When a teacher dies

In my not so long life, I have known about the passing away of people I admire, those that have had real influence in my life. I call these people "teachers" for the valuable things I have learned from them.

When I was a young physics undergraduate, the main hero among my classmates was Richard Feynman. He was a prominent physicist, Nobel prize winner but perhaps most famous for his demonstration of the flaws that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. His life was an inspiration for many physics students. I thought "if I am serious about being a physicist, I have to meet this guy". One cold winter day I read about his death. Then I wondered "Shall I be a serious physicist?"

When I was in junior high school, there was a TV show named Cosmos, conducted by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. It was my favorite TV show, I admired the beautiful images, the very appropriate selection of music, and the clarity and easy acumen of his explanations about intricate subjects of astrophysics. When years later he came to my city to give a speech, my undergraduate classmates brought their favorite Carl Sagan books to be autographed and went to the conference. I can't remember why I did not, perhaps I was busy with a project, I was insecure about my spoken English, or simply I was lazy. I thought, however, "sure there will be a better chance to meet him, I will be able to communicate better than today and I will follow his steps for writing about science and filming awesome science documentaries". Years later, when I was just finished my master on computer sciences, I read about Carl Sagan's passing. Then I wondered "Shall I be a serious science popularizer?"

I never have been a fan of soft popular American science fiction. I enjoyed superficially the action and special effects of some shows but at the end there was always something that left me unsatisfied. I disliked the monotony and visually unappealing scenarios in Star Trek and the lack of real science in the essential Star Wars plot (almost just the typical medieval story about the knight that saves the princess from the dragon claws, but with laser swords instead of steel). I hated to find that an Hugo prize winner (the Nobel of American Science Fiction writers) got honors for stealing ideas with a lower quality result from an Eastern European writer not very known in the USA.

But I love the work of some international hard science fiction writers, like Polish writer Stanislaw Lem and, specially, British author Arthur C. Clarke. Yes, the one that helped Stanley Kubrick to create "2001: A Space Odyssey". The life achievements of Sir Arthur Clarke deserves its own writing (and many books). But for now I just want to say that he is my favorite classic hard science fiction writer. His stories not only are backed by real science but are very well written; his prose is close to poetry and makes you feel almost like if you were there. My first experience on doing a website was my translation to Spanish of the Unauthorized Arthur C. Clarke Homepage during the mid nineties. In 1998 I translated to Spanish this sentence in the Contact page: "He answers all his letters, sometimes he writes the response himself".

Ten years later, while working on a project based in part on his work, I thought "I should write Sir Arthur, maybe he will like the project and allow me to publish his recorded supportive message on YouTube". I was thinking on how to write this letter when, in a still cold Easter morning, a friend called me to ask about my feelings on Clarke's death. It was true, the news was in all online news papers and all online science fiction forums to which I am subscribed. Then I wondered: "Shall I be a good science fiction writer?"

Nah, I did not wondered that! I don't know if I will become some day a good "anything" writer. But I know that the chance to meet Arthur Clarke in person was not easy. For many of his late years he never left his adopted home in Sri Lanka, on the other side of the world. But there was a good chance to write him and to be read by him. I knew that for ten long years!

Apparently there is a lesson I had not been able to learn in my life. However, there are some teachers still alive, some are even younger than me. I admonish myself so that I will attain and learn
from my past bitter experience and do something about it.

I hope so.