ARTHUR C CLARKE
2017 marks the centenary of Arthur C ClArke. Jonathan Wright looks back at the life and times of the SF Grand Master
What did the late SF visionary ever do for us? We look back at 100 years of Mr Space Odyssey.
At only mild risk of hyperbole, to try to imagine science fiction without the contribution of Arthur C Clarke is to imagine a wholly different universe. Co-creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey; the brit “big three” novelist whose reputation matched and surpassed robert A heinlein and isaac Asimov; and public intellectual futurist before we even knew there was such a job, Clarke’s fame extended, and still extends, far beyond the field.
“it’s amazing the amount of people who have actually heard of Arthur in some context,” says tom hunter, director of the Arthur C Clarke Award. “they might not be familiar with his work, but that legacy and knowledge of him as an individual is definitely there.”
but, as we approach the 16 december centenary of Clarke’s birth, how did this happen? how did a grammar school boy from minehead in somerset come to occupy such a privileged place in the wider culture? Where else to begin to answer such a question than out beyond the atmosphere – or, more accurately, the simulacrum of space that stanley kubrick, with Clarke’s input, created for 2001.
even in a movie shot through with dazzling images, one sequence in particular lingers in the memory. As we watch a shuttle approach a spinning space station, Johann strauss’s Blue Danube waltz plays. it’s awe-inspiring in that it evokes both wonder and, perhaps because there’s a clinical quality to this vision of space travel, a shiver of fear. in a world where colour television was still a novelty, kubrick and Clarke didn’t just tell us about the future, they showed us what it looked like in widescreen. We’ve never quite been the same since.
“my dad took us to see 2001 at the Abbey Cinerama in liverpool on first appearance,” remembers novelist stephen baxter, Clarke’s co-writer in his later years. “i was 10 going on 11, i guess. mind duly blown. i think i understood very little, but i do remember it vividly – the music especially hit me, and my dad bought the Zarathustra theme as a 45rpm single!”
Considering 2001 was in key respects the apotheosis of Clarke’s career, it’s probably no coincidence that it was being created – along with a novel that, hunter says, was “like an instruction manual to interpret the [movie’s ambiguous] ending” – around the time Clarke turned 50. A middle-aged man, he brought broad experience to the cosmic theme of, in hunter’s words, “humanity’s place in a broader universe”.
to return to that grammar school boy in minehead, Clarke was a stargazer, a fossil collector and an avid reader of American pulp magazines. As a teenager, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and, as a contributor to society journal Urania, persuaded editor marion eadie to add an astronautics section.
during the second World War, Clarke was a radar specialist with the rAf. When the conflict ended, he gained a first-class degree in mathematics and physics from king’s College, london. he served twice as chairman of the british planetary society. kicking off his life as a futurist, he popularised the idea of geostationary satellites, explaining in Wireless World how they could be used in telecommunications more than a decade before sputnik i was launched. he also wrote non-fiction books we’d now probably describe as pop science.
tales of ten worlds
in 1951, after having sold his first short stories to Astounding Science Fiction in 1946, he became a full-time writer. in keeping with its pulp roots, Clarke’s fiction is often portrayed as a little, well, workaday. but this, according to stephen baxter, is a simplification. “i have a theory that, with time, he will be recognised as a much better writer than is maybe the consensus now,” he says. “he will be remembered for his handling of huge themes, but he did have an instinct for story. thus Childhood’s End [1953], in which he dramatised the huge [olaf ] stapledonian theme of the evolutionary uplift of mankind, and told it through the eyes of parents losing their children.
“And as for his short fiction, brian Aldiss of fond memory praised the opening line of ‘the star’ [1955] as near-perfection: ‘it is three thousand light-years to the Vatican.’ the immediate clash of two worldviews in one sentence – and the subtext of the story there in nine words. that is artistry.”
it’s also important that, unlike his “big three” contemporaries heinlein and Asimov, Clarke had a particularly english utopian take on sf that can be traced back, via olaf stapledon whom Clarke invited to speak at the british interplanetary society, to hG Wells. the contrast with