“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke, 90. The news has emerged in the last half-hour of Clarke’s death In Sri Lanka, his adopted home for many years. I predict that most of the obituaries will tag him primarily in two ways, as the ‘father of the communications satellite’ and the author of 2001. (CNN ) The latter should be much more closely associated with Kubrick, to my way of thinking. True visionary status, however, devolves on Clarke for work like Childhood’s End (always my favorite) and The Foundation trilogy […just destroyed my science fiction cred in a senior moment. Of course the Foundation books were by that other late classic writer, Asimov. — FmH] and the brilliant short story “The Nine Billion Names of God”. “Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names — and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them — God’s purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.” “Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?” “There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply winds things up . . . bingo!” “Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.” Chuck gave a nervous little laugh. “That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ‘It’s nothing as trivial as that’.” Which other of Clarke’s work do readers cherish?