Wayne Watson, Guest Commentator*

Clarke died last week, March 18. His background has been written about extensively in the intervening time on the internet and media. Over many years, my wife and I have often followed his writings, contributions to technology, movies, and efforts to promote science. I’ll only provide a few personal comment here.

My favorite short story was "History Lesson", which I read in high school, and I certainly had a strong attachment for the movie "2001".  My wife got caught up in pentominoes as a result of reading his "Imperial Earth". She managed to work her way through well over a thousand solutions to the total to 2,339 possible ones before computers came along and provided all the solutions. Somewhere in our games closet may be her solutions,  or they are on a old computer that has long disappeared from our house, but the good memories of his works remain within us.

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* Wayne Watson is a local amateur astronomer and works with young people at the Imaginarium, Nevada City’s science museum, where he is known as the ‘Astro Guy’.  He has extensive experience including several years as a researcher for the Space Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona. He regularly hosts the Imaginarium’s Sky Show and astronomy events.