Arthur C. Clarke, RIP

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, a giant of the SF field, died today. I won't try to recap his life or work; many, many others in many venues will do that. I don't have any personal stories to tell of him; I never had the privilege of meeting the man. I will, however, note two key points.

Clarke was one of those rare SF authors whose influence extended far beyond the genre. To get a sense of how important he was in the greater world, the story about his death made the home page of CNN (though now it is here). How many other SF writers will ever get the lead story position there?

Clarke, unlike some of the other early SF writers many of us in the field remember, was a giant not simply because he was writing SF in its relatively early years, but because he was both an inventive and an occasionally brilliant practitioner of the craft. Again, I'll spare you the lists, but if you don't know his early work--the books and stories he wrote himself (not the collaborations)--you owe it to yourself to read at least a few of them.

When I was young, Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke formed the ruling trinity of SF writers. All three are dead now. That makes me sad.