Heroes

I think everyone at one time or another thinks, talks, or writes about their heroes. The thought occurred to be when I heard a Bruce Springsteen song, "Candy's Room," on the radio. The first two lines of the song are:

In Candy's room there are pictures of her heroes on the wall
but to get to Candy's room you gotta walk the darkness of Candy's hall

Putting other interpretations of that song aside, I wondered who are my heroes? They are certainly not on the walls of my room at least, not my home office. I have prints of a Brandenburg Gray Wolf, a Talbot dolphin, and a map. Are they in the books on my bookshelves? In all probability, for me I think, they would be there. Could it be Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, John Bardeen, Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, or Jules Verne?

I had meant for this post to appear a few days ago and then I read an obituary for Arthur C. Clarke in The New York Times. I think the first book that I read of his was "Glide Path." I seem to recall it sitting on one of my parents book shelves (right next to "Failsafe"). The short story I remember most, even if it wasn't one of his favorites, was "Rescue Party." I even copied a short passage into one of my notebooks which I still have to this day:

"That is the greatest fleet of which there has ever been a record. Each of those points of light represents a ship larger than our own. Of course, they are very primitive—what you see on the screen are the jets of their rockets. Yes, they dared to use rockets to bridge interstellar space! You realize what that means. It would take them centuries to reach the nearest star. The whole race must have embarked on this journey in the hope that its descendants would complete it, generations later.

"To measure the extent of their accomplishment, think of the ages it took us to conquer space, and the longer ages still before we attempted to reach the stars. Even if we were threatened with annihilation, could we have done so much in so short a time? Remember, this is the youngest civilization in the Universe. Four hundred thousand years ago it did not even exist. What will it be a million years from now?"

Reading that story made me want to become a scientist, and reading it again, still does. Perhaps I should have pictures of my heroes on my walls (or cube).