Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds

Hello everybody

"Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds" is the title of a voluminous collection
of
Arthur C.Clarke's non-fiction essays. The book is now available in
paperback
(Voyager books, ISBN 0-00-648369-0). The content ranges from discussing
his
time in school in the 1930's to up-to-date pieces.

The  range of subjects is incredible. They reach from Alexander the
Great to
giant squid, from Meccano "the most wonderful toy ever invented up to
that
time [the 1940's ]" to PCs: "a cure for the complete Meccano syndrome",
and
of course all the subjects you would expect: fellow science fiction
writers,
technical prophecy, including his 1940's paper advocating geostationary
radio/TV satelllites (electricity to be provided by a steam engine
powered
by solar heat!) plus such items as his 1940's membership in the British
Interplanetary Society (which was founded in 1933 and still exists, see:
http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/ ) and its relationships with sister
organisations such as the American Rocketry Society and the Verein für
Raumschiffahrt (which was eliminated by the Nazis).

Clarke can turn a fine phrase and there are little gems on just about
every
page:
"One may laugh at the little vials of dews that Cyrano de Bergerac
attached
to his body so that he may be drawn towards the sun; but perhaps the
familiar warp of contemporary science fiction will bear no closer
examination"

Clarke worked in WWII as a radar technician with physicist Luis Alvarez
(he
of the dinosaur asteroid) on developing aircraft blind-landing
equipment:
"One [test site] was surrounded by a tasteful tableau of crashed
Liberators.
We were always very careful to to explain to visitors that they had
managed
to get that way without any help from us."(1949)

"The problem of making contact between two bodies [spaceships] in space
seems to us considerably less difficult than refueling a plane in midair
...
we consider that a few nylon cables should be able to neutralize any
reasonable relative velocity , after which it would be merely a matter
of
manning the capstans."(1948)

"In a few year, we will be seeing the first photographs of of the Earth
as a
single small globe among the stars. Is it too much to hope that this may
make the more extreme forms of nationalism look as ridiculous as they
are?"
(1947)

The book continues in chronological order and ends with Clarke's version
of
the history of the 21st century (which differs considerably from what we
know to be the real one ;-)

In one word: FASCINATING

Greetings
Karl Heinz

available from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk