It’s been a little while since I wrote anything, so I thought I’d start off with something about Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who was buried yesterday in Sri Lanka. As a young kid growing up, he was one of the authors that I would read voraciously from around age 10 on, starting with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama. His style of writing included a lot of hard science-based material that at the time was somewhat prophetic. Both he and Isaac Asimov forged a new path with science fiction with many brilliant ideas that to this day seem almost unparalleled.

For the double-major in physics and mathematics, Sir Arthur predicted the artificial satellite and geosynchronous orbit for said satellites long before they were brought to reality. He worked on perfecting radar during the 1940s as an officer in WWII. And all the while he set about the physical work here on Earth, he was always looking up at the stars and dreaming.

This was a man I always admired as a personal hero of mine. Someone who wouldn’t let the confines of daily life (or post-polio syndrome) get the way of bringing his ideas to the masses. If it weren’t for him and a few others, I definitely would be somewhere else doing something that wouldn’t be half as interesting.

Whether or not you do like science fiction or Arthur Clarke, it’s good to have heroes. Eventually though, they do leave you. I have none left now and have reached middle age officially. This is not a complaint but merely an observation. Now that they are all gone, I can either choose to mourn them or carry on with the spirit of what they stood for.

I choose to do the latter. And so should you, fellow writers!