A man who made the world

I haven't been blogging much, in part because I've found myself swamped with actual paying work and in part because I felt I was getting too wrapped up in the ongoing campaign to be president of Pennsylvania.

But the news yesterday of the death of Arthur C. Clarke saddened me. As a pre-teen, science-fiction geek bookworm, I naturally read a lot of his stuff -- as an adult I didn't keep up, aside from the Rama series. But 2001, Rendezvous with Rama and short stories such as "The Nine Billion Names of God" left a huge impression on me. People who dismiss science fiction as mere genre are unfortunate in what they miss -- good science fiction, particularly the "hard" science fiction of Clarke and the writers he inspired, grows not only the imagination, but the sense of wonder and sense of reason.

It was just a few weeks ago that I introduced Cavin to the film version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. His verdict: "It's slow." True enough. But it contains indelible moments from our shared culture, the kind of things that most artists and writers only dream of creating.

To live 90 years and create a body of work that will likely live another 200, if not more -- that inspires a sense of wonder.