{"id":47,"date":"2008-03-19T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T07:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/19\/arthur-c-clarke-1917-2008\/"},"modified":"2008-04-04T09:38:16","modified_gmt":"2008-04-04T16:38:16","slug":"arthur-c-clarke-1917-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":"Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite authors passed this week. Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka this past Tuesday. I really enjoyed reading his stories when I was a teenager. Even on my last business trip, I read another one of his books.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nClarke was the first author I obsessed over. On advice from my high school Russian teacher, I started with <em>Childhood&#8217;s End<\/em> when I was about 15. I then read <em>Rendezvous with Rama<\/em>, <em>Imperial Earth<\/em>, <em>A Fall of Moondust<\/em>, and almost all of Clarke&#8217;s short stories.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Clarke wasn&#8217;t good at character development. Only a few of his books had a page-turning plot, but he could weave a masterful tale of science fiction.<\/p>\n<p>One of his short stories has especially stuck with me over the years. <em>The Nine Billion Names of God<\/em>. It tells the story from the point of view of a salesman and programmer who install a huge IBM-like mainframe at a Buddhist monastery. Seems the monks there have been attempting to discover the true name of God. With the help of a computer, they can accomplish the task they started hundreds of years ago in only a few months.<\/p>\n<p>No, I won&#8217;t spoil it for you. But the story emphasizes Clarke&#8217;s craft for weaving highly technical information into a readable and enjoyable story.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m just thankful that Clarke&#8217;s talent is on paper and will exist forever for many to read. Even my son is enjoying reading those very same books that I read when I was his age.<\/p>\n<p>I bid you farewell, Mr. Clarke, as your body returns to the stuff stars are made of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite authors passed this week. Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka this past Tuesday. I really enjoyed reading his stories when I was a teenager. Even on my last business trip, I read another one of his books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}