{"id":458,"date":"2008-03-18T19:34:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=458"},"modified":"2009-01-15T01:09:45","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T05:09:45","slug":"2008-the-final-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=458","title":{"rendered":"2008: The Final Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had breakfast with Isaac Asimov. I shook hands with Robert Heinlein.               Kate Wilhelm did a tarot reading for me. I&apos;ve workshopped with Gene               Wolfe, George R. R. Martin, and A. J. Budrys. Nancy Kress is still               a close friend. David Gerrold wrote for my magazine for ten years.               I saw Keith Laumer from a distance once, and have had several conversations               with Larry Niven and David Brin. But I have never been anywhere               close to Arthur C. Clarke. Now I won&apos;t get the chance; as I learned               on arriving at home this evening, he has died in Sri Lanka at age               90.<\/p>\n<p>Arthur C. Clarke was my favorite SF writer for a long time. Asimov               was a little dull, and Heinlein&apos;s stridency bothered me at times,               but Clarke was as close to perfect as SF writers got for me, at               least in high school\u2014and maybe still. His SF was about <i>ideas<\/i>,               and he let nothing else get in the way of those ideas. I began writing               SF by imitating his short stories. When I later began writing SF               novels I was imitating Keith Laumer, because I knew damned well               that I could never imitate <i>Against the Fall of Night<\/i> or <i>Childhood&apos;s               End<\/i>. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/july2004.htm#07-31-2004\">As I               have reported here more than once<\/a>, when I was seventeen I gulped               and asked a beautiful girl to go out with me and see <i>2001: A               Space Odyssey<\/i>. She said yes. Seven years later, Carol said yes               again, when I asked her to share a different kind of odyssey with               me. Yup, Arthur C. Clarke landed me first a best friend, then a               lover, and finally a spouse. (One doesn&apos;t get that kind of service               from Barry Malzberg.)<\/p>\n<p>There&apos;s not much more to say. When a man gets to be 90 before he               dies, I don&apos;t mourn, I celebrate. We had him a long time, and now               he is free of all the suffering and limitations inherent in flesh.               I happen to think that I may meet him yet&#8230;but let that pass. We               have his stories. He worked his magic on me, and I would not be               the writer I am if he were not the writer he is. <\/p>\n<p>Just one more word: Thanks, Sir Arthur. Really. And thanks again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had breakfast with Isaac Asimov. I shook hands with Robert Heinlein. Kate Wilhelm did a tarot reading for me. I&apos;ve workshopped with Gene Wolfe, George R. R. Martin, and A. J. Budrys. Nancy Kress is still a close friend. David Gerrold wrote for my magazine for ten years. I saw Keith Laumer from a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[71,18,20],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir","tag-eulogies","tag-sf","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}