Future of Engineering
Sunday, March 23, 2008
After Arthur Clarke, Who are Science Fiction's Visionaries?
Whether Arthur C. Clarke is measured by such enduring science-fiction novels as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in which he conceived of a space-travel program before man walked on the moon, or purely scientific papers like “Extraterrestrial Relays,” in which he described geosynchronous communications satellites two decades before one ever orbited the earth, the author, who died Wednesday at age 90, will long enjoy a legacy as a titan of speculative thought, seemingly capable of willing innovations into existence simply by imagining them.
Yet Mr. Clarke’s passing poses a challenge to the current generation of science-fiction writers: in a world where technology evolves so rapidly that the present already feels like the future, will a modern-day author ever inherit Mr. Clarke’s aura of prescience? Do any of his successors share his apparent talent for envisioning technological breakthroughs before they are realized?
Read more on this topic from this NY Times article
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After Arthur Clarke, Who are Science Fiction's Visionaries?
Yet Mr. Clarke’s passing poses a challenge to the current generation of science-fiction writers: in a world where technology evolves so rapidly that the present already feels like the future, will a modern-day author ever inherit Mr. Clarke’s aura of prescience? Do any of his successors share his apparent talent for envisioning technological breakthroughs before they are realized?
Read more on this topic from this NY Times article
Related blogposts
After Arthur Clarke, Who are Science Fiction's Visionaries?
PermaLink - After Arthur Clarke, Who are Science Fiction's Visionaries? posted by Ecacofonix : 11:02 PM
