As an essayist, Clarke discusses the implications of science, but humanity -- its obsessions, aspirations and foibles -- is the underlying subject to which he continually returns. He has little patience for organized religion: "The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths," he writes in 1965, "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." If you think that's harsh, you should hear what he has to say on the subjects of UFOs and astrology.

In "Credo," an essay published in 1991, Clarke lays out a belief system by distinguishing between two views of God: Alpha, who "rewards good and evil in some vaguely described afterlife," and Omega, "Creator of Everything ... a much more interesting character and not so easily dismissed." Clarke writes, "No intelligent person can contemplate the night sky without a sense of awe. The mind-boggling vista of exploding supernovae and hurtling galaxies does seem to require a certain amount of explaining."

But Clarke is always careful to educate rather than merely lecture. On the immensity of space he writes, "To obtain a mental picture of the nearest star, as compared with the distance to the nearest planet, you must imagine a world in which the closest object to you is only five feet away -- and then there is nothing else to see until you have travelled a thousand miles." On biological evolution: "We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins."

In 1975, the Indian government gave Clark his first satellite dish. Since then, appropriately enough, he has used the link on several occasions -- including millennium eve -- to address the world he helped to envision half a century ago.

The citizens of the future, Clarke has written, may be "like gods, because no gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command. But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the universe when it was young." Clarke has preserved his young state of mind; indeed, he often quotes his own epitaph: "He never grew up; but he never stopped growing."

Recent Stories