{"id":2397,"date":"2008-03-19T07:53:53","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T07:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/19\/arthur-c-clarke-rip\/"},"modified":"2008-03-19T07:53:53","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T07:53:53","slug":"arthur-c-clarke-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/19\/arthur-c-clarke-rip\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur C. Clarke, RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

As approximately six billion other blogs have noted, Arthur C. Clarke is dead<\/a>. His obit in the Times<\/cite> runs to three pages, which is a good indicator of just how long and distinguished his life was.<\/p>\n

My initial reaction is similar to Matt McIrvin’s<\/a>: it feels like the passing of an age. Bradbury and Pohl are of the same generation, but they don’t feel like the same sort of writers as Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein, the ruling triumvirate of old-school SF.<\/p>\n

I was never a huge fan of his fiction– I went through Asimov and Heinlein phases, back in the day, but didn’t get as deeply into Clarke. I’m also dubious about his “laws”<\/a>, which I think say more about the worldview of SF fans than the world itself. But it’s impossible to deny his huge influence on both the world of SF and the world, period. His stories are Exhibit A in the case that science fiction has helped shape the world we live in, and you could pretty much rest there without bothering the rest of the alphabet.<\/p>\n

The world we live in is a better place for him having been here. And really, that’s the most that anyone can hope to have said about them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As approximately six billion other blogs have noted, Arthur C. Clarke is dead. His obit in the Times runs to three pages, which is a good indicator of just how long and distinguished his life was. My initial reaction is similar to Matt McIrvin’s: it feels like the passing of an age. Bradbury and Pohl… Continue reading Arthur C. Clarke, RIP<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,35,37,11,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-movies","category-pop_culture","category-science","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}