Welcome to another “in memoriam” posting. Damn.
Arthur C. Clarke, the great SF author, died today at the age of 90. Actually, since his home in Sri Lanka is a day ahead, he passed away – appropriately enough – tomorrow.
Clarke’s short fiction was one of the many things I aggressively sought out when I was in my early teens, and being the geek I am I also was a huge fan of his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey. Huge fan of his novels as well, most notably Childhood’s End. To state the obvious point, he was a fantastic writer whose work brimmed with great ideas (even his “lesser” work had flashes of fantastic imagination).
I had the privilege to speak to him once, VERY briefly. I was volunteering and running a lot of the A/V stuff at Dragon Con one year, in the early 90s, and the convention was able to get a satellite feed from Sri Lanka to have Clarke speak. The audio was not coming through and I had to test the mike here in Atlanta.
“Hello, Mr. Clarke,” I said, with the thought OMGIMTALKINGTOTHEGUYHOWROTE2001!!! screaming in my brain.
“Can you hear me?”
Smiling, he looked up. Through the video feed it looked like he was looking at me (which, of course he couldn’t; the video was one-way).
“Yes, we can hear you. Hello there!”
“H…Hi.”
I could have said a million things, like how much I loved his work, how much I appreciated the ideas he always brought to his stories, about how much I admired his dedication to the science field, how I thought he was as brilliant as they come… But, as these things always seem to happen, the moment was lost. I handed the mike to the MC and walked off stage….
Well, I couldn’t say it then so I’ll write it now. Thank you, Arthur C. Clarke. Thanks for making the impossible seem possible, for opening the mind of many many readers around the world – myself, of course, included.
Thanks you so much.
Like I have stated before, we are losing some of the greats, people. If you can, reach out to the people you admire for what they have done, because pretty soon they won’t be here any more.