Long live Arthur C. Clark.
I grew with him, as my parents did. And our kids will grow with the works of the man that never grew up.
For me, this is a sad day. My greatest hero has died.
Long live Arthur C. Clark.
I grew with him, as my parents did. And our kids will grow with the works of the man that never grew up.
For me, this is a sad day. My greatest hero has died.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
For me, Richard Feynman was a click above Arthur C. Clark, but just barely. I still feel the loss of such a great man.Originally Posted by Mario F.
The first sci-fi book I read in full was Childhood's End. THis was in high-school when they introduced reading time for the first half-hour of homeroom. A teacher suggested it to me and it's probably one of the best stories I've read. Of course I don't read often if it's not a programming book, but I read it and it was good.
His short stories were class!
I don't remember the title but one i loved was where a team of astronauts become stranded on an asteroid when their computer navigation goes down, the complex trajectories and angles to get them off the rock and home are lost and the sun will soon fry them if they don't leave.
the solution is thought up by a crew member that recalls the amazing mathematical skill and tradition of the chinese using abacus, they rig up one for each crew member and break the tasks down between them....its cool, better than i'm telling it of course...hehe!
if anyone has ever seen the competitions with the chinese students using skills learnt on abacus (abacii ?) to VERY rapidly solve series of Savant-level mathematics problems they will know what i mean....
They do it by moving the beads in their mind and quickly tracing the movements with their fingers as though using the instrument. this skill is learned through hours of intense practice in very competitive groups...it leads to the question.. can intelligence be taught...
"Into the Comet", 1960. (Although I'm looking at it right now from one of my deceased father books, it was only published in 1967, it seems).
It was a comet, not an asteroid. You are right. Amazing story. All the more amazing the fact... he was right. You can solve most of the more complex operations with that incredible instrument. It was a dream that revealed the hero, the possibility of using several abacus. It always stroke me as appropriate that this kind of solution would be revealed only in a dream, when we are more in touch with the farther regions of our brain, our history, memories, and origins.
I love everything in this man. The works, the life, the lifestyle. It's quiet interesting however, because I don't have anything of Arthur C Clark that I can say is my favorite. It's the collection he brought us and the quality of it all that makes him my favorite science fiction writer and one of my favorite "inspirational scientists".
Brewbuck is right. Look at Richard Feynman. Simply Wow! He too stands one notch up in my personal "inspirational scientist" ladder. But not for his novels. Arthur C Clark novels are... I'm at loss here. I grew up with them after all, as my father who taught me to love books, did.
Who here never owned a Arthur C Clark pocket book?... Liar!
But then I'm confronted with the fact my favorite science fiction novel is Philip K. Dicks' Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (of which I'm one of the few proud owners of the first edition, paperback). The novel and the awesome cult film it spew are among the most memorable moments in science fiction to this date. Both book and movie are my favorite science fiction works in their respective fields.
There is nothing in Artchur C Clark that I can say I like best. But he's one of the few heroes of mine. Collectively he supplanted everyone so far in my modest opinion. There is no one in the planet that has never heard that name before.
Arthur C Clark is like Coca Cola (without the crappy advertisements). An icon to our imagination and no doubt one of the greatest writers of all times.
Last edited by Mario F.; 03-20-2008 at 10:10 AM.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
I heard about it from my dad the other day, another legend gone.
