His most brilliant work? His third law from "Profiles of The Future", 1961:
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
That's just genius.
His fiction was good, too.
I always felt badly, though, once 2001 came and went. From now on it's seriously dated. Kind of like when August 29, 1997 happened and there was no Judgement Day that the second Terminator film promised.
Note to self: When I write a fantastic future story about killer computers, make sure to either not set a firm date for it, or set it significantly in the future. Like hundreds of years, because I'm sure in the 1960s 2001 seemed far away.
