The last of the "big 3" is now gone. Big three sci-fi writers that is. Arthur C. Clarke is now dead. He was preceded into that great space station in the sky by Robert Heinlein who died in 1988 and Isaac Asimov who died in 1992. As a teenager I read as many of their books as I could but I must confess that I never saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. So I will correct soon that by renting the DVD. Not sure why I passed that by. Was it the hokey use of the first few minutes of Richard Stauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra? Not sure really. Or, maybe I did see it just can't remember the details. That seems to happen a lot lately. "Old timer's disease" (aka: Alzheimer's Disease)?