The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation Welcomes You!
Sir Arthur C. Clarke was an engineer, futurist and humanist who lived by the precept that it is our personal responsibility to use all our cognitive and creative capabilities to imagine past today to shape a better tomorrow.
The Arthur C. Clarke foundation proudly honors his legacy by sparking our imaginations, and daring to fuse our experience, creativity and expertise to think differently at the annual Unleash Imagination program. We invite you to explore this site for the legacy of Sir Arthur, information on the foundation, and details on this year’s exciting Unleash Imagination evening of events!
INTRODUCING THE 2026 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDEES:
INNOVATOR
AWARDEE
The VLOG BROTHERS
HANK AND JOHN GREEN
Visionary authors, educators, and entrepreneurs inspiring millions through science, literature, and learning.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
AWARDEE
BILL NYE
Science educator, engineer, author, and television personality leading generations to embrace science through curiosity, humor, and accessible learning.
IMAGINATION IN SERVICE TO
SOCIETY AWARDEE
CONNIE WILLIS
One of the world’s most celebrated science fiction authors for her imaginative, insightful storytelling.
REVISIT UNLEASH IMAGINATION 2025
THE 2026 CLARKE CONVERSATION ON IMAGINATION
THE SIR ARTHUR CLARKE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDEE
BILL NYE
Bill Nye is an American science educator, engineer, television presenter, inventor, andNew York Timesbestselling author. As the co-creator and host of the Emmy Award-winning 90’s television seriesBill Nye the Science Guy, Nye helped introduce science and engineering in an entertaining and accessible manner to generations of viewers, fostering an understanding and appreciation for the science that makes our world work. Today, he is a respected champion of scientific literacy through his work challenging opponents of evidence-based education and policy on climate change, evolution, and critical thinking.
Nye’s lifelong commitment to science advocacy has earned him various honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, inclusion in the TIME 100 Health List, a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Children’s and Family Emmys.
For 15 years, Nye served as CEO of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest and most influential non-governmental space organization co-founded by Carl Sagan, and is now the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Ambassador for the organization. He earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and currently resides in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, CA with his wife.
Click the FULL BIO link for more really interesting info on our Lifetime Achievement Awardee, Bill Nye!
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Throughout his life, Clarke explored the boundaries by encouraging us to reimagine through a creative lens of life. Today, we are facing a new frontier with great new challenges. AI and medical breakthroughs, new technologies that spawn new enterprises, for example, offer us bold new transformational possibilities, but at the same time create sobering concerns for the future of humans in this emerging world. One of the leading questions of this moment is how we embrace promising ideas and technology without losing the ability to open ourselves up to and move forward with bright new ideas. Wherein will lie the vibrancy of the human spirit and imagination?
We are living through a moment akin in some ways to the industrial revolution more than a century ago. It is similarly critical today to promote new, beneficial ideas, especially those that spring from the young, many of whom are on their way to becoming our decision-makers. From your different vantages what do you foresee as some of our and their challenges, and where might the opportunities emerge in your and other fields? How can we make new ideas more accessible? How can we use this period of questioning to benefit humanity?
Are there ways to challenge today’s decision-makers to actively seek out and support innovative ideas and technologies that have the potential to transform our world for the better? Arthur Clarke warned us that as we become enamored by “screens”, we should remember that data is not information, and information is not vision. How do we foster an environment individually and collaboratively, by which we can ensure that the brightest minds can make a meaningful impact with visions borne of imagination, expertise and commitment to shaping a future that benefits all of humanity?
SIRIUS XM host Steve Scully will engage the three 2025 Clarke Awardees, whose visions and accomplishments advance science and society to seek their thoughts on where we are, where we need to go from here and most importantly, how to get there.
THE SIR ARTHUR CLARKE INNOVATOR AWARDEE
THE VLOGBROTHERS
HANK GREEN AND JOHN GREEN
In 2007, John emailed Hank a proposal. Instead of being brothers via text message (which was how they were mostly doing it) they would make videos back and forth to each other for a full year.
