Scoble linked to a blog post on the NY Times site yesterday about Jim Gray’s contributions.

You may remember that his boat disappeared a year ago.

Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001, Earthlight, Rendezvous with Rama, and many other classic science fiction novels, died at his home in Sri Lanka this morning.

The title of this post, the closing line of his story “The Nine Billion Names of God”, was shamelessly stolen from dmsilev@Kos, where I heard the news.

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away yesterday.

I never really got into playing D&D, for some reason, but I was always very aware of that world. It had a large influence on the world of fantasy writing: for example, it was noted by some that you could hear the dice rattling while reading Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksennarion.

(And yes, I know the difference between D&D and Adventure. I just couldn’t resist.)

The AP reports that the Eyak language became extinct on Monday when the last fluent speaker, Chief Marie Smith Jones, died in her sleep. A linguist at UAK Fairbanks had collaborated with her for years in an attempt to preserve the language, but it’s not the same as having a native speaker around…

Two days ago, Anita Rowland died. She’d been battling cancer for quite some time, but her family thought she had 6 months to go, until last week, when it went down to a month — and then a few days over the weekend. She passed away on Monday, as her husband held her hand. He has a memorial thread over on his LJ.

She was one of the first Seattle bloggers I started following, and the organizer of the monthly blogger Meetups in Seattle and on the Eastside. I swiped many a link from her for this blog. :-) I first became aware of her, I think, when I heard an interview on KUOW about blogging. (Mine existed at the time, but I wasn’t doing much with it.) If I remember correctly, I listened to it while delivering pizzas in Woodinville.

She and Jack cared for her grandson, R—-. Ael and Erin met him once at a Meetup at Crossroads, and instantly hit it off.

I never started reading the Wheel of Time series, but it may be just as well: Robert Jordan has passed away before finishing the last book.

Diane Duane shares her reminiscences on the passing of Madeleine L’Engle over here.

Especially when they’re for friends.

Especially when I’ve never actually met them.

Peter Murray was one of the Seniors on Diane Duane’s YoungWizards.net. I just found out that he’s been sick for a while, and passed away today, with his family at his side.

Dai stiho, cousin. Give my best to the One.

Update: just got this quote off the IRC announcement of his passing.

<@LazyLeopard>
Death is cruel, and not just to the one who dies.
Peter’s was not a quick death, nor an easy one. Be
angry at that cruelty. Be sad. Mourn for him. Then go
out and live, because only by living can we give death a
poke in the eye.

John W. Backus, who led the IBM team that created FORTRAN, the first widely-used programming language, died Saturday. I remember trying to teach myself FORTRAN in middle school with a textbook and a gridded sheet of paper (one character per square, of course — only way to program :-) ). By the time I could get my hands on real computers, though, they all ran BASIC, and then when I started college, Pascal set me firmly on the road to structured programming.

Edit: Ah, he helped create Backus-Naur Form, too. Neat.

The BBC reports that John Inman, probably best known for his role as Mr. Humphries on Are You Being Served, has died at age 71.