When I read it this afternoon, I definitely had a moment of "...". What a man.

I think someone posted a batch of the artist's work to minimal_icons a while back. That one spoke to me.

Three page obit in NYT online, 90 years old, first novel still in print, not too shabby a life.. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/books/19clarke.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

shit.

ad astra.

non est ad astra mollis e terris via...

//squints "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars." I think.

"There is no easy way from the earth to the stars."

MY Latin is nonexistent. *g* But that's Seneca, and I remembered enough of it to look it up.

He was the first SF author I read.
Not much else to say...

And candles are not stars.

And the writer of the best last line in SF. I can't quote it, and don't have it but, something like; "And overheard, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

"The Nine Billion Names of God."

That sucks.

Well, damn it. :-(

NO!

I thought ACC was going to live forever!

Whoah. End of an era.

"Peter Pater
Astrogator
Lost his orbit calculator
Out among the asteroids. . .

They rang the Lutine Bell at Lloyd's."

(per The Space Child's Mother Goose - seemed fitting.)

*sigh* Definitely a loss. His were some of the first sci-fi I ever read as a young'n. );