Childhood's End and Remembering Arthur C. Clarke

Last night was the premiere of Childhood's End on SyFy. The reviewers haven't been kind  but I think it's been very faithful to the source novel. We'll be watching part two tonight.

December 16 would have been Arthur C. Clarke’s 98^th birthday. Arthur (who called me a colleague and friend, despite our only having corresponded by mail) passed on in 2008, after ninety years of a life that could only have happened in the century and civilization that he helped to shape.

Clarke has long and deservedly been called one of the finest “hard” science fiction authors, for good reason. From the beginning of his career as a writer, he explored frontiers of human knowledge, pondering the implications of everything from cetacean intelligence to planetology. From the logic of John Von Neumann’s universal self-replicator to the possible motives of beings far in advance of ourselves.

And yet, what most intrigues me about Arthur’s work is something else – his ongoing fascination with human destiny – a term seemingly at odds with the scientific worldview.

True, a great many of his stories have focused on problem-solving, in the face of some intractable riddle. His characters, confronted with something mysterious, aren’t daunted. They gather resources, pool knowledge, argue, experiment, and then – often – transform the enigmatic into something that’s wondrously known. This part of the human adventure has always shown us at our best. Peeling away layers. Penetrating darkness. Looking back at the wizard, standing behind the curtain.

But there is another Arthur C. Clarke. The one who sent David Bowman through the monolith in his great classic, 2001. The author who gave us Childhood’s End. One who frets that we may not be wise enough to survive the next few generations of tense immaturity, let alone become worthy of joining more advanced communities of mind.

And so, we have a recurring theme of intervention – quasi-divine -- receiving outside help to achieve our potential. It was Clarke’s Law that a sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. What few have pointed out is how often he brought in Supertech/magic to save humanity from itself.

In this mix of both fizzing optimism and dour worry, Arthur always struck me as similar to two other giants, both Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, who also surveyed very wide horizons, from alluring to disquieting. Indeed, Isaac spent a very long span exploring extensively a topic beloved to Arthur, the notion of humanity needing guidance from supertech outsiders -- in his case robots -- leading to a similar conclusion.  That fractious individualism must give way to a more-mature level of unitary uber-mind. A conclusion that Isaac started to back away-from, in the years before he died, leaving hints that I wove into Foundation's Triumph.

In contrast, the other "BACH" authors -- Bradbury and Heinlein -- always believed that human beings -- as individuals and then arguing among ourselves -- can and will figure things out. (Side note: in EARTH I explore a different possibility, that humanity might be able to participate in higher levels of mind without losing individuality.)

What none of them ever did – and especially not Arthur – was give in to despair. The notion of change never lost its fascination. Clarke's works appear always to say, “what was will not always be, so get ready.” Yes, the past deserves honor – it got us here – but the future is what draws us forward. As it has always drawn Arthur C. Clarke.

Here’s Arthur Clarke on the challenges of predicting the future: 

“The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I have failed completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable, have we any chance of visualizing the future as it will really happen.”

Indeed, Clarke’s Three Laws of prediction summarize his views on the future and our ability to look forward to tomorrow:

1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Today, Clarke's work is honored and remembered with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, founded by professor Sheldon Brown at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) -- where researchers investigate the underpinnings of creativity and imagination, key elements in how we will shape and create a bold future .... 

...one that would have made Arthur proud. 

Imagination, Skepticism and Memory

== Tis all in the mind ==

How and where does imagination occur in human brains? The answer, Dartmouth researchers conclude in a new study, lies in a widespread neural network -- the brain's "mental workspace" -- that consciously manipulates images, symbols, ideas and theories and gives humans the laser-like mental focus needed to solve complex problems and come up with new ideas. 

Especially provocative: "Understanding these differences will give us insight into where human creativity comes from and possibly allow us to recreate those same creative processes in machines."  

This type of research provides real grist for new explorations at two new centers devoted to the study of the science of imagination. The new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California San Diego has a goal " to help society become more effective at harnessing imagination." Similarly, the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University brings writers, artists and scientists together "to reignite humanity's grand ambitions for innovation and discovery."  

