"Death and the Senator" | |
---|---|
Short story by Arthur C. Clarke | |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
Publication | |
Published in | Analog Science Fiction and Fact |
Publication date | May 1961 |
"Death and the Senator" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in 1961 [1] and has since been included in several collections of Clarke's writings.
Set in an unspecified year, but a few years before 1976, the story tells of Martin Steelman, an American senator and potential Presidential candidate. As a member of a Senate committee, he has used his influence and rhetoric to refuse funding for an astrobiology project.
Some years later, he learns that he has a potentially fatal cardiac condition. Thereupon, he hears from one of the space scientists, whose project he helped to kill, that the USSR is experimenting with medical treatment under zero gravity conditions in a space station in Earth orbit. Although Steelman is offered a place on the treatment programme, which is highly experimental, he gives it up on seeing a young couple also waiting to be treated.
Back in Washington, D.C., he spends a few last quiet months with his family members, for which he had always been too busy with politics, and finds happiness in the role of a loving grandfather. While sitting on a bench and contemplating his fate, death comes quietly to him.
The story is widely understood to be a rebuke of U.S. Senator William Proxmire's criticism of space exploration. [2]
Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
Alastair Preston Reynolds is a British science fiction author. He specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle University, where he studied physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD in astrophysics from the University of St Andrews. In 1991, he moved to Noordwijk in the Netherlands where he met his wife Josette. There, he worked for the European Space Research and Technology Centre until 2004 when he left to pursue writing full-time. He returned to Wales in 2008 and lives near Cardiff.
The Space Odyssey series is a series of science fiction novels by the writer Arthur C. Clarke. The first novel was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. The second was made into a feature film, released in 1984, respectively. Two of Clarke's early short stories have ties to the series.
The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. He stated that it was his favourite of all his novels. Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologized in The Sentinel in 1983.
"The Nine Billion Names of God" is a 1953 science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. The story was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards. It was reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964.
Earthlight is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1955. It is an expansion to novel length of a novella of the same name that he had published four years earlier.
The Sands of Mars is a science fiction novel by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground. The Sands of Mars was Clarke's first published novel.
Hyperion is a 1989 science fiction novel by American author Dan Simmons. The first book of his Hyperion Cantos series, it won the Hugo Award for best novel.
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 2001, is a collection of almost all science fiction short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke. It includes 114 stories, arranged in order of publication, from "Travel by Wire!" in 1937 through to "Improving the Neighbourhood" in 1999. The story "Improving The Neighbourhood" has the distinction of being the first fiction published in the journal Nature. The titles "Venture to the Moon" and "The Other Side of the Sky" are not stories, but the titles of groups of six interconnected stories, each story with its own title. This collection is only missing a very few stories, for example "When the Twerms Came", which appears in his other collections More Than One Universe and The View from Serendip. This edition contains a foreword by Clarke written in 2000, where he speculates on the science fiction genre in relation to the concept of short stories. Furthermore, many of the stories have a short introduction about their publication history or literary nature.
The Hammer of God is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke originally published in 1993. Set in the year 2109, it deals with the discovery of an asteroid to be on course to collide with Earth and depicts the mission for deflecting the asteroid by using fusion thermal rockets.
The Last Theorem is a 2008 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl. It was first published in the United Kingdom by HarperVoyager in July 2008, and in the United States by Del Rey Books in August 2008. The book is about a young Sri Lankan mathematician who finds a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, while an alien invasion of Earth is in progress.
"Sunjammer" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, originally published in the March 1964 issue of Boys' Life,. The story has also been published under the title "The Wind from the Sun" in Clarke's 1972 collection of short stories with this title. It depicts a yacht race between solar sail spacecraft.
"Jupiter Five" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in the magazine If in 1953. It appeared again in Clarke's collection of short stories Reach for Tomorrow, in 1956, and deals with the detection and exploration of an old spaceship from outside the Solar System.
"Hate" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1961 and subsequently included in several collections of Clarke's writings, including The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. The story originated when movie producer William MacQuitty asked Clarke to write a film treatment titled The Sea and the Stars. Nothing came of the project so Clarke transformed the treatment into a short story. If magazine retitled it "At the End of Orbit" for publication but Clarke preferred his original title because it has "more punch" and it is under that title that the story has since been published.
The Best of Arthur C. Clarke: 1937-1971 is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer Arthur C. Clarke originally published in 1973.
Michael Joseph Cassutt is an American television producer, screenwriter, and author. His notable TV work includes producing or writing, or both, for The Outer Limits, Eerie, Indiana, Beverly Hills, 90210, and The Twilight Zone. In addition to his work in television, Cassutt has written over thirty short stories, predominately in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. He has also published novels, including the 1986 The Star Country, the 1991 Dragon Season, the 2001 Red Moon and the 2011 Heaven's Shadow, in collaboration with David S. Goyer. In addition, Cassutt contributes non-fiction articles to magazines and is the author of the non-fiction book, The Astronaut Maker, a biography of NASA legend George W. S. Abbey (2018).
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
The following is a list of works by Arthur C. Clarke.
"The Red One" is a short story by Jack London. It was first published in the October 1918 issue of The Cosmopolitan, two years after London's death. The story was reprinted in the same year by MacMillan, in a collection of London's stories of the same name.
In his lifetime Arthur C. Clarke participated in film, television, radio and other media in a number of different ways.