I was
pretty annoyed when I found out that Mumbai had no public libraries. I was also
annoyed when I found out that the British Council Library, a ‘private library,’
didn’t carry Isaac Asimov’s books. I was even more annoyed when I realized that
the BCL search engine was just as atrocious as the Washington Country library
service search engine was. But I digress. Back to Asimov.
For me it
was a terrible blow to be estranged from this wonderful author I had just
discovered. My mother’s ear was subject to these complaints, and soon enough, I
found myself sitting upright in bed with Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space
Odyssey” in my hands.
I was suspicious, to say the least. I mean, who was this
imposter Brit, who thought he could go around calling himself the greatest SF
author of all time? Perhaps I was being too hard on him. After all, he had
co-created one of the greatest movies of all time. Then again, Asimov’s movie
had Will Smith in it.
I cannot
deny that Clarke is a good writer. His books have that essential quality of
being page turners. Indeed, he does make very obvious attempts at creating
suspense. The last line of each chapter practically begs you to flip the page.
The most
common praise given to him is his understanding of science. I think it is more
remarkable that he is able to seamlessly convey this understanding of science
through the story, without taking away from the action. Clarke uses science to add to the action.
To be fair,
while Clarke and Asimov both were masters of SF, they wrote about two
completely different fields. Asimov conjured tales of robots secretly running
our world, whereas Clarke concerned himself with ancient, godlike beings who monitored
the universe with massive and iconic monoliths.
Honestly,
there was something about Clarke’s description of space that clicked with me.
Clarke has made me a thrall to the wonders of space, and I devour his books to
experience them. So farewell for now, Mr. Asimov. I’m blasting off to Europa.
No comments:
Post a Comment