Sanding on the Shore of the Cosmic Sea

I was eleven.

The novelization of 2001 had just come out. I wanted to see the movie of course.

That wouldn’t happen until I was seventeen.

The novelization was one of the Signet Book Club offers. I don’t know if you recall those, but about once a month, we got a little flyer from them, and it had offerings of new books approved for us youngsters.

And in the back was 2001. I scrapped together some money and bought it.

It came in paperback and had the classic preproduction painting of the space station and the Pan-Am clipper on the cover.

I opened it, read the first sentence and was hooked. I read that book till it fell apart.

Then I bought another.

Rad it till it fell apart.

And another.

Same story.

And another.

And so on.

I still have a copy, and I pull it down and read it about once a year.

It’s dated of course. When it was written, the Pioneers, Voyagers, and Cassini were blueprints or dreams.

But the visions those words in the book conjured up. A view of infinite horizons that took my breath away. Of humanity standing on the shore of an infinite ocean and wondering where we belong in it all.

I’d put that novel in second place behind the Bible on shaping my wordview.

I open the pages and the vistas still call to me.