Farewell

Dear Arthur C. Clarke, I hope you are able to read this wherever you, just like Bowman could. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your books and wish you the best for the future.

I first came across Clarke in May 2001. I had gone to visit my Mama in UK after the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake. I visited the local library and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey lying in a shelf. I had always heard about the book, but never thought of reading it. I was just coming out of my Hardy Boys days and had started reading a few Robin Cook books. But 2001 was something special. I can't describe what I felt after reading the book, but I went back to the library immediately to get the next book in the series. Sadly, I couldn't find 2010 in the library. Instead I got a book called Richter 10. The book is never counted as his great works, but it remains the best Clarke book for me. The book, as the title suggests, is about earthquakes and 2 people trying to predict them. It was an amazing book. But I felt as if I was meant to come to UK and read the book after the terrible earthquake I had witnessed.

I came back to Ahmedabad a few days later and immediately bought all 4 books in the Odyssey series. I've asked the local bookstore at least a hundred times for Richter 10, but no one seems to have heard about the book here. After that I stopped buying science fiction. I think the Odyssey series was so awesome that I never felt the need to read anything else. Last December, I was in another bookstore in Ahmedabad when I saw The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke lying there. I couldn't resist the temptation and bought it right away. The book contains all the short stories (and some not-so-short stories) written by Clarke and is a breathtaking book. Anyone who calls himself (or herself, in rare cases) a science fiction fan must read this book. It took me almost a month to finish all the stories for even a 2 page short story had as much power as a 1000 page novel. I couldn't read more that 2-3 stories a day due to the sheer brilliance of the work. Each story sent me to wikipedia reading about Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons or geosynchronous satellites and many things more.

This book made me want to read more science fiction and fantasy. So another trip to the store to buy Heinlein, Asimov, Pullman and yet another fruitless search for Richter 10.

I don't know why Clarke's death came as such a blow for me but it did. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I would add a corollary to that - any sufficiently good book is indistinguishable from magic. And most of Clarke's works fall into that category. So long Mr. Clarke, and thanks for all the fiction.