Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke
    Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke
    Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke
    Ebook58 pages32 minutes

    Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke

    By Steve Lehman

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Science fiction is replete with brilliant crackpots, some of whom are crammed full of cracked genius. A few only appear cracked because the broken lens of our mundane myopia distorts their image. Occasionally, an SF writer survives the near sighted negativity of various vested interests and ascends to prophetic status. Arthur C. Clarke is our contemporary, secular Elijah. Let's open the doors of our visionary perception, give him a seat at the table, and consider how he has wondered the Earth.

    The world first began to wonder about this country boy from Somerset in southwest England in 1945. As an officer in the RAF during the War, he had already been involved in testing the first to be developed, radar talk-down equipment. The importance of aerial communications well established in his mind, he extrapolated a nobler use for the V2 rockets that rained down on Britain. Clarke reasoned that artificial satellites could be launched using slightly larger rockets, and then parked in geostationary orbits high above the Earth. Such an arrangement would solve a basic problem in the use of radio signals, which propagate in a straight line. Instead of flying away from the curving Earth at a tangent, they could be reflected from orbiting satellites to receivers situated beyond the horizon.

    His 1945 paper titled "Extra Terrestrial Relays" first proposed the underlying principles of our current satellite communications system. We now take for granted instantaneous, global coverage of politics, sports, military carnage, natural disasters, and cultural events. Worldwide telephone service uses the same system to bounce voice and computer data wherever required. The information revolution has invaded our homes, and lives, on the wings of Arthur Clarke's vision. He is the number one prophet of the postmodern age.

    Having reached the age of thirty, discharged his military obligations, and established himself as an innovative genius, Clarke decided to have some fun. He focused on writing science fiction and took up scuba diving.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteve Lehman
    Release dateDec 17, 2014
    ISBN9781311465290
    Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke
    Author

    Steve Lehman

    I grew up in the American Midwest but have spent most of my adult life in Canada as a teacher of writing and English literature. Enlightened ideas of education where I work at John Abbott College in Montreal have given me the freedom to create curriculum, enough time to practice my own writing, and the ability to arrange sabbatical excursions. I have also been able to teach for varying periods of time in California, Saudi Arabia, Austria, and South Korea. The most important literary influence on my thinking has been William Blake. He was a renegade poet and visionary artist who lived in England during the early years of the industrial revolution. Blake all but equated creative imagination with God, and the mythological figure that represents this energy in his work is called Los. In a flash of youthful exuberance, I came to see myself as Los Layman, using a variant spelling of my last name. Later, I decided it should be Los Laymen to be more respectful of Spanish grammar and less egotistical. Blake’s idea was that no individual can possess the creative imagination. The spirit migrates among people and from one generation to the next with unfathomable caprice. Writers can only troll the shoals of language in hopes of periodic visitations from Los who lurks eternally in the depths.

    Read more from Steve Lehman

    Related to Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Beyond The Nuts And Bolts

      Apr 18, 2024

      I have just been revising, revamping and tarting-up my 1990 book Portraits of Alien Encounters, which features my investigation of high strangeness encounters and experiences in northern England in the 1970s and early 1980s. A large part of the book

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What We Did In The Shadows

      Aug 19, 2021

      What We Did In The Shadows
      23 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Shelley Mysteries

      Sep 8, 2022

      The Shelley Mysteries
      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Necrolog

      Aug 12, 2021

      Marie-Jeanne Koffmann spent four decades in the mountains and forests of the former USSR in search of the Russian wild man known as the almasty. Born in Paris, she spent most of her life in Russia. She obtained an MD at Moscow University in 1941 and

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      “Time Like A Ball And Elastic”

      Jul 1, 2022

      “Time Like A Ball And Elastic”
      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Her Dark Materials

      May 6, 2022

      A novel-in-verse written in dense Dorset vernacular, Orlam is a curious and enchanting thing. Like a dark poetic almanac, it charts a year in which its heroine, nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles, leaves behind the innocence of her childhood. Orlam takes

