Arthur C Clarke
Arthur Clarke didn't seem to get nearly as many write-ups as Buckley did after his death. I figure that comes from Clarke's relative isolation in Sri Lanka, hence there are not so many journalists with remembrances to share. Among those I did read, the one at Salon paralleled my own experience with Clarke's books. Just change the date to about a decade later. Yet I was probably buying more or less the same versions of Clarke's books (as pictured) since I was buying them used. So I was also paying probably $1.50 for them at the time. Like the Salon writer, I too save those now yellowing paperbacks out of nostalgia. They were indeed my books, cheap though they were. Thinking back to high school, and my lunchtime trips to All About Books and Comics, got me to wondering about the store these days. Apparently they've moved about a quarter mile away. Google's Streetview just barely includes 7th Street and Camelback where the store used to be. I can't tell for sure what's there now. On those trips I started spending a little bit here and there getting science fiction books. My first trip there I bought Clarke's Childhood's End. Somewhere Clarke grumbles about how this is so universally considered his best book. I can understand the grumbling since what it means is that he wrote his best book very early in his career, only to follow it up with lesser efforts decade after decade. But I have to agree with the assessment. I also got many of Clarke's early classics, as the Salon author lists, too: Imperial Earth, The Sands of Mars, Rendezvous with Rama, The Fountains of Paradise. I even bought then-new paperbacks of Songs of Distant Earth (supposedly ACC's personal favorite) and 2061. After that, I don't think I read any more of Clarke's later novels--most of them co-authored for whatever reason. I did get the essay collection Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! from the library a few years ago, from which I take this amusing quote:
“Unfortunately, most people do not understand even the basic elements of statistics and probability, which is why astrologers and advertising agencies flourish. If you want to start an interesting fight, say in a loud voice at your next cocktail party, ‘Fifty percent of Americans (or whatever) are mentally subnormal.’ Then watch all those annoyed by this mathematical tautology instantly pigeonhole themselves.”
On that same trip to the Comics/book store, I also bought Dandelion Wine and The Illustrated Man. I also note that the Salon article seconds my opinion that (a) most people who read science fiction don't read for literary style, and (b) Ray Bradbury was one of the few science fiction writers who did write with a literary flair. In fact, I would say he was my adolescent introduction to "fine writing" as opposed to just racing along to find out what happens next. Clarke's writing was "serviceable" as they like to say. His characters are not at all memorable. He has no Guy Montag in his works that I'm aware of. To this day I'm ambivalent about technology and the virtues of "Hard science fiction" (Clarke, Larry Niven, Heinlein). In my teen years I was leaning a little more towards the hard SF view than I did later, so it was a virtue that, whatever the stylistic shortcomings, Clarke's books presented you with things that might actually happen, as opposed to mythologies as Bradbury or Harlan Ellison might give you. Over time I grew impatient with the arrogance and coldness that goes with much of hard SF culture. Even in that collection of essays, Clarke annoyed me a bit when he wrote glowingly (and I think a bit tongue-in-cheek) of how one day artificial intelligence will surpass humans to such a degree that we will be lucky if our computerized creations keep humans around as pets. In my teen years, I would have found such a suggestion strangely cheerful, but then lonely teenagers often have a heavy dose of misanthropy about them.
Clarke had a little more reality to his presence than many writers, thanks to the TV series Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World. Looking back I'm sure it was mostly a put-up job cashing in on Clarke's name in which a whole slew of writers and producers put the show together while Clarke provided a taped intro/exit piece for each episode. In this it matched the similar In Search of... with Leonard Nimoy. But it gave me a chance to see and hear what Clarke was like. I still remember his distinct accent: "We cahnt railly know if there's life ahfter death." Whether there is or not, Clarke had a nice long life, despite years of poor health toward the end.