His remarkable record of foreseeing future technologies led him to be known as “the godfather of the telecommunications satellite.”Ī radar pioneer in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Clarke wrote a 1945 article in Wireless World magazine in which he outlined a worldwide communications network based on fixed satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 22,300 miles - an orbital area now often referred to as the Clarke Orbit.Ĭlarke’s seminal article, for which he received $40, was published two decades before Syncom II became the world’s first communications satellite put into geosynchronous orbit in 1963.įor pioneering the concept of communications satellites, Clarke received a number of honors, including the 1982 Marconi International Fellowship and the Charles A. “Clarke incarnates the essence of, which is to blend two otherwise opposite activities into a single story, that of the advancement of mankind.” “He places his characters in a near future where science has changed the way we live and the possibilities for adventure. “Clarke, along with Asimov and Heinlein, is unique in that his human dramas are determined by advances in science and technology,” Slusser, a professor of comparative literature, said in 2005. Clarke” and curator emeritus of UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection - the world’s largest publicly accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and utopian fiction - ranks Clarke as one of the three greatest science-fiction writers of all time.

George Slusser, author of the 1978 book “The Space Odysseys of Arthur C.

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