Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction author best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, started writing at the end of World War II and the beginning of the nuclear age, a time when technology promised to bring untold benefit to humanity and had the potential to utterly destroy it. So he wrote science fiction with some actual science in it, tales about space travel, alien encounters and human evolution.
The future was a continuing object of fascination for Clarke. He proved to be uncannily accurate at making divinations about the course of technology. Back in 1964, he predicted virtual surgery, 3D printers and the internet. Of course, he also predicted that we would have an army of monkey servants to cater to our every whim. You can’t always be right.
But thanks to the magic of one of his predictions – the internet – you can listen to Clarke read two of his most acclaimed works – …