“And one by one overhead, the stars started going out.”
That’s how this feels, as the man who wrote the line in his story “The Nine Billion Names of God” will get a chance to learn some of them first hand. Arthur C. Clarke has passed away in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.
I, as many know, was not a popular kid in high school, entranced in such things as computers and science fiction. And growing up, there was The Movie, explaining evolution and exploration, humanity and aliens. 2001 seemed so far away in 1982 when I was ten.
Soon the library would learn to stock up on science fiction, and one of the authors they knew had to find their way out to the southwest branch was Arthur Clarke. I can remember looking at the phone, wondering if AT&T knew what was happening after reading “Dial ‘F’ for Frankenstein”. America of 2276 was made real with the misadventures of Duncan Makenzie in Imperial Earth, and I listened to my own fair ammount of static, wondering if aliens were just lost in the noise. I felt for the priest on board the ship, suffering my own crisis of conscience, around the planet that had to die to herald the birth of Christ. I, numerous times, pictured an older version of myself sipping a scotch in the “White Hart”. I felt a bit of pride when the crew of the S9000 chased after all those chemical rockets bearing humanity away from Earth. My drama class winced when I performed the presentation parts of “Food Of The Gods”, and two swore off soy products right there and then.
And it wasn’t just the fiction. “Man and Space” from Time Life was checked out by me on a monthly basis from the Jr. High School library. The descriptions of basic physics, the colorful illustrations of the Saturn rockets, the examination of our solar system, all kept me coming back for more.
And it continued into adulthood. “U.S.S. Discovery” is the Star Trek machinima my friends and I were trying to launch, in an effort to add more actual science and exploration to the universe. I was upset that the U.S.S. Odyssey was the first on-screen casualty of the Dominion War. And I was almost thrown out of the theater during the opening of “Star Trek: First Contact” when Worf detatched the main deflector dish… which was the “AE-35 unit”. His ability to take a small piece of science… or a large one, and turn it into a story is something I try to bring to my own writing in my classes. I don’t succeed often, but the thought that it’s possible keeps me trying to write, and write, and write something better than before.
Arthur C. Clarke was a writer of true vision, and his body of work will entertain, educate, and enthrall all the generations that come down after him. It saddens me that the 2001 he and Stanley Kubrick envisioned has not come to pass, but if his fans… including myself… have anything to say about it the stars will be humanities home.
Goodbye.
So, this is Miniature Rules Hiatus Week, but I think I’ll finish Ninja tomorrow before the meetings.
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