From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Nov 07 1999 - 13:32:33 MST
At 05:44 AM 6/11/99 EST, Robert B. wrote:
>To the best of my knowledge, the quote should be attributed to Tsiolkovsky
>and not to Clarke. I wouldn't be surpriced if Clarke had quoted Tsiolkovsky
>on it at some point and the attribution got lost.
Arthur C. Clarke, TALES OF TEN WORLDS, 1963:
`Our beliefs were neatly expressed by that famous remark of Tsiolkovsky's,
which I'd hung up for everyone to see as they entered my office:
EARTH IS THE CRADLE OF THE MIND--BUT
YOU CANNOT LIVE IN THE CRADLE FOREVER
`(What was that? No--of *course* I never knew Tsiolkovsky! I was only four
years old when he died in 1936!)'
That, obviously, is not Clarke himself speaking... but a character in his
1959 story `Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting', reprinted in the
collection. ACC was born in 1917.
Poignantly, that story starts by noting: `The twenty-first century does
*not* begin tomorrow; it begins a year later, on January 1, 2001.' Bad
luck, Arthur. Less than two months away now, and you were right - the
cretins never did learn to count...
Damien Broderick
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