Arthur C. Clarke: I Will Miss You
Arthur C. Clarke has died this Tuesday. I will dearly miss him for all the great things he have done.
I grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke. The first book I read was The Garden of Rama. It was here where I was introduced to science fiction. My very first book, found by accident at my British Council Library back in Rangoon.
Garden of Rama virtually opened up many vistas of my philosophy and coincided with my reading of The Kingdom of the Sun by Asimov. I think I was 12 or 14 back then, when Aliens meant green slimy monsters with tentacles or at least the weird looking E.T. For the first time in my life I was introduced to the concept of “intelligence”. Within the Garden of Rama, the Octospiders, the Avians and the tiny-ness humans that humans were.
Imagine how it was like to discover the concept of linguistics, when I read the Octospiders communicated through color bands across their foreheads and immediately invented dialect so that Richard and the other humans would understand their language for they also “spoke” in the infrared band.
It was also a very personal and human journey as I saw the evil in humanity that persisted all the way to space. As I saw children play innocently and grew up to be adults, as I saw the incredible sacrifices, responsibility and love Nicole gave and took. As each of the characters aged, matured, changed, loved, hated, sacrificed and eventually died… It was heart wrenching pain when the Archie and Richard died in the cell…
It was entirely magical, I went on to read all four Rama books ending with the last one at the Node.
Arthur C. Clarke, thank you for everything you have done, I will miss you dearly…
