Two deaths in the past twenty-four hours to report.<\/p>\n
Arthur C. Clarke<\/a>, author of 2001<\/i>, Rendezvous With Rama<\/i>, and a wealth of other science fiction, has died at his home in Sri Lanka. He was 90.<\/p>\n I read a great deal of Clarke’s science fiction when I was younger. 2010<\/i> was amazing. I liked Imperial Earth<\/i>, though I’ve since learned that the science in it is pretty dire. The Fountains of Paradise<\/i> was remarkable, but not really an inspiration on my own Ring Around the Sky<\/i>. Oh! And The Songs of Distant Earth<\/i>. And his short stories! “The Nine Billion Names of God,” and its chilling last scene. The melancholy of “The Star,” and its revelations about the Star of Bethlehem.<\/p>\n I’m not sure, but I think the last Clarke novel that I really<\/i> enjoyed was 2061<\/i>. In the 90’s I’d moved on to other things.<\/p>\n He was very good with ideas.<\/p>\n Clarke will be missed.<\/p>\n The director Anthony Minghella<\/a>, director of The English Patient<\/i> and The Talented Mr. Ripley<\/i>, has also died. He was 54.<\/p>\n I loved The English Patient<\/i>. Minghella’s screenplay was the first screenplay I bought, because I wanted to see<\/i> how he’d taken that very remarkable novel and translated it into a film that was just as remarkable.<\/p>\n I’d never read the source material for The Talented Mr. Ripley<\/i>, so I came to that film fresh, and I was quite impressed with it. I seem to recall that reviews on it were mixed, but I can’t see why. I really liked it.<\/p>\n Raise a glass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two deaths in the past twenty-four hours to report. Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001, Rendezvous With Rama, and a wealth of other science fiction, has died at his home in Sri Lanka. He was 90. I read a great deal of Clarke’s science fiction when I was younger. 2010 was amazing. I liked ImperialContinue reading “On Arthur C. Clarke and Anthony Minghella”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[552,193],"class_list":["post-1735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-arthur-c-clarke","tag-obituary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}