Sir Arthur C. Clarke has published a great deal of scientific nonfiction, most of it speculative essays about the future. These works include The Exploration of Space (1951), a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection; The Challenge of the Spaceship: Previews of Tomorrow's World (1959); Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible (1962); The Promise of Space (1968); and Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations (1972). But he is best known, of course, as a central figure in twentieth-century British science fiction. He has applied his considerable knowledge of science to the writing of his fiction, making him one of the foremost writers of "hard science fiction" in the tradition. At the same time, in novels such as Childhood's End (1953), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Rendezvous with Rama (1973), he explores a cosmic vision of humanity's place in the universe that is almost mystical in tone. This balance between the scientific and technological on the one hand and the transcendental on the other provides for Clarke's most distinctive contribution to modern science fiction.
