The End of an Era

The last of the big three has left us.

I am sure that many will wax eloquent on the passing of Arthur Clarke. I will not join them in recounting his accomplishments and awards. They were many, and are easily found.

Arthur C. Clarke - Wikipedia
(don't downplay Wikipedia, it is a good source for quick information)

My thoughts are inspired more by the passing of the last of the big three than by the passing of Arthur Clarke. He lived longer than the other two.

I was born during the decade when Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke did much of their seminal writing, the 50s. Of course, I did not discover them in the 50s, when they wrote the works that made them giants in Science Fiction, nor even in the 60s, when they confirmed their reputations at the best in the genre.

It was not until Junior High that I really caught the reading bug (thank god my son is already infected at age 10), and it was science fiction that caught my mind.

I cut my teeth on Star Trek, and that was in the 60s. I caught as much of it as I could during its first run, but my parents would not let a 9 and then 10 year old stay up until 9:30 every Thursday to watch it. The third season it was switched to 10pm on Friday, and an 11 year old had an easier time talking them into that. Then it went into syndication, during those same Junior High years, and I raced home every afternoon to watch.

But, Star Trek was only one hour a day. In the other hours I turned to the books in the house, but I wanted books that had the same things as Star Trek. Fortunately, my older brother Roy read science fiction, so I started reading what he had finished, mostly Robert Heinlein. I never looked back. My next discovery was Arthur Clarke, Childhood's End, I think. Asimov was the last of the three, when I encountered the Foundation series. I read everything my brother had, and even bought a few of my own. Because there were so many books by these three to be found in libraries and bookstores in the 70s, I never really finished with them and moved on. I thought I was well read in science fiction until I got to college and took a class on science fiction and fantasy and my classmates knew authors I had never read, like Larry Niven, and Frederick Pohl. Of course, they had far less grounding in the giants than I had.

Science Fiction has been a life-long addiction of mine, since I found Star Trek more than 40 years ago. Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and Arthur Clarke have been a big part of that, and with the passing of Arthur Clarke, that era of Science Fiction is ended. Science Fiction is not dead, far from it, but it would not be where it is, and I would not be who I am, without the thoughts, musings, surmisings, and above all, entertaining writings of these three giants.