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Classical Corner

      Jan 28, 2021

      Classical Corner
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Pickpocket

      Jun 1, 2020

      Pickpocket
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Phrygian Migration

      Jun 2, 2023

      The Phrygian Migration
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Notes From The Underground

      Jan 16, 2020

      Notes From The Underground
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      To Hell And Back

      Sep 1, 2022

      The first complete English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy appeared in 1802, and over the past two centuries, new versions have proliferated beyond count, like Beatles covers or Sherlock Holmes movies. A diverting literary parlor game is to imag

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Call Of The Weird

      Sep 7, 2023

      The Call Of The Weird
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Flatwoods Monster!

      Mar 24, 2022

      The Flatwoods Monster!
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      Amber accord of Shalimar arrived before her into a room set like a scene from Scheherezade: Oriental rugs, brass lamps mantled with jujube glass. She entered slightly out of breath, one end of a silk sari afloat behind her, embraced my sister, called

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke - Steve Lehman

      Dimensions of Arthur C. Clarke

      Steve Lehman

      Published by Editit at Smashwords

      Copyright 2014, Steve Lehman

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Also by Steve Lehman

      Down In Andong: English as a Korean Language

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      The Divine Clarke

      Arthur Sea Clarke

      Sir Star Child

      Other books by Steve Lehman

      Introduction

      Science Fiction has often been trivialized and ridiculed by the champions of mainstream literature. My most recent gafiation away from the SF fold began about fifteen years ago and a colleague’s comment was typically condescending. Finally grew out of it, eh? SF is too often seen as an adolescent diversion instead of a legitimate literary genre. The classics are conveniently reclassified as utopian satire or otherwise separated from the pejorative sci fi label. Whatever the reason for my gafiation, it wasn’t because I had lost interest in or respect for writers like Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Philip Dick, Kurt Vonnegut or Arthur C. Clarke. Of course, ninety percent of science fiction is crap, as Theodore Sturgeon pointed out long ago, but then ninety percent of everything is crap.

      Sir Arthur earned his right to be considered for inclusion in the ten percent in 1945 with a short essay titled Extra-Terrestrial Relays. It was a visionary projection of the array of communications satellites that now provide the backbone of our postmodern system. The musical elements of his writing style may not always resonate in a Shakespearean key, but the cognitive dimension is an important part of aesthetics. I have found the ideas in Clarke’s subsequent SF to be either instructive, or if not, as Darko Suvin likes to say, at least worth disagreeing with.

      Clarke was a major inspiration for me between 1994 and 2001. The three essays here are presented in the order they first appeared. The Divine Clarke won a few bucks in a contest run by Matrix Magazine, and then was published under a slightly different title at It’s a Bunny in 1996. The second essay, about Clarke’s scuba diving, was first published in Paradoxa in 1998. The Hollins Critic used Sir Star Child for its December 1, 2001 edition.

      I would like to thank Brian Attebery for his editorial assistance with the second and third of these essays and Rita Toews for the Smashwords cover design, which is based on an ESA/Hubble image.

      The Divine Clarke

      Science fiction is replete with brilliant crackpots, some of whom are crammed full of cracked genius. A few only appear cracked because the broken lens of our mundane myopia distorts their image. Occasionally, an SF writer survives the near sighted negativity of various vested interests and ascends to prophetic status. Arthur C. Clarke is our contemporary, secular Elijah. Let's open the doors of our visionary perception, give him a seat at the table, and consider how he has wondered the Earth.

      The world first began to wonder about this country boy from Somerset in southwest England in 1945. As an officer in the RAF during the War, he had already been involved in testing the first to be developed, radar talk-down equipment. The importance of aerial communications well established in his mind, he extrapolated a nobler use for the V2 rockets that rained down on Britain. Clarke reasoned that artificial satellites could be launched using slightly larger rockets, and then parked in geostationary orbits high above the Earth. Such an arrangement would solve a basic problem in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1