Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, on December 16, 1917. He served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist during World War II. During this time, he started to sell science fiction stories to magazines. After the war, he acquired a degree in mathematics and physics, from Kings' College, England. In the October of 1945, he published a paper, in Wireless World, titled "Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" which proposed the idea for geostationary satellites, and how they could be used as communications relays. He worked as the Assistant Editor for the magazine, Science Abstracts, for a short period in time, after which he became a full time writer in 1951. In 1956, he moved to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he currently lives.
Honors
- An asteroid named after him: 4923 Clarke
- A species of Ceratopsian dinosaur named after him: Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei
- The geostationary orbit named after him: the Clarke Orbit
- Awarded the title of Knight Bachelor
- Honorary Board Chair of the Institute for Cooperation in Space
Works
- Prelude to Space (1951)
- The Sands of Mars (1951)
- Islands in the Sky (1952)
- Against the Fall of Night (1953)
- Childhood's End (1953)
- Expedition to Earth (1953)
- Earthlight (1955)
- Reach for Tomorrow (1956)
- The City and the Stars (1956)
- Tales from the White Hart (1957)
- The Deep Range (1957)
- The Other Side of the Sky (1958)
- Across the Sea of Stars (1959)
- A Fall of Moondust (1961)
- From the Ocean, From the Stars (1962)
- Tales of Ten Worlds (1962)
- Dolphin Island (1963)
- Glide Path (1963)
- An Arthur C. Clarke Omnibus (1965)
- Prelude to Mars (1965)
- The Nine Billion Names of God (1967)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- An Arthur C. Clarke Second Omnibus (1968)
- The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night (1968)
- Of Time and Stars (1972)
- The Wind from the Sun (1972)
- Rendezvous with Rama (1973)
- Imperial Earth (1975)
- Four Great SF Novels (1978)
- The Fountains of Paradise (1979)
- 2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
- The Sentinel (1983)
- The Songs of Distant Earth (1986)
- 2061: Odyssey Three (1988)
- A Meeting With Medusa (1988)
- Cradle (1988)
- Rama II (1989)
- Beyond the Fall of Night (1990)
- Tales From Planet Earth (1990)
- The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990)
- More Than One Universe (1991)
- The Garden of Rama (1991)
- Rama Revealed (1993)
- The Hammer of God (1993)
- Richter 10 (1996)
- 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)
- The Trigger (1999)
- The Light of Other Days (2000)
- The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2000)
- Time's Eye (2004)