What of the undiscovered country of the future? Can we use our imagination and creativity to speculate about the problems we will face: See my interview: Five Burning Questions at ASU's Center for Science & Imagination.

And how is imagination connected to creativity? Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, explores the creative process, profiling a hundred talented individuals -- artists, poets, scientists and inventors -- to see how the process can be cultivated. 

==Bias and Skepticism==

An essay in Scientific American, by SKEPTIC editor Michael Shermer, discusses motivational bias -- our tendency to warp our perceptions and inputs to fit the beliefs and narratives we already hold dear.  Liberals do this, leftists and rightists do it. Mass media cater to it. Science tries to combat it - teaching students to recite "I might be wrong" - but scientists (being human) do it too. 

In Shermer's case, the belief structure that he had to wrestle with is a strong libertarian bent -- a leaning that I well-understand because I share many aspects, including a deep respect for competitive endeavors like science and markets, that brought us all our great success.  Shermer discusses how his strong libertarian leanings made it hard for him to begin taking in enough facts to re-evaluate simplistic positions on climate change and gun control.

But the core lesson is bigger than that.  It underlies how we can be marshaled into "belief armies" that follow idea-banners instead of rationally compared evidence.  It is why we like to hear what we believe reinforced, instead of eagerly seeking the argument, contrary evidence and criticism that is the only known antidote to error. Scientists are trained to (often grudgingly) overcome motivational bias.  That may be why strong interests in society are financing the War on Science.

==Memory and Technology==

Ah but is Google wrecking our memory?  In his book, Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, Clive Thompson argues that our brains have always been bad at remembering details. But now we've begun to fit machines into a technique we evolved thousands of years ago —“transactive memory.” That’s the art of storing information in the people around us.

Or are digital cameras messing with our memory? The "Photo Taking Impairment Effect" finds that the act of taking a photograph decreases our ability to remember the moment.

== Browsing -- for just 20 years? Really? ==

Can you believe the web browser is 20 years old? Or that MOSAIC took the world by storm ONLY 20 years ago? Either way, it makes you blink, just to imagine the world of back-then. Have a look back via Frank Catalano's brilliant essay about the things we used to take for granted.

When did you first go online?  My first extensive use was while we lived in FRANCE, using their competitive Minitel system, which was better than Compuserve and in nearly every home in France. They were trying hard to get ahead of us with a unified, centrally planned approach and it worked well, if incrementally. Everyone could check the weather, get news and order tickets...

...Then Al Gore (yes, he did not lie) pushed a bill that unleashed the Internet on the world, taking government hands almost completely off. The opposite approach than the French -- and the greatest act of deregulation in the history of history... for which he get no credit, only mockery. From ungrateful fools.

See my talk: The Role of the Internet in the Future. 

== Science marches on, despite attempts to shut it down ==

Congratulations Elon and the SpaceX team for a vital and successful Falcon 9 launch from Vandenburg of the Cassiope research satellite into polar orbit. A secondary experiment -- to re-fire the first stage after cargo separation and test a possible rocket-based recovery process -- was only partly successful. But much was learned toward what might be a breakthrough cost-saving measure. Again congratulations on this vital milestone.

Will the year of the comets wreck Martian science?  'Three operational spacecraft currently circle Mars: NASA's Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), as well as Europe's Mars Express. NASA also has two functioning rovers, Curiosity and Opportunity, on the ground on Mars. All of these spacecraft will have ringside seats as Comet ISON cruises by Mars this year, followed by Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) swooping within 76,000 km of Mars in November of 2014. The comet poses risks to orbiters circling Mars -- a prospect that may lead to re-orienting and maneuvering of the craft to protect them from comet particle strikes.'  Which will be - believe me - rather difficult.  I am worried about those orbiters.

NASA's Plutonium problem - could it end deep space exploration?  Plutonium 238 is special.  Can't be made into bombs, so there was little effort to create an industry producing it.  The isotope happens to be uniquely suited for long range missions beyond the realm where solar power works. I know some of the guys trying to come up with new methods.  Meanwhile, here's a fascinating article on the subject. 

Read a summary of a way-cool conference in Washington DC, hosted by David Grinspoon and the Library of Congress, that featured author Kim Stanley Robinson, NASA historian Steve Dick and other luminous minds, talking about the human future. Should humanity build "lifeboat" colonies in space? Or concentrate on Earth?  Or give up?

