And we’re back

Contemporary Fiction. Wed, Mar 19th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

with some sad news.

Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died. I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with his works, but there are many eulogies and tributes available online (Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, NPR, Google Search) for you to check out. Much has been made of his most famous work, 2001: A Space Odyssey (first a book then a movie with Kubrick), but I am most familiar with him though his World of Strange Powers miniseries.

We have lost four brilliant minds in less than a year (Clarke, Ingmar Bergman, Madeline L’Engle, and of course, Kurt Vonnegut). I’m not sure why this has caught me so off guard, but I can’t help but imagine what my world would be like if I hadn’t read A Wrinkle in Time when I was in elementary school, if Clarke’s World of Strange Powers hadn’t scared the pants off me when I was younger, or if I hadn’t watched The Seventh Seal in college. I won’t attempt to explain the impact Vonnegut’s oeuvre has had on my love of reading, because I’m not sufficiently talented to explain that in a blog entry. It seems to me, though, that when an author goes beyond simply keeping the reader’s attention, beyond entertainment, and is able to impact the reader’s perception of the world, the author has tapped into the true power of the written word. That is, I believe, the point of most (if not all) writing. Just something to think about.

For your journal (perhaps), here are Clarke’s Three Laws of Prediction:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

What authors, artists, musicians, inventors, magicians, scientists, politicians, philosophers, or saints have had an impact on your life?

Per aspera ad Astra.