On this day in 2008 British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke died aged 90. A prolific writer, he is most famous for the screenplay of Stanley Kubrick’s film: 2001 – A Space Odyssey.

Clarke had an uncanny knack for predicting the future well in advance of events, thus he foresaw satellite communication and the universal use of computers for online banking and shopping, decades before they happened. Clarke was briefly married but openly gay and he spent the last 50 years of his life in Sri Lanka.

Here is a poem by James Weldon Johnson that reminds me of the film 2001 – A Space Odyssey, despite being called The Creation:

And God stepped out on space
And he looked around and said,
I’m lonely –
I’ll make me a world.
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke
And the darkness rolled up on one side
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said “That’s good!”
Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun.

Today I am grateful for the wonder of the universe which is stranger than we may ever imagine; nevertheless we should not be afraid, because we are a part of it ourselves.