Sci-Fi author extraordinaire Arthur C. Clarke was credited for many things during his long, fruitful career as a writer an visionary: Inventor of the tele-communications satellite, proposer of the "Space Elevator", etc.

But it was not until I finished reading one of his first novels, "Childhood's End" (Amazon US & UK, that I realized that he should also be credited for laying the foundations of what would later be known as the ciber-punk cyber-punk movement.

"Childhood's End", written between 1952-53, deals mainly with the concept of First Contact between humanity and 'the Overlords', a race of alien beings so monumentally advanced they almost appear god-like in their powers. Yet there's one part of the novel that should be noted:

"The group of artists & scientists that had so far done the least was the one that had attracted the greatest interest—and the greatest alarm. This was the team working with "total identification." The history of cinema gave the clue to their actions. First sound, then color, then stereoscopy, then Cinerama, had made the old "moving pictures" more and more like reality itself. Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation of all the senses, and perhaps hypnosis aswell, but many believed it to be practical. When the goal was attained, there would be an enormous experience of human experience. A man could become—for a while at least—any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real of imaginary. He could even be a plant or an animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense impressions of other living creatures. And when the "program" was over, he would have acquired a memory as avivid as any experience in his actual life—indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself.

How about that? 30 years before "Neuromancer" and "Snow Crash", Sir Clarke was already coaxing us to jack in to the Matrix! Not bad, Artie, not too bad at all...

Of course, even in as early as 1952, Mr. Clarke was already aware of the inherent danger of letting yourself too immerse in entertainment, and forgetting about living your REAL life:

Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep, and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges—absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won't be living their own lives anymore. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!"

And remember, this was published before HBO, "24", "American Idol" and Youtube came into being!

He even predicted the impact of things like Napster, Myspace & Blogger: the advent of a myriad of talented amateurs, that nevertheless would never attain the greatness of their predecessors of past centuries.

Truly, a man who lived ahead of all of us.

I will end this posting by recommending all of you to read "Childhood's End", if you haven't done so already. It's a great novel that begs not to be put down until finished, and will leave you both astounded and questioning about the possible role of man among the daunting vastness between the stars.