Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Gay(?) Sci-Fi Icon Arthur C Clarke is Dead


Joe.My.God has the details. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Grand Master of Science Fiction, died on Wednesday in his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka at the age of 90. Interestingly, his Wikipedia entry does not mention his sexuality at all.

Neither the Los Angeles Times or New York Times obituaries mention Clarke's sexuality.

Clarke is best known for his collaboration with visionary film director Stanley Kubrick on the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, elements of which Clarke used to create a best-selling novel of the same name.

Similarly to Joe.My.God, I grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke's novels, although my first (and the only one I can remember reading at the time) was Childhood's End and in general I was more of a devotee of Isaac Asimov's work than either Clarke or Heinlein. Clarke's three sequels to 2001 were also best-sellers, despite being of ever decreasing quality.

It is true that Clarke had a genius for making wild predictions about future technology that have so far come true: geostationary satellites (now called Clarke orbits), cell phones, space stations and the Internet.

2 comments:

dolph said...

i' d like to keep in touch - my emailaddress is: clazz@gmx.net

tanx

with best wishes

dolph

Jody said...

Thanks to the power of Google, I just came across your article.

Clarke was indeed gay, as this tribute to him discusses: http://www.doorq.com/Blog.aspx?b=998

And since you are a fan of SciFi et.al, stop by doorQ.com. It's a stomping ground for queers into genres like fantasy, horror and sf.

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