This news saddened me greatly. Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction was central to my interest in science. I grew up on a steady diet of his stories ever since I was first introduced to his stories by my father as a child. Whenever I found myself in a library or a bookstore at a loss for what to read next, I instinctively headed to his section to see if he had anything new to offer. He will be missed.
Over the weekend I finished reading The Light of Other Days, a sci-fi collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. The novel takes place in the near future, where a power-hungry media mogul develops a technology that allows him to use a wormhole to view any location on Earth. As if that isn’t enough, the technology soon proves to be capable of not only viewing across space, but backwards in time as well. This discovery unleashes widespread changes as society struggles to come to grips with the loss of privacy and the discovery of the true horror of mankind’s past.
I found the subject matter intriguing, especially when the media mogul’s scientists discover the technology’s ability to view the past. At that point, he recognizes that there are probably many people watching him from the future using the exact same technology that he has just discovered. Makes you wonder: when you’re alone and you feel like you’re being “watched”, are you just being overly paranoid or extremely perceptive?
For me, I’ve always had this trick of “sending” messages to myself in the past and in the future. When I was either sick or under some severe amount of stress, I tried to ask my future self to assure me things would turn out OK. And when I was well again, I tried to remember to tell my past self that everything turned out OK, and remind myself how good I felt at that moment. Sure, it sounds kind of stupid and I know it doesn’t really work, but it always allowed me to endure the tough times and focus on getting things done.
But who’s to say that there isn’t some future self, even an ancestor, watching me and making sure the message gets through?