Date posted: March 18, 2008 - Tuesday
Title: R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke
Current mood: sad
Another part of my childhood died today. Science fiction author Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away in Sri Lanka where has lived since the 1050’s.
Clarke was one of the first authors I read when I started checking out books from the small branch library in the beachfront town where I lived. It was his writing, and a number of others, who shaped my youth with ideas and possibilities.
My brother and I would go to the library and check out the maximum of 14 books each. We would read our stack of books, exchange the books and read those and be back at the library before the two-week checkout period was over. That’s how we would spend our summers.
It was around this same time when I moved toward becoming a writer myself. There had been some movement in that direction before, but it was my sophomore year in high school when I wrote some things in English that kind of cemented an interest in putting words down on paper. That English class, along with a job writing sports stories for the local newspaper set me on the path to what I am today.
Today I can list at least a couple of small publications of fiction and hundreds of newspaper articles, editorials and columns as part of my literary background. And it was people like Clarke and his compatriots in the world of science fiction that helped get me started. And he wasn’t limited to fiction. He is widely credited with originating the idea of communications satellites and had a part in the development of radar. His short story, "The Sentinel", was the basis of the script for the movie "2001 A Space Odyssey". Another of his famous novels, "Childhoods’ End", was one of the most frightening things I have ever read.
It is more than sad to me when another great writer dies. Death means more than the end of life. It means the end of writing, the end of production. We will see no more creations from the mind of Arthur
