a paper in 1945 about communications satellites in orbit around Earth at a time when rocketry and missiles were in their infancy and no nation had fired a single rocket into space, let alone a complex wireless communications satellite.
Today, we all know how that worked out. Whenever we make a cell phone call or receive a television signal from a satellite dish.
I sometimes wonder if some of these scientist science fiction writers don't fire the imagination of other scientists who begin to work on their ideas and make them a reality.
I also recall a passage from Genesis where man was building a high tower to reach Heaven..Tower of Babel and God saw what they were doing and confused their language so they could no longer understand and communicate with each other. Apparently, this was displeasing but God also said something interesting which has had far reaching implications.
Genesis 11-4-6
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Idea after idea have been introduced by science fiction writers which today are reality.
Who could forget Jules Verne's 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea...written in 1870. All about submarines and forget the title since 20,000 leagues is about 10 times the diameter of the earth. The idea of submarines was introduced, though there were submarines used in the American Civil war. They were powered by men, much like the ancient galley and nothing like what Jules Verne wrote about. Today, submarines are some of the most technologically advanced and refined products of science...in numerous fields.
So, it seems once someone conceives of a process or concept, it only remains for them or others to develop the idea into reality.
Science fiction writers seem to conceive of a large number of concepts which come on line later and that seems to bear out what was said so very long ago, for good or evil.... "and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do"
I will miss Arthur C Clarke and also Isaac Asimov who gave me many hours of pleasurable reading and fired my own imagination as to what was to come.
Sci-fie writer Clarke laid to rest
British science-fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has been buried in his adopted country of SRO Lank.
Music from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was played at the funeral and members of the family which had adopted him cried as his coffin was lowered.
"Here lies Arthur C Clarke. He never grew up and did not stop growing," his gravestone in Colombo is to read, in accordance with the author's wishes....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7309598.stm