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Ladies and gentlemen, the last of the “big three of science fiction,” Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, left us today.

Arthur C. Clarke (I could never think of him as “Sir Clarke,” and he professed embarrassment about the title) was my first role model as a writer: Stanley Kubrick said, “Arthur’s ability to impart poignancy to a dying ocean or an intelligent vapor is unique.” His grasp on the English language in his prime was remarkable — fluid, at times majestic, and always concise.

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There is a bizarre story involving the Soviet space program that originally circulated in the late 1980s, and still pops up here and there on the internet. Attributed to The Washington Post, the story spoke of six Soviet cosmonauts being witness to seven giant figures hanging in space, in the form of humans, with mist-like halos and wings the size of those on jumbo jets.

In other words, the classic depiction of angels.

This reputedly was witnessed by cosmonauts Vladimir Solevev, Oleg Atkov and Leonid Kizim in July of 1985, during their 155th day aboard the Salyut 7 space station, and was later sighted again by three other Soviet cosmonaut-scientists, including woman cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. “They were smiling,” it is claimed she said, “as though they shared in a glorious secret.”

Afterwards, Vladimir Solevev, during a 1997 tour to schools in the United Kingdom, dismissed the story, and expressed puzzlement as to why the Post would print something so obviously absurd.

(No comment.)

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