Great article. I think this expresses it. Hitchens was just the village atheist. What happens to him now is up to God, and the Lord is known for His mercy, so while we should pray for him I don´t think he necessarily condemned himself to Hell. He will, however, have to pay for anyone he misled.
But imagine knowing that your intellectual contribution is going to be defined by little more than being like the shabby crank in the small town who defined himself by being the village atheist. The village atheist, like Hitchens, didn´t even have any convincing or intellectually interesting ideas. He was just a crabby old man who felt things hadn´t gone the way he would have done them if he had been God.
Hitchens could write and it´s a pity that he was reduced to this...by himself. And he will disappear soon from human thought - but ironically enough, he will never disappear from the mind of God.
Hitchens wrote on many different topics for at least 30 years. He was, for the most part, a war reporter, not a religion writer. I should know, I have most of his books and frequently peek into them for a bit of intellectual enjoyment. So, I for one, will remember him.