I'm sad to report that Arthur C Clarke has died, and before we found any evidence of life on other planets, although the discovery of more than 200 extrasolar planets in the last decade surely had put some wind in his sails. He was ahead of his time from back in the 60's, and we're still catching up. I just rewatched 2001 very recently and was re-impressed with how he set helped set the bar for the limits of the human desire to explore beyond our closed inner space, even a year before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
Interestingly enough, we just waxed rhapsodic about science fiction and its role in the West, as well as the genre in general, on Bomb English just this week. Of course, Mr. Clarke lived to a ripe old age of 90, but it was still nice to see the man still with us, chilling in his home in Sri Lanka. RIP, Mr. Clarke.
