I wish to propose that the Nobel Prize for Literature for the year 1999 be awarded to the writer Arthur C. Clarke, presently resident at: Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The works on which I base my proposal that Mr. Clarke be awarded the Nobel Prize are his novels Childhood’s End, and City and Stars.
Although the rest of the opus created by Mr. Clarke represents just as respectable a basis for the award of a Nobel Prize, I shall restrict myself to formulating my proposal on the two works that I have quoted.
As you know, Mr. Clarke is an author of SF literature, and I am fully cognisant of the fact that the great majority of literary theoreticians do not regard such literature as being either serious or valuable. To date, a Nobel prize has never been awarded for an SF opus, although some of the authors who did receive the prize are, in addition to writing the usual and fully accepted genres, also authors of well known SF works for example, William Golding, 1983.
Nobel nomination Arthur C. Clarke
At the beginning of his book the author draws attention to the fact that economic science is in chaos and that it can no longer constitute the means of managing economy.
This chaos, the author believes, is the result of sketchy and inadequate understanding of capital. The classics of economy and Marx have formed a school of thought on capital, a theory on capital that seemed to be totally true and final. It appeared that capital as such was thoroughly understood. This has been amply confirmed in practice – in the application of their theories in comprehending the movement of capital and in controlling that movement. Their theories did not, however, foresee that capital would continue to develop (perfecting within itself) and that it would prove itself through that very development to be quite different from their concept of it.
When capital had reached the stage of true development it began to function quite differently, and this was – according to the author – the reason behind the inadequacy, impotence even, of those theories to either explain its movement or to control it. In order to deal with the resultant problems and to forestall damage, economists are attempting to discover a different application of existing theories, or to create their own new, modified ones on the basis of the existing. Since those new and modified theories all fall short of being able to explain matters, they are being propped up by auxiliary theories which in their turn are supported by secondary theories… and so on. The sheer volume of those auxiliary means is rendering contemporary economic science utterly ineffective. It can no longer be aided by refinement of modification of existing theories; there is a need for change of Copernicusian dimensions to put matters to rights.
The economic theory of social ownership is not plagued by such confusion, but only – the author believes – because there is as yet no theory.
All articles are available here as PDF documents.