Memories of Arthur

Arthur C Clarke died today. No, I'm not going to link to the Wikipedia page or any of the many thousand pages about him on the net. If you don't know who he was, it's your loss. This loss is mine.

One of the first Clarke books I read was Dolphin Island. Put a little sci-fi with some good kids story and add dolphins.. Perfect for a young geek-in-the-making like me. As time went on I read his other books, Fountains of Paradise, Childhood's End, 2001, and on, and on. There was a time when not a day went by that I didn't have a Clarke in my book bag. And as I grew up, so, for some reason did his books. Reading Fountains of Paradise now, gives me a different view from when I was a kid. 2001 shows more now than it did when I was (12? 13?) well, whenever it was I read it.

My only memory of meeting Clarke was at the Otter club (or was it the SSC?) in 1993. He used to come there to swim and play table tennis. I was there with a friend of mine, and saw Clarke at the TT table getting ready to play with one of his minders (always young, always good looking, and always male), so I went up, introduced myself and asked if I could have the honour of a game. He was kind enough to agree. And he kicked my ass. Now I'm not much of a TT player. Hell, the main reason I played was so that some day I could tell people, Yeah, I played table tennis with Arthur C Clarke. But this was humiliating. A 75 year old man, who was supporting himself by holding on to the table with one hand, and not even moving from his position, beat me. he just had a massive reach, and a killer top spin that had me bouncing all over the place, while he calmly stayed there. As a friend of mine said when I told him this: Pwnt!

I guess that is one of the memories I'll carry to my grave.

We all knew about Clarke being gay. But I think many of us were right pissed off when Prince Charles decided not to personally give him his knighthood because some fucking tabloid said he was a pedophile. But, in a wy, who cares. Him getting a knighthood wouldn't change the impact he has made on us geeks. And the greatest honour he can get, is knowing that he will live forever. As long as there are people looking up at the stars and dreaming, whether they know it or not, there will be a bit of Clarke looking up with them. And one day, when they finally build the space elevator, I hope they name at least part of it after the man who dreamt of it.

For me, that was Arthur C Clarke. The writer, the visionary, the dreamer, the guy who schooled me in table tennis. I'm not going to speak of his other work. There are many others to talk about his contributions to science and all. Let them talk about those. As for me, I hope his spirit finds his way to its final home, and he finds out that it's full of stars.