The Sentinel Has Departed

[krpalmer]

As it turns out, it was on the journal of someone else that I first saw the news that Arthur C. Clarke had died. I was saddened to hear it, and made freshly aware that I had just finished reading a book (the stated if still open-ended conclusion of a three-book series, no less) with his name and Stephen Baxter's on the cover (although the book does remind me much more of Baxter's style, with Clarke presumably the senior idea person)... and yet one thought that loomed in my mind was that the last member of a triad is gone, three science fiction authors who had achieved name recognition in broad definitions of the larger world: Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov. (I've noticed that point made elsewhere as well.) All three of them started their writing careers in the 1940s (although Clarke started a bit later than Asimov and Heinlein) and made the best-seller lists in the 1980s (along with a collection of other SF authors). As with other people who became part of that "SF boom," popularity seemed to attract criticism of "writing just to cash in on previous success" (although criticising Heinlein, at least, seems to threaten bringing the people who've made his works the foundations of their beliefs down on you), and I myself can question the development of "The Foundation Trilogy" or wonder how much of Clarke's success came from the good fortune of being associated with Stanley Kubrick's visual work on 2001... but they were an integral part of my own science fiction foundations, and I'm left wondering who's that well-known nowadays as an SF author. Actually, I did have the immediate answer of "William Gibson," but it does seem to me that Gibson's noteriety is the direct product of moving in a "mainstream" direction.

I now kind of want to reread Clarke's short story "Superiority." In my otherwise comprehensive book club edition of Clarke's collected short stories, a chunk of its text happens to be missing. Fortunately, I have a vintage printing of "Expedition to Earth."

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Our (Tor's) trade paperback edition is, to my knowledge, the only edition of THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE that contains a full and accurate tetx of "Superiority." Regarding our hardcover, all I'll say is, that's the last time I believe a British publisher when they assure me that their typesetting is fully proofread and debugged.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I actually did check out the trade paperback in a bookstore to see if the omission had been corrected, but given that I already had another source for the missing part... Still, I'm reminded once again that my online postings actually do have a chance of reaching people for whom they may matter.

Perhaps I'll reread "Rescue Party" as well, if as always with the awareness of how it might have played directly to John W. Campbell's tastes...