For a while in adolescent years I was altogether too taken with the possibilities of robots and androids and cyborgs; I've mentioned this before. I was fond of characters like Data from Star Trek: TNG (Brent Spiner, not so much), Cliff Steele from Doom Patrol, Murphy from RoboCop...I liked HAL 9000 and Jane from Speaker for the Dead and, may the stars have mercy on me, I even liked Mycroft Holmes from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress even though that book is one of the reasons I'd love to slap Robert Heinlein in the face with a week-old fish. I've got nothing against Mycroft himself—it's just that Heinlein couldn't figure out how to write a revolution except by resorting to a deus ex machina, and because Heinlein's a slipshod writer, he reveals the deus ex machina FIRST. You're supposed to wait until the last act, you dork...well anyway. I'm irritated because I care. I used to believe in so many different robot and cyborg friends, and I feel sorry that I allowed myself to be poisoned with cynicism towards the world of computing and modernity in general. There was a time when I was headed in the H. P. Lovecraft / Ignatius Reilly direction, but perhaps Fortuna has been kind to me all along. I've been knocked away from many unhappy fates.
Er, I'm drifting from the subject. "A Meeting with Medusa" caught my eye some time in high school; it's about a man named Howard Falcon who's almost crushed to death in an airship accident, survives through heavy modification of his body, and thus is ideally positioned for a pioneering expedition into the Jovian atmosphere. Falcon's reflexes are better, he can take a lot more gees, et cetera., and the mere fact of having been the first person to experience the hugeness of Jupiter firsthand changes him forever. He's aware not merely that he's done something nobody else has done before; he's done something that no other living person could do. His skills are truly unique, and the alien experience of Jupiter makes Falcon feel alien himself. He's not quite human any more, and he knows it.
Honestly, not a bad story. I've disliked Clarke's flat prose and flat characters, but I've underrated him perhaps. And I've had my own idle speculations about what sort of creatures might exist in the Jovian atmosphere so I was keen to see what Clarke came up with. Among other things he envisions cellular structures formed from bubbles of waxy-looking hydrocarbons, and a giant tentacled organism (the titular Medusa) that can selectively inflate and deflate parts of itself. ~Χαρά