β Scribed by Arthur C. Clarke
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Another Clark's legendary book that for instance had an impact on Gene Roddenberry, creator of televisionβs βStar Trek.β βI read Childhoodβs End, of course, and was mightily moved by it,β said Roddenberry. βAnd I should say that Profiles of the Future was the next most important Clarke work in my life because a great deal of what I did on βStar Trekβ was guided by that.β It is, in fact, difficult not to think of the famous Roddenberry line βBeam me up, Scottyβ when reading Chapter 7 of Profiles, βWorld Without Distance,β about teleportation.
The book, wrote Isaac Asimov, gave βall of us a chance to raise our eyes from the ground and to contemplate the scenery ahead.β
Profiles of the Future is not a narrative listing pie-in-the-sky predictions. βAll attempts to predict the future in any detail appear ludicrous within a few years,β Clarke wrote in an updated introduction in 1983. βThis book has a more realistic, yet at the same time more ambitious, aim. It does not try to describe the future, but to define the boundaries within which possible futures must lie.β Pro files offered the best of rational speculation based on the limits of natural laws and discredited any loose imaginations that cast aside the truths and methods of science.
Foreword to Millennial Edition
Introduction
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