[Simon]

>>making note to send a books to Upstat..err...Western New York<<

Here's why he's important to you GG ... there might be no satellite radio if he hadn't thought about the idea of geosynchronous orbits way back in 1945. (Oh sure, someone else might have come up with the idea in the last 63 years...but then again, maybe not, since we still aren't zooming around in our flying cars.)

Clarke, together with Asimov and a few others, helped create the concept of "speculative fiction" which, unlike science fiction, has to be grounded in actual science.


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A couple more Clarke quotes I like:
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

And since we're surrounded by water down there, this one hits home:

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean."