About the Author
Sir Arthur Clarke (l9l7 - ) is one of the three most important science fiction writers of the 20th century (and the only one of those three, Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein being the others) still alive. His most famous creation, of course, is the novel and collaborative screenplay for the film 200l which at its premiere in l968 was regarded as the finest science fiction film ever made and which, a third of a century later, holds its high place in the canon. The film has made the year "200l", now regarded as "Clarke's year", the most important such date since the now defunct l984. 2001 is based upon a short story, The Sentinel, written in the late l940's which Clarke's agent, Scott Meredith, was unable to sell to any of the many extant science fiction markets. It was only when Donald A. Wollheim, later the famous editor at Ace Books and later still the publisher of his own firm, DAW, became editor of a new magazine, Ten Story Fantasy, and called for submissions that Meredith was able to sell Clarke's 5000 word story for $50.00. (The magazine itself rapidly failed; there was never a second issue.) Until its adaptation for film and its expansion into novel form, this was one of the least known Clarke stories. Clarke was, before the film, already famous as the author of Childhood's End (l953), Against The Fall Of Night (l95l) and the nonfiction Conquest Of Space which had in the early l950's been a main Book of the Month Club selection. The film, however, took him to an entirely different level of recognition and celebrity and he has become the world's most recognizable and admired science fiction writer, knighted by Queen Elizabeth in l952. He is an expatriate British citizen, resident for the past 30 years in Sri Lanka. Death And The Senator is only one of his many notable short stories: The Star (l955) won a Hugo and both that story and his Nine Billion Names Of God (l953) were anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame. Death And The Senator is one of his finest short stories; it remains, after four decades, his last story to have appeared in Astounding/Analog magazine.