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December 15, 2022

Almanac of Story Tellers: Arthur C. Clarke

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books 

Today is the story of Dec. 16th
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    It is the 350th day of the year, leaving 15 days remaining in 2022.
 
    On this date in 1917, the scientist and writer, Arthur C. Clarke, was born in Somerset, England.

    He told his stories about science, sometimes the real, unvarnished truth, and sometimes the fictional possibilities from the recesses of his inventive mind. Occasionally, both would merge, and the facts and the fictions would become one.

    One of those times was during World War II, when Clarke, then a radar technician and instructor for the Royal Air Force, wrote an article for Wireless World. It foresaw a communications satellite system that would relay radio and television signals around the world in an instant. The system became operational some two decades later.

    By 1946, he was selling his short fiction to magazines in the United States and Great Britain. His first novel, in 1948, was Against the Fall of Night.

    A devoted proponent of the possibility of space travel, Clarke's 1951 book, The Exploration of Space, was used to persuade U.S. President John F. Kennedy to launch the idea of mankind landing on the moon. Clarke later joined CBS newsman Walter Cronkite during the 1969 landing of Apollo 11 to help describe and explain what was happening.  

    For much of his life, Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of Science Fiction writing. His works, which included Childhood's End, The Songs of Distant Earth, and The Hammer of God, won a number of Hugo and Nebula science-fiction awards. His short stories include The Nine Billion Names of God and The Star, about the findings of the ruins of a distant civilization whose sun-star became a supernova, which turned out to be the State of Bethlehem,

    But perhaps his best known work was the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, for which he co-wrote the novel and the screenplay with Stanley Kubrick. 

    In 1956, Clarke moved to Sri Lanka to continue his love of scuba diving. He died in 2008.

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