ARTHUR C. CLARKE HAS DIED. I first spoke with him back in 1988. I sent a copy of my first book to him in Sri Lanka, and got a phone call from him the next day — from Baltimore, where he was at Johns Hopkins and thought to be suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He wrote me a while later to give me the good news that it was just the post-polio syndrome. It seems that it finally got him, but at the ripe age of 90. He was a very thoughtful guy, and a very good correspondent; he even autographed a copy of 2001 for my daughter when, at age 2, she could name all the moons of Jupiter. I doubt that I would do as well, if I attained his degree of fame. I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, but Yasser Arafat got it instead. I think it’s pretty clear that Clarke would have been a better choice . . . .

The world is better for his having lived, and worse for his having died.

UPDATE: Bruce Webster on Clarke’s influence: “He was the last of the Big Three — Isaac Asimov, Clarke, and Robert Heinlein — to pass away, and we shall not see their like again. It is hard to overstate the impact that these three authors had upon not just one, but at least two or three generations of scientist and engineers in the Anglosphere, particularly those of us who grew up in the 1950s through the 1970s.”