Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3678830 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 430 pages

Synopsis
Portrays the life and career of Arthur C. Clarke, including interviews with friends and colleagues and highlighting his contributions to science fiction.

Customer Reviews

Most boring biography ever?
Okay, so maybe it's unfair to be reviewing this considering I tried to read it not long after reading the Philip K. Dick biography. But God! Clarke's life comes across as being incredibly boring in this lame duck of a book. I struggled through it until the "young" Clarke gets divorced (he looked about 60 when he was in his early 30's) then I had to give up. The book is just tedious in the extreme. There seems to be little thought or consideration for Clarke's fiction, or any sort of critical analysis of it. Instead we get an sleep inducing account of seemingly everything Arthur ever did.
Come on- half way through the book and still no close look at "Childhood's End"? It's like the author either never read Clarke's fiction, or never enjoyed it enough to bother writing more than a perfunctory description here and there.
Maybe Phil Dick just had a far more interesting life than Arthur Clarke (this much is most likely true) but it doesn't help when your biographer can't bring the excitement out of something as inherently exciting as "The City and the Stars" or "Childhood's End".

Avoid.