Arthur C. Clarke Reads His Classic Sci-Fi Works: Childhoods End and “The Star” [Video]

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 – …