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Rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke: Centenary Essays

Edited by Andrew M. Butler and Paul March-Russell

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Product details

10 Dec 2022

ISBN 9781780241081 (Paperback)
306 pp., Free UK Shipping

About

Rendezvous with Arthur C. Clark explores the author’s representations of gender and sexuality, his location within post-war science fiction, his engagement with religion and ecology, his influence on such writers as Iain M. Banks, Stephen Baxter and Liu Cixin, and his enduring legacy through the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. We follow his imagination and thought from the depths of the ocean to the moons of Jupiter and, indeed, beyond the infinite.

Reviews

Scholarly yet readable, this is an exciting and thorough overview of Clarke in all his facets, which does a great service in correcting the absence of serious commentary on his writings. Perhaps the best praise I can offer is that it gave me an immediate desire to dive back into his body of work, and read anew one of – if not the most – significant voices in post-war British science fiction. --Alistair Reynolds

This is an exemplary collection that brings a fascinating group of authors and approaches to bear on Clarke’s work, from the uber-canonical to the comparatively obscure and pulpy. It’s one of those rare edited collections that comes together as a unified intervention in a field – it’s terrific! -- Gerry Canavan, Marquette University

This collection eloquently reminds us that there is so much more to Arthur C. Clarke than just his well-known texts Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The contributors illuminate the whole range of Clarke’s corpus – his fiction and nonfiction, his forays into television and film – in relationship to a fascinating range of topics such as religion, sexuality, empire, environmentalism, and posthumanism. I walked away from this book with a fresh appreciation for this towering figure in science fiction. -- Jeremy Withers, Iowa State University

Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography: Works by Arthur C. Clarke
Introduction: Clarke’s Mysterious Worlds
Andrew M. Butler and Paul March-Russell

1 ‘It’s just my job five days a week’: ‘Rocketmen’ of the 1950s
Andy Sawyer

2 Clarkaeology: Arthur C. Clarke’s Time Capsules
Patrick Parrinder

3 Leaving the Cradle: Apocalypse, Transcendence andChildhood’s End
Thore Bjørnvig

4 A Space Bodhi Tree: The ‘Crypto-Buddhism’ of Arthur C. Clarke
Jim Clarke

5 No Future? Queering Deep Time in The City and the Stars
Paul March-Russell

6 Arthur C. Clarke and the Limitations of the Ocean as a Frontier
Helen M. Rozwadowski

7 The Extensions and Obsolescence of Man in 2001 and 2010
Andrew M. Butler

8 All these worlds are yours except Europa’: Transhumanism and the Ethics of Terraforming
Alexey Dodsworth-Magnavita

9 Dark Forest or Grand Central: Self and Other in Liu Cixin and Arthur C. Clarke
Lyu Guangzhao

10 ‘Big Dumb Objects’, Conceptual Breakthroughs and the Technologiade in Arthur C. Clarke and Iain M. Banks
Joseph S. Norman

11 Clarke Dare Speak Not its Name: Defining Sexuality in Imperial Earth
Mike Stack

12 Thirty Years is Ample Time: The Clarke Award and Literary Science Fiction
Nick Hubble

Afterword
Stephen Baxter

Notes on Contributors
Index