Can giant-galactic black holes grow by eating quantum foam? Marco Spaans at the University of Groningen says that black holes can grow by feeding on the quantum black holes that leap in and out of existence at the smallest scale. These quantum black holes are part of the so-called quantum foam that physicists believe makes up the fabric of the Universe.

Back in 1982, while I was a post-doctoral fellow at the California Space Institute, I created a report urging NASA to explore ways to do 3D parts fabrication in orbit, allowing space station personnel to create many of their spare parts, needing only to have the software patterns "beamed up" by radio from Earth. Several potential methods were described, including today's layer-by-layer build-up method… plus a few that to this day have gone under-explored.  Many unfortunate factors -- most of them non-technical - delayed this coming to pass.  Only, now see how NASA is preparing to launch a 3-D printer into space next year, a toaster-sized game changer that greatly reduces the need for astronauts to load up with every tool, spare part or supply they might ever need.

== Cool sci-miscellany ==

Mike Halleck - "The Engineer Guy" - disassembles and explains a wide variety of cool, everyday devices like a liquid crystal display.  Very well-done mini-documentaries.  Great diversion time that beats cat videos by a long way.

Okay, Boston Dynamics is damned scary.  Their latest  robotic"cheetah" can outrun any but the three fastest humans.

Two million years ago, a supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy erupted in an explosion so immensely powerful that it lit up a cloud 200,000 light years away, a team of researchers led by the University of Sydney has revealed.

Future spacecraft may be 3-D printed -- in space, by robots.

Kinda gruesomely-cynically funny.  Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered yet another dead and lifeless planet drifting around a silent, pulsing sun-like star over 100 light-years away, feeding their growing sense of nihilistic despair. Okay... it's for laughs.  But still.

Transparency will abound. And possibly save us. UCLA engineers have created a 1/2-pound, portable smartphone attachment that can be used to perform sophisticated field testing to detect viruses and bacteria without the need for bulky and expensive microscopes and lab equipment.

I discussed starships and asteroid mining and what it might take to bring boldness back to our civilization, on David Livingston's syndicated radio SPACE SHOW, in September 2013.

In appraising the tradeoffs between competition and cooperation in an organism, these scientists are discussing in the real world what was also covered in my novel Earth.

Fly maggots, the wonder recyclers, will save the seas by replacing the wasteful way meal for fish farms is made by scooping everything living out of the oceans… and many other cool uses. This - plus algae farming and many other looming breakthroughs could just help us to squeak by.

A fascinating chart of the relative amounts of damage - to users and to society - done by abuse of various drugs, both legal and illegal.  Marijuana (canabis) is NOT harmless! While legalizing it, I would retain a presumptive right of families to meddle if a beloved zonker is on a death-to-ambition spiral. Still, recent trends toward sanity are signs that a new generation is ready, at last, to bring a sense of proportionality to an insanely destructive Prohibition.

A golden eagle attacks and kills an adult deer.  Yipe!

Earth may have had free oxygen in its atmosphere in appreciable amounts much earlier than we had thought… about 3 billion years ago rather than the more recent "Great Oxygenization" event of 2.3 billion years ago.

What did our distant ancestors sound like? Listen to the linguists' latest reconstruction of 6000 year old Indo-European.  Kinda fascinating.

Why are our bees dying?  This matters a lot!  Become educated about this threat to our food supply.  These are the "canaries" in our environment… and their loss may cost us a lot of money.  The chief counter-measures… to get farmers to plant varicultures, hedges and flowers just along the borders of theit fields and for us to plant…(icky)… flowers!  Watch this TED Talk by Marla Spivak.

Weizmann Institute scientists show that removing one protein from adult cells enables them to efficiently turn back the clock to a stem-cell-like state.  They revealed the “brake” that holds back the production of stem cells, and found that releasing this brake can both synchronize the process and increase its efficiency from around 1% or less today to 100%.  The researchers showed that removing MBD3 protein from the adult cells can improve efficiency and speed the process by several orders of magnitude. Such on-off switches are amazing and rare.