Now they run an educational media company, Complexly, that is home to over a dozen educational YouTube channels like Crash Course, SciShow, PBS Eons, Healthcare Triage, and The Art Assignment. Together, those channels have 18 million subscribers and are viewed over 60 million times per month. Always 100% free, and funded through advertising, grants, and support on Patreon, Complexly’s videos are used by teachers and learners in schools all over the world.
They also both write books, though one of them has been at it for longer. John’s novels include “Looking for Alaska,” “Paper Towns,” “An Abundance of Katherines,” “The Fault in Our Stars,” and “Turtles All The Way Down,” and others. Hank wrote “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing,” and “A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor,” both on the New York Times’ best-seller list.
They’ve also been actively working on some charity projects. For the last 10 years, they’ve been running something called the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, which sounds like a joke but has distributed millions of dollars to charities, non-profits, and educational projects.
“We think a lot about what it is to be a person in this peculiar era of history. That’s mostly what we talk about on Vlogbrothers, our primary YouTube channel. That means everything from how to interface with growing inequality, how to prioritize mental health in a world that…does not, and how to find meaning and feel valued.”
They like to talk about these things on YouTube, but also in real life, when they get a chance.
THE SIR ARTHUR CLARKE IMAGINATION IN SERVICE TO SOCIETY AWARDEE
CONNIE WILLIS
Connie Willis is the best-selling science-fiction author of “Dooms Day Book” “To Say Nothing of the Dog,” and the two-volume “Blackout” and “All Clear,” and has won more Nebulas and Hugo Awards than any other author, an unprecedented total of eight Nebula Awards and eleven Hugos for her novels and short stories.
Her other novels include “Passage,” “Bellwether,”, “Lincoln’s Dreams,” “Crosstalk,” and “The Road to Roswell.” She is currently working on a new time travel novel called “Book Cipher.”
Willis is a SFWA Grand Master of Science Fiction and a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. She was named Best Science Fiction Author of the Nineties by LOCUS Magazine.
Willis lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband, a retired physics professor. She has one daughter, Cordelia, who is a forensic scientist for the San Jose Crime Lab and who does lots of community theater. Connie Willis loves screwball comedies, Shakespeare, Dorothy Parker, the television series PRIMEVAL, church choirs, chocolate, Fred Astaire, Mark Twain, Thornton Wilder, and Harrison Ford, not necessarily in that order.
Click the FULL BIO link for more intriguing details on our Imagination in Service to Society Awardee, Connie Willis!
Scenes from 2023 Unleash Imagination
WATCH FOR THE 2026 AWARDEES ANNOUNCEMENTS AND join the annual celebration – in person or virtually.
Join us for an unforgettable evening of cocktails, an elegant sit-down dinner and dessert, encompassed by the unique opportunity to meet new friends, chat and take pictures with our esteemed awardees and special guests. Close the evening inspired and enlightened with ideas to unleash your imagination and shape the future for a better tomorrow. Join our mailing list, and watch for details on how to be there!
Take your seat in the live audience or watch virtually, from wherever you are, as our moderator Steve Scully challenges the Clarke Awardees on topics of both great interest and concern for the future of our planet, and our daily lives. Questions from the audience are some of our favorite parts! Check out some past Clarke Conversations on Imagination.
We are especially excited about the planned launch of the new intergenerational co-mentoring program, the HAL 9000. With your help, HAL 9000 will open new opportunities for young people from all backgrounds to work with adult experts to create actionable plans that will benefit humanity. Learn how you can support this rich and productive program launch!
Get to Know Us!
Sponsor the Future of Unleash Imagination
With the sponsorship package including a table for 8 at the beautiful Embassy of France, online promotion before during and after the event, our sponsors return year after year to invest in the future of the invaluable programs, maintaining the legacy of the visions of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
Not on our mailing list? Join here: clarkefoundation.list@gmail.com
Past awardees, from the left: George R.R. Martin, Margaret Atwood, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Cixin Liu, Jill Tarter, Irwin Jacobs, Mark Dankberg, Fred Ordway III.
