re: Hey...
My God, are you saying Arthur C. Clarke is some kind of science ... FICTION writer?!
I remember another science gaffe he made in the novel The Sands of Mars, namely that the Red Planet has no mountains. But this was written in the 1950s, so he can be forgiven. And even right up to the Mariner 9 mission in 1971, many scientists thought Mars to be a rather dull, flat world covered mostly with craters.
But he has also been on target in spooky ways, namely the date of the planetoid hit in Rendezvous with Rama - September 11, 2077. I know, the odds were 365/6 to 1 that he would pick that month and day, but please note this was in 1973.