Arthur C Clarke

I was completely seduced by Clarke after reading a short story he wrote -- can't remember the title -- when I was still in high school. The main character was a chaplain aboard a spaceship [filled with athiests] investigating a remote solar system that had died when its star went supernova. After discovering that one of the planets in that solar system had developed a significantly advanced civilization that had disappeared overnight in the explosion, the chaplain is left alone with his own turbulent thoughts. Calculations had proven to him, that the entire system and its advanced civilization had been destroyed so that the Supernova could be the "star over Bethlehem."

What a writer. Had a good long life, though, so there's no tragedy.