Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008
Categories: In the News , Science Fiction & Fantasy
Last month, the science fiction community lost one of its great icons when Arthur C. Clarke died at age 90. His passing caused pause for me because of the role Clarke’s work played in my life as an introduction to the world of science fiction, a role Clarke has filled for readers of many generations.
I still have the tattered copy of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey I bought in the sixth grade at a flea market stall selling used 50-cent paperbacks. I couldn’t say for sure now what compelled me to buy the book, and I probably couldn’t have told you at the time I bought the book why I was making the purchase. More than likely, I had heard of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s eponymous film and figured this was the best way to see what all the fuss was about.
I don’t remember much about reading the book the first time other than being fascinated by Clarke’s vision of the future, but I imagine I was somewhat confused by the book’s contents. Clarke’s style of writing, which now, after years have passed and my tastes have changed, I would describe as smooth and incredibly engaging, is intriguingly philosophical and not the best place for a 12-year-old sixth-grader to dive into the sci-fi genre but this thoughtful bent to Clarke’s writing is what makes him, to me, such a significant science fiction writer and thinker.
This is witnessed by the reader in the opening moments of 2001 as Clarke’s ape protagonist Moon-Watcher discovers knowledge that will lead to his species' survival and Clarke muses upon the consequences of the evolution of humankind. In a later section, Clarke describes the interaction of the crew of the spaceship Discovery, which is on a mission to Saturn in the wake of some strange happenings in the solar system with the ship’s mysterious, humanlike artificial-intelligence computer Hal 9000 beautifully and succinctly, giving strange life to their mundane world together:
Nowadays, one could always tell when Hal was about to make an unscheduled announcement. Routine, automatic reports, or replies to questions that had been put to him, had no preliminaries; but when he was initiating his own outputs there would be a brief electronic throat-clearing. It was an idiosyncrasy that he had acquired during the last few weeks; later, if it became annoying, they might do something about it. But it was really quite useful, since it alerted his audience to stand by for something unexpected.
The casual (yet, as above, often foreboding) description of their slow days aboard the ship makes all the more mesmerizing the events that unfold as the crew is pushed by an unexplained alien intelligence towards a powerful conclusion.
In the course of telling this remarkable story, Clarke melds the worlds of science and philosophy into an unforgettable tale. Clarke’s description of life in space is not only beautiful but at times startlingly prophetic in terms of the future of humankind's presence in space, and the questions Clark's novel raises about the post-Industrial Revolution “man vs. machine” question are arguably more relevant today than they were upon the novel’s release four decades ago.
It seems obvious then that 12-year-old me would have had a hard time absorbing all of the contents of Clarke’s novel, but the strange world of 2001 intrigued me enough even then to prompt further delving into sci-fi by picking up novels by other great authors such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and H.G. Wells and of course to read other Clarke novels such as 2001’s sequel 2010 and later Childhood’s End, a different sort of take on the possibilities of the human race’s further evolution.
The science fiction community has undeniably lost one of its titans, but Arthur C. Clarke’s contributions to the literary world won’t soon be forgotten nor will I soon forget the enduring impact of Clarke's work on my own life as a reader.
