A reader:

Mr. D: I tried one of Clarke’s novels once, but couldn’t get into it. His characters just didn’t seem like real people.

[Me] Reading sci-fi for human interest is like reading your newspaper’s sports pages for stock quotes. That’s not what it’s about. What’s it about? To quote the title of an Isaac Asimov essay on this very topic, it’s about “Those Crazy Ideas.”

Mr Derbyshire — You didn’t have to go to The Nine Billion Names of God for a Clarke ∩ Tibet intersection. You already provided one in your fine ACC memorial notice. Quote: “That profound imaginative connection with the great void …” That’s very Tibetan!

[Me] Hm. Well, it’s very Buddhist, I suppose, and Tibetans are Buddhists. And the country Clarke settled in is 69 percent Buddhist, according to the CIA World Factbook (though a quite different style of Buddhism).

I think we’re stretching here, though. I can’t really recall much in the way of Buddhist themes in Clarke’s books. And I can spot a Buddhist theme at a hundred paces, I’ve read the classic Chinese novels and verse. True, Clarke sometimes spoke of himself as a “crypto-Buddhist” (see here, for instance), but that was just whimsical. Clarke didn’t have a religious hair on his head. Like a lot of constitutionally irreligious types, he was slightly attracted to Buddhism because it’s the least religious of religions. In its pure form (which, as it happens, the Sri Lankan style most closely approximates), its doctrines are atheist.

I hereby claim Arthur C. Clarke for the New Mysterian pantheon.