One small death for man, one giant loss for mankind

My favourite author, Arthur C. Clarke died today. Doubtless many people across the world are reading their papers this morning and thinking, “Oh he was still alive?” He is one of those figures that has been so well known for such a long time that people just sort of assume they must be dead by now. However, today was the day. He was 90.

There is only one set of books that has ever made me cry, and that is Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series. Onions aside, it takes quite a lot to make me cry. However, after following protagonists to the depths of space and back, through generations and circumstances changing in even more incredible ways, yet still told through that human perspective, crying was the least I could do.

Mr Clarke had an incredible ability to imagine, powered by great curiosity and with an accompanying skill for explanation. His books often have appendices in the back where he will reference what his curiosity led him to read, what science journal article became the inspiration for some of his imagination’s fantastic seeming ideas. For example, he wrote a book in the late eighties, but set in 2020 or so, where one character achieves great fortune by solving the millennium bug. The actual bug part is just part of the character’s history and is not an important event in the story itself, but it shows just what foresight and attention Arthur C. Clarke had. However, his main claim to prophesising is satellites. He wrote a paper outlining satellites no less than 25 years before they were actually constructed and as a result no company could copyright them once they were up and running. Out of respect for his achievement the geostationary orbit that satellites orbit the Earth in is called the Clarke Belt.

So he died today but did you know that he left a goodbye message for his friends and fans, recorded back in December. The man who was born in 1917 had even the foresight to predict his own death and the dexterity of mind to be able to use anything the modern world could throw at him. He left his goodbye message on Youtube. I truly think when humans reach the edge of the universe the mind of Arthur C Clarke will be there waiting for them, wondering what took us so long.

If you will allow me to call Arthur C Clarke a hero of mine then permit me to say that I have two more. One of them is Douglas Adams whose fame and popularity is so widespread that to say that I like him sounds almost like a cliché. That fact does not stop me from saying that he is a hero of mine; it just removes the need to explain it.

The third hero is Rod Serling. This is him.

He was an American science fiction writer and is best known for being the man behind The Twilight Zone. Serling did not just come up with the concept for the show but also narrated the opening and conclusions to all of its episodes, and himself wrote 92 of the 156 episodes made between 1959 to 1964. He also has a great sense of humour and hosted television quiz shows, but the good kind. He is also remembered as being a humanitarian, for example he would often cast African American actors at a time when many studios refused to. For these reasons his home town even has a holiday to celebrate his memory.

The success of the Twilight Zone itself is so great that it has the only television theme tune that actually carries semantic meaning. People will hum the theme to express the idea of a strange situation or event. Even people with no knowledge of the show will do this because it has become so prominent in our culture. The phrase, The Twilight Zone, is used without a thought to the programme, just to express something weird happening. Even now nearly 50 years after it first aired they are still making new episodes of, though they are very different of course.

Aside from the fact that they are all men, and all now sadly dead, the similarity between these three people is rather obvious; they are all wrote Science Fiction. I have heard many an English teacher sigh when I told them that this was my favourite genre. There is a perception that such books are just about three legged men fighting two legged men with rayguns or robots. However, Science Fiction, and Fantasy too, have the flexibility to incorporate all the other genres. Science Fiction books can easily contain romance, horror, mystery and comedy but they do it in a different way. Science Fiction is not even really a genre at all; it is a disclaimer for, “This book can be about anything.”

An SF book can have you drifting through space as a baby, or feeling the raging fires of Io as they burn away into space. You can be sitting in the infinite comfort of God’s lap or riving in the agony of an infinitely chaotic universe. Without the walls that other genres put up there is an incredible stage by which we can teach, or learn, a lesson. If you want people to think then take them outside of what they know already. Did you know that the core of Jupiter might be a vast diamond far bigger than the Earth? Mr Clarke taught me that.