Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke has passed on at age 90. He was one of the writers that brought me into science fiction, with 2001: A Space Odyssey (The book, in my opinion, was better than the movie, which I encountered years later in college, and the movie wasn't that bad at all). After that I hunted down his collections - Wind from the Sun and Tales of the White Hart, and from Clarke I got into Asimov and Ellison and Bradbury and Analog and Galaxy and everything that followed.

But what I loved about Clarke's fiction was his hooks and his stingers. Clarke could bring you into a story quickly and effortlessly, and leave you a little spike at the end of a short story that would turn it into a tiny epiphany. And his words stay with me long after other stories have faded from my mind.

For example, the first line of 2001 -

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts

Or the last line of his story, "Reunion", from the collection Wind from the Sun -

If any of you are still white, we can cure you
.

Clarke had the ability to hook the reader in, and use everything up to last period to serve his story. He will be missed.

More later,