Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:25:28 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <mjw at press.jhu.edu>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>, <wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Silverberg on Clarke
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

It begins:

"The merits of most of the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke have
largely escaped me. There is no denying the overwhelming visionary
fertility of his imagination*he exceeds all others in his ability to
show us the wonders of the as yet uncharted realms of space and
time*and some of his short stories are superb. But the big, bland
novels that repeatedly put him on the best-seller lists*the Rendezvous
with Rama books, Imperial Earth, 2001 and its various sequels, et
cetera, have always struck me, despite their passages of great
conceptual inventiveness, as dull, slow, and passionless. That they
should have enjoyed such great commercial success and gobbled up so many
Hugo and Nebula awards left me baffled."

Read the rest:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_1002/ref.shtml

mjw