uss the journey that both take you on, and how they influenced each other. These days, science fiction movies wrap up their endings in small little packages; this movie and novel will give you the stars. Show a gamer the film, and you'll realize how these visions still resonate with modern audiences. Would we really have had a scene where our nameless protagonist destroys a rogue AI in Portal by destroying her piece by piece as she tries to talk you out of it without Clarke's HAL?
Clarke didn't just give us great fiction, although that will be a major part of his legacy. He had degrees in science and mathematics, and his nonfiction work is important in a way that's hard to overestimate. While Clarke didn't invent the idea of geosynchronous orbit—that honor belongs to Herman Poto?nik—Clarke did see the promise of this idea for communication and wrote extensively about the idea. Most broadcast satellites orbit the earth in geosynchronous orbits, sometimes called Clarke orbits. With Clarke's love of differing mediums, from the printed word to his television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers and his fascination with instant communication such as e-mail, this must have been a satisfying legacy indeed: the idea that his work has increased our connection with each other.
Clarke was also a believer in the technology of space elevators, with the idea that an object in geostationary orbit with Earth, connected to a terrestrial location via a number of possible materials, could be a cheap and effective way to place objects into space. Arthur C. Clarke died before this technology matured, but work continues on the concept. It's very possible in the next decade we'll see space elevators being used to cheaply deliver payloads into orbit.
George Whitesides was the executive director of the National Space Society. He said that Clarke's enthusiasm "was what I think made him so popular in many ways..."
"He was always thinking about what could come next but also about how life could be improved in the future," Whitesides told the BBC. "It's a vision that I think we could use more of today."
One of the striking themes of Clarke's work was the moment where we made contact with another intelligence, and what it might do to us. This lead to powerful scenes, but the thought behind it was almost plaintive. Technology is getting more powerful, and yet we're still our normal, violent and hateful messes. Clarke seemed sometimes to be looking into the stars and wishing for help. What he may not have realized is that with his fierce intelligence and limitless imagination he was helping us, and in the work he left behind he will continue to help us. He knew that technology can make the world better, and that a rational mind was no less beautiful than any other.