== Finally, how to fight anti-science politics ==

The biggest victim of the recent US government shut down may have been science, as crucial experiments were cut off - including the entire research season in Antarctica. To many of those who instigated this disaster, the harm to science was not a Flaw of their plan but a Feature.

This will be a long struggle though there are possible innovations.  For example Salon Magazine has featured my proposal for a unique and potentially effective way for individual voters - one at a time - to rebel effectively against the political crime called gerrymandering. It requires no changes in law, no court decisions or ballot initiatives. We could all start this rebellion tomorrow, without any cooperation from a corrupt political caste. It would benefit BOTH Democrats and Republics as well as third parties. Above all, it would reduce the radicalization of American politics that is tearing the country apart.

==And an announcement==

First, a useful announcement: The Next National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day is scheduled for October 26, 2013.  One or more of your local pharmacies will likely accept your old pharmaceuticals free, no questions.  It disposes of them safely and keeps them out of landfills or sewers where they apparently are having ever-worsening effects on water supplies -- for example putting female hormones from birth control pills into what you drink from the tap.  Go through your cabinet!

The Odd Way We Design Our Destiny

In order to bridge the holidays, while we cruise the Caribbean and use skepticism to stave off the "end of the world"... here’s a classic bit of blather about the future, written way back in the early nineties, when the web was new and when pioneers like former JPL director Bruce Murray were trying out these new conversational methods utilizing a brand new breakthrough called the “world wide web.”  

(New... except portrayed even earlier in EARTH.) In conjunction with the TV show Closer to Truth, I had suggestions for Bruce’s Hyperforum experiment that included some innovations still never seen on sites like Facebook and so on.  Enjoy. – DB 12/21/12)

========

What will tomorrow be like?  Human beings are fascinated by the future.  We project our thoughts into unknown territory, using the brain's talented prefrontal lobes to explore and envision, sometimes even noticing a few errors in time to evade them.

People acquired these mysterious nubs of gray matter -- sometimes called the “lamps on our brows” -- before the Neolithic.  What has changed lately is our obsessiveness at using them.  Citizens of the NeoWest devote large fractions of the modern economy to predicting, forecasting, planning, investing, making bets, or just preparing for times to come.  Indeed, our civilization’s success depends at least as much on the mistakes we avoid as the successes that we plan.

Do we live in a special time?  In an episode of his science-interview show Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn warned against temporal chauvinism... the ever-present temptation for any observer to believe this particular moment is unique, the crucial fulcrum around which destiny will turn, decisively transforming all future ages. That claim has been made by thinkers in every generation that ever recorded its thoughts.  And yet, Bruce Murray maintained that this era truly does face unique challenges; unprecedented crises confront the world's social, scientific and ecological networks.  Why else would average citizens find shows like Closer to Truth so fascinating?

If we face a time of crisis, it isn't with our eyes shut!  Consider George Orwell’s groundbreaking novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Published fifty years ago, it foresaw a dark future that never came to pass, perhaps in part because Orwell's chilling tale affected millions, who then girded themselves to fight “Big Brother” to the last.   Since then, other “self-preventing prophecies” have rocked public awareness. Did we partly avert ecological catastrophe thanks to warnings like Silent Spring and Soylent Green?  Did films like Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach, and Fail-Safe help caution us against inadvertent nuclear war?  Above all, every power center, from governments and corporations to criminal and techno-elites, gets repeatedly targeted by Hollywood’s most relentless message... to stay suspicious of all authority.

No, if our prefrontal lobes fail in their crucial job of predicting/exploring/preventing, it won't be for any lack of trying.

This episode of Closer to Truth touched on many contemporary worries. For example, what kind of human population can be sustained by the planet?  Citing the high-densities that today thrive in countries such as Holland, Graham Molitor projected that sixty billion humans may someday share the Earth -- assuming powerful symbiotic technologies arrive in time.  Bruce Murray seemed rather more worried about the planet's near-term ability to support even today's seven billions.  Which of them is right?

The panel also discussed the fate of nationalism, long a controlling force in human affairs.  Today, some countries are creaking and splitting into ethic sub-units while others seem just as busy amalgamating -- eagerly surrendering bits of sovereignty to supra-national groupings like the European Union and the World Trade Organization.  And I should draw attention to a third anti-national trend.

About a hundred years ago, people all over the world began drifting away from priests, kings and national flag-totems, transferring their loyalty instead to fervid ideologies -- models of human nature that allured with hypnotically simplistic promises.  Often viciously co-opted by nation states, these rigid, formulaic, pseudo-scientific incantations helped turn the mid-20th Century into a hellish pit.  But ideology may at last be passing from its virulent phase toward a more commensal one, as millions of educated people pin their righteous passions to more narrowly-focused agendas -- from child labor to animal rights, from privacy to dealing with land mines. In a third de-nationalizing trend, thousands of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, now must be heard and accommodated whenever great powers meet.  It is a chaotic trend, noisy and self-righteous... yet also full of promise.

Even if NGOs offer hazy outlines for a distributed style of world governance, it won't happen overnight. Meanwhile, there remains the perennial question of war.   Robert Kuhn suggested -- and Bruce Murray agreed -- that we haven't seen an end to conflict.  In fact, Pentagon officials are deeply worried that future foes won't ever again let us meet them with our strengths. Instead, adversaries will try to exploit the inherent weaknesses of a complex, interdependent civilization, using inexpensive -- and possibly uattributable -- modes of attack.

One key to our survival will be agility in dealing with whatever the future hurls our way. That means not relying on assumptions just because they worked in the past.  As the late Richard Feynman put it --  “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.”

The panel raised another important issue: how to manage technological change so that it benefits all people, not just those living in the NeoWest.   They also touched lightly on the problem of preserving both freedom and privacy at a time when cameras seem about to prodigiously expand human vision and databases exponentiate human memory. Worthy topics that merit further discussion in our followup hyperforum.

One more aspect of the fast-approaching future has become a fixation among some of our best and brightest. It is the possibility of a sudden break in the balance of intelligence and power on Earth.   For example, many foresee the imminent arrival of human-level -- and then transhuman -- artificial intelligence.  Optimists expect this transforming event to result in a "singularity," when all humans will share access to all knowledge, advancing together toward a sublime, godlike state.  Pessimists, including Sun Computers V.P. Bill Joy, view the prospect of hyperintelligent machinery with dread akin to what Homo erectus may have felt, upon glimpsing the first fully modern man.

Similar scenarios are offered by those who see either salvation or ruin in some looming breakthrough of biology, or in physics.  Such wild speculations may  all prove to be smoke.  But if any of them -- optimists or the pessimists -- turn out to be right, we will see astonishing changes in far less time than it takes to wreck an ecosystem.  Or to teach a new generation how to cope.

It means we'll have to handle things on the fly, improvizing as we go along.

A final topic always gets raised, whenever we talk about the notion of "progress," and this episode of Closer to the Truth is no exception.  Why has human wisdom not advanced as rapidly as our technology?  How can we hope to deal with all of these new dangers and opportunities, if our moral character stays mired in primitive brutality?

I've heard this question asked so often that a strange thought occurred to me.  Yes, it's a cliche.  But could it also be a lie?

Consider the famous Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. When it appeared in 1967, two monumental new projects transfixed the people of the United States -- conquering outer space and overcoming deeply ingrained social injustice.  Now compare the world depicted in the film with the one we live in.  Who would have imagined that colonizing space would prove so grindingly slow -- yet by 2000 we’d refute so many cruel bigotries that citizens once took for granted, back in 1967?

We still don’t have the fancy space stations of 2001, but our astronauts come in all sexes and colors.  And kids who watch them on TV feel less fettered by presumed limitations. Each may choose to hope, or not, without being told you can’t.  At this rate, who will bet me that a woman or a person of color won’t preside in the White House long before the first human being steps on Mars?

Progress doesn’t always go the way we expect it to.

It is sometimes wiser than we are.

====

And now a glimpse at the sort of thing we were doing around 1996... online polls that were then collated and intelligently discussed in something Bruce Murray called a "hyperforum", some of whose characteristics have yet to be achieved even now, in the age of Facebook and Twitter, alas.

