Clarke

I've ignored Spitzer(1), I've ignored Wright the Cone-head(2), I've ignored the brokerage firm fire sale on Wall Street(3)--but I can't ignore this one.

When I first started reading science fiction more grown-up than Tom Swift, Clarke was there. And he was thoughtful and inventive. Sometimes he was prophetic: geosynchronous orbits and "I remember Babylon" (the latter more fulfilled by the internet than satellite broadcasts, but it was the social aspects that worried him). Sometimes he wasn't--he seemed to suffer from the popular SF delusions about the role of human sexuality in society.

His prose could be deadenly didactic when he went into a long riff away from his story. And his ideas about God were pitiably simpleminded.

But he was a creative genius. And we'll miss him.

(1) I have some taste. And I didn't know who Spitzer was before, and didn't feel competent to analyze his downfall.

(2) I'll bone up a little more before I say anything.

(3) I have nothing interesting to say. "Yikes?" "Hope this does the job?"