Wayne Watson, Guest Commentator*
Clarke died last week, March 18. His background has been written about extensively in the intervening time on the internet and media. Over many years, my wife and I have often followed his writings, contributions to technology, movies, and efforts to promote science. I'll only provide a few personal comment here.
My favorite short story was "History Lesson", which I read in high school, and I certainly had a strong attachment for the movie "2001". My wife got caught up in pentominoes as a result of reading his "Imperial Earth". She managed to work her way through well over a thousand solutions to the total to 2,339 possible ones before computers came along and provided all the solutions. Somewhere in our games closet may be her solutions, or they are on a old computer that has long disappeared from our house, but the good memories of his works remain within us.
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* Wayne Watson is a local amateur astronomer and works with young people at the Imaginarium, Nevada City's science museum, where he is known as the 'Astro Guy'. He has extensive experience including several years as a researcher for the Space Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona. He regularly hosts the Imaginarium's Sky Show and astronomy events.
Arthur C. Clark and his writing have always been welcome at the Steele house, both Ellen and I were blown away by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Space Odyssey books that followed. My other favorite was Imperial Earth. We often discussed science fiction themes at our house, watching the Twilight Zone and Star Trek with our children. Jessica our oldest became an avid science fiction fan, even as a third grader she was reading at the junior high level. One afternoon in Arizona on a Sunday drive to visit some Indian cliff dwellings we got into a discussion of panspermia, "seeds" of life exist all over the Universe. When Jessica attempted to discuss this concept with her third grade teacher Mr Boyd, an ardent Mormon, we were called in for a parent/teacher conference by the school councilor. They wanted to know where this child got such an idea, and just what did we think we were doing filling our child's head with such nonsense. We continue to discuss those crazy ideas that come from science fiction. We will miss all those rich fertile ideas that came from the brain of Arthur C. Clark.
Posted by: russ | 23 March 2008 at 05:27 PM