====

A HYPERFORUM POLL: An updated version is available on my website. 

Which of the following fields of human endeavor will bring about the greatest positive changes in the next 25 years?

a.  Advances in physical science (e.g. allowing access to the resources of space)

b. Advances in biology (e.g. extending human lifespan or intelligence)

c. Advances in cybernetics and related fields (e.g. creating intelligent or hyper-intelligent machines)

d. Advances in human sanity, behavior and understanding

e. Something else (write-in) __________________________

Which of the above will have the greatest Negative impact? (Answer a-e, or write-in) ___________

SOME FOLLOWUP QUESTIONS:

1.  What is the sustainable human population of Earth, assuming that technology keeps advancing?

--Less that one billion.

--One to three billions.

--Three to six billions.

--Six to twelve billions.

--Much more than twelve billions.

2.  Will nation states continue to be important, fifty years from now?

As important or more so.

--Less important but still valuable for organizing largescale efforts.

--Unimportant because of World Government.

--Unimportant because power will devolve to individuals and self-organizing groups.

--Some combination of the above.

3.  Click which statement you agree with.

--My own favorite ideology is a good approximation of what it will take to make a better civilization.

--It will be enough to raise a next generation that is measurably saner and better educated than ours; it's none of our business to prescribe their model of utopia.

4.  Scientific advances suggest that:

--Destructive powers will become available to ever-smaller groups of angry people.

--Error-detecting and problem-solving tools will become available to ever more numerous groups of sincere people.

--Artificial intelligence and nanotechnology may enable humans to redesign themselves in fantastic ways.

--Artificial intelligence and nanotechnology may enable new forms of "life" to overtake or replace humanity.

--All of the above.

5.   Click which statement you agree with.

--Human decency and justice haven’t kept pace with technological progress.

--Wealth and technology have helped us start to address ancient injustices, maturing enough to face new challenges.

=======

One outcome of this exercise was my Questionnaire on Ideology that is still taken by hundreds, every year.  It is less a survey than it is a exercise for each individual to take a chance to re-assess, poking at some of the assumptions that underlie belief and things that we take for granted. 

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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A TRIBUTE TO ARTHUR CLARKE

Arthur C. Clarke (who called me a colleague and friend, despite our only having met by mail) passed on today, after ninety years of a life that only could have happened in the century and civilization that he helped to shape.

Arthur has long and deservedly been called one of the finest “hard” science fiction authors, for good reason. From the beginning of his career as a writer, he explored frontiers of human knowledge, pondering the implications of everything from cetacean intelligence to planetology. From the logic of John Von Neuman’s universal self-replicator to the possible motives of beings far in advance of ourselves.

And yet, what most intrigues me about Arthur’s work is something else -- his ongoing fascination with human destiny -- a term seemingly at-odds with the scientific worldview.

True, a great many of his stories focused on problem-solving, in the face of some intractable riddle. His characters, confronted with something mysterious, are never daunted. They gather resources, pool knowledge, argue, experiment, and then -- often -- transform the enigmatic into something that’s wondrously known.

This part of the human adventure has always shown us at our best. Peeling away layers. Penetrating darkness. Looking back at the wizard, standing behind the curtain.

But there was another Arthur C. Clarke. The one who sent David Bowman careening through the monolith, helplessly bound for transformation and deification. The author who gave us CHILDHOOD’S END and 2001 A Space Odyssey. One who frets that we may not be wise enough to survive the next few generations of tense immaturity, let alone worthy of joining more advanced communities of mind.

And so, we have a recurring theme of intervention -- quasi-divine -- receiving outside help to achieve our potential. (And wasn’t Clarke’s law that a sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic?)

In this mix of both fizzing optimism and dour worry, Arthur always struck me as similar to two other giants, both Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, who also surveyed very wide horizons, from alluring to disquieting.

What none of them ever did -- and especially not Arthur -- was give in to despair. The notion of change never lost its fascination. His works appeared always to say "what was will not always be, so get ready." Yes, the past deserves honor -- it got us here -- but the future is what draws us forward.

As it always drew Arthur C. Clarke.

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Footnote: Recently, I've been involved in starting the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego. 

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." --Arthur C. Clarke

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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