Tuesday, March 18, 2008

So now it's Arthur C. Clarke...

Man. A lot of eminent figures are dying this year:

British-born science fiction guru Arthur C. Clarke died at a hospital in Sri Lanka on Wednesday, his aide Rohan de Silva told AFP. He was 90.

President Mahinda Rajapakse mourned the death of Clarke and paid tribute to him as a "great visionary." His death was a loss to Sri Lanka, the author's adopted home since 1956, Rajapakse said.

"The president was deeply saddened by his death," spokesman Chandrapala Liyanage said. "The president recalled attending Sir Arthur's 90th birthday celebrations. The president believes his death is a loss to Sri Lanka."

From the Sydney Morning Herald.

2 comments:

Ixion said...

Oh My God! Some evildoer is going around and dispatching all the octo- and nonagenarians!

Then again, maybe it was one of Clarke's harem of young boys getting some serious payback on him.

Hell, Clarke was in self-imposed exile for over 50 years so some of his 'young' male friends would be old enough to be grandparents themselves by now.

nitroglycol said...

Well, the the other eminent figures who've died lately (Jeff Healey, Gary Gygax, and that film director) were considerably younger than that when they died.

As regards the pedophilia thing, a bit of research brings up some interesting things:

Ten years later, in 1998, Clarke's was about to be invested with knighhood when another setback struck: the British tabloid The Sunday Mirror accused Clarke of being a pedophile. Although the allegations were ultimately discredited, the scandal delayed his investiture some two years.

From here:

http://www.nndb.com/people/725/000023656/

Sorry about the use of bold, but Blogger doesn't accept the "blockquote" tag. Interestingly, Charles Pellegrino seems to be alluding to this here:

Some years ago, an editor had asked me to remove, from the paperback edition of my novel Dust, a back-cover blurb from an author who had been accused of moving to a foreign country specifically because it was legal, there, to have sex with little girls. The accusation was proved, by Interpol investigators, to have been totally made up by a "journalist" whose real aim was to embarrass the author's friend, Prince Charles (whom she held personally responsible for the death of Princess Diana). This twenty-four carat crackpot changed her story many times before admitting she made it all up. As in the Brown case, if you saw the vindication at all, you found it in a single paragraph hidden in the back pages. The rest of us knew from the start that the accusation was a shamelessly invented hoax - - for the author in question, aside from being one of the gentlest giants on this planet, had never expressed any interest in the female gender for more than one week out of his entire life (and he told everyone that was a mistake); and we also knew that his relationships had been exclusively long-term monogamous ones, with adults. Still... My editor had said it was "what people think that counts... and it is no longer cool to have your name associated with him." I told the editor that only two things counted. First, we knew the truth. Secondly, he was my friend; and the two things I will certainly stand for are the truth and my friends. The book was published with the blurb intact.

From here:

http://www.ibdof.com/viewtopic.php?p=1782180&sid=0f6b27cf87d155782e0ccf89ef6ffb9d

Looking at my copy of Dust, there is indeed a quote from Clarke. Of course, the original allegation (at least in the version cited by Pellegrino) refers to young girls, which leaves open the question as to whether he was into young boys. Pellegrino seems to think he was only into grown-up ones, though.