Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90

Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 – New York Times.

I wrote to a new friend in Sri Lanka just a couple of weeks ago, and expressed the surprise I experienced every time I read something about Arthur C. Clarke: “My god,” I would think. “Is he still alive?” Well, sadly, he is not.

When I was in my teens I became hooked on science fiction. The first I remember reading was Isaac Asimov, but i quickly took to Arthur C. Clarke’s writings. Rendezvous With Rama sticks with me as one of the most impressive accounts of an encounter with an alien craft imaginable. His Childhood’s End is another engrossing account of our species encountering an alien — and superior — civilization. I read and enjoyed many others, however, including more short stories than I can recall.

It strikes me that those two books, plus 2001: A Space Odyssey — based of course on his short story, The Sentinel — concerned imagined encounters with superior races. There was a sense of humility there: a sense of the unlikelihood that we are really that advanced a species, given the size and age of our universe. And there was also a sense of wonder: what would we learn about ourselves, how would we change, upon meeting another intelligent (more intelligent!) species?

Arthur C. Clarke was a staple of my juvenile reading, although I’m not sure whether I’d still enjoy his writing were I to return to it now with my undoubtedly more refined eye. But his work struck me at the time of reading as being a head above most of the other science fiction writing that I encountered. And he enlarged my world, and expanded my sense of what was possible. And he communicated a love of science. And I am grateful to him, and sad to hear that he has passed on at last.

Comments are closed.