Only Giant Shadows

"Any reasonably advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."

That is my gloss of a quotation attributed to the renowned author Arthur C Clarke. You'll notice that I didn't write "science fiction" before the word "author" above. It's my own personal rejection of the common practice of relegating certain writers to the artistic ghetto of the genre they write within. All of my life "Sci-Fi" has been relegated to a status below "literature". Now Clarke is gone, passing away last week and we are just beginning to discern the vast landscape his artistic shadow occupies.

I've been becoming uncomfortably aware recently of an increase in the number of artistic and culturally iconic persons who are shuffling off this mortal coil and this had led me into musing as to who, if anyone, is moving forward to occupy the void such losses create. Perhaps that is a misbegotten question, having more to do with my rising angst about my own mortality - which these passings are seeming to make keener in my mind. Still, I find myself looking for new shadows cast by new artists that seem to measure up to the ones cast by the giants I have encountered thus far.

I suspect that each generation asks similar questions, and that these questions become more personal and poignant as the one voicing them perceives they have truly passed the halfway post in the race they are running. It is our human perspective to ever view the world and events through the lens of self, even if we say we strive for empathy. We are hopelessly wrapped up in ourselves at times, especially at those time when we feel the Grim Reaper's breath cold upon the nape of our neck.

Still I am grateful for Clarke and his generous, creative energy that has so infused my life and thought with ideas that are at once wildly fantastic and deeply human. Indeed, it seems to me that the fantastic is often a better place to observe the truly human moments of truth we are all heir to. The fantastic can often provide a sharper sense of contrast, irony and inconvenient truth than we perceive amid the familiar. It was, and still is Clarke's uncompromising commitment to look straight into the human condition that has lent the ring of truth and the air of worth to his great canon of work.

But new fantastic revelations will flow no more from his mind into ours. We are left with only his giant shadow it seems, but perhaps something more as well. Shadows only appear in the light, and the bigger and more distinct they are, the brighter and more focussed the light must be. And the light draws us all, doesn't it?