Profiles Of The Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible - Tapa blanda

This book originally appeared in 1962, and was based on essays written during the period 1959 ¿ 1961. Since it was concerned with ultimate possibilities, and not with achievements to be expected in the near future, even the remarkable events of the last decade have dated it very little. But Arthur Clarke has gone over the book making corrections and comments where necessary in order to bring it right up-to-date. The author, amongst many fascinating excursions into what the future may hold, discusses the fourth dimension and the obsolescence of the law of gravity, the exploration of the entire solar system and the colonisation of some of it; seas will mined for energy and minerals, and asteroids will be pulled to Earth to supply needed materials; men, already bigger than they need be, may be bred smaller to be more efficient on less food.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset in 1917. He studied at King's College, London, receiving a BSc in physics and mathematics. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force and was part of the team that developed the early warning radar defence system, an experience recounted in his 1963 novel GLIDE PATH. He is, though, best known as the writer and co-creator with Stanley Kubrick of the groundbreaking film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. He died at his home in Sri Lanka in March 2008.