I remember when acorn user (a bbc microcomputer magazine) had an article on forth. I got enthusiastic about the idea but there was no real way to get a forth interpreter back then. I did play around with interpreting rpn expressions in basic, though probably not very efficiently :)
the game dorfromantik is a fun twist on this idea - the game generates random tiles and you have to fit them in with matching edges. you produce some beautiful pastoral landscapes while playing a pretty fun and challenging game.
"a fall of moondust" would translate extremely well to screen, and "the martian" has shown that it's the kind of movie that would do well enough in terms of reception.
The first Clarke I read as a kid and still one of my favourites. It hasn’t aged well, not least because it was written before we landed on the moon and now know its surface isn’t like that.
I remember 3001 mainly for the bit about deism vs theism, which is one of my favourite throwaway passages in all of sf.
8<-------------------
"You said that all the old religions have been discredited. So what do
people believe nowadays?"
"As little as possible. We’re all either Deists or Theists."
"You’ve lost me. Definitions, please."
"They were slightly different in your time, but here are the latest versions. Theists believe there’s not more than one God; Deists that there is not less
than one God."
"I’m afraid the distinction’s too subtle for me."
"Not for everyone; you’d be amazed at the bitter controversies it’s aroused.
Five centuries ago, someone used what’s known as surreal mathematics to
prove there’s an infinite number of grades between Theists and Deists. Of
course, like most dabblers with infinity, he went insane."
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