Arthur C. Clarke has died at 90, in Sri Lanka

Photo from the Arthur C. Clarke foundation.

From wikipedia:

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name.

His bibliography is quite renowned, including novels such as Childhood's End (depressing, but entertaining), the Space Odyssey series (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001), numerous short stories, and nonfiction too.

In remembrance, I'll leave you with his 3 laws of prediction to ponder:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.


2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.


3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Author Lloyd Alexander has died

Lloyd Alexander wrote some of my favorite childhood fantasy books, including The Black Cauldron series (The Chronicles of Prydain).

Died yesterday at 83 years of age, and his wife of 61 years died 2 weeks ago.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/05/18/entertainment/e082014D93.DTL&feed=rss.news

Charles Darwin's letters available online

Pic: A letter from Darwin to his friend Joseph Hooker (right), written whilst he was recuperating in the lull between writing On the Origin of Species and its publication. On the left is a reply from Hooker.

The complete works of Charles Darwin is available online at: http://darwin-online.org.uk/

Apparently, handwritten letters were recently added to the Darwin Correspondence Project at: http://darwin1.caret.cam.ac.uk/

It's a pretty big collection:

Darwin was a prolific letter writer, exchanging correspondence with nearly 2,000 people during his lifetime (1809-1882). Nearly 14,500 of his letters are known to exist, with the biggest collection residing in Cambridge.

Makes me wonder how Darwin would have felt if he knew that so many of his personal letters would someday be publicly available to anyone with an internet connection. Seems an ironic devolution of privacy.
The article below mentions the variety of his letters, including some family conversations about his personal hygiene. I wonder if that's as embarrassing as baby bath pictures?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6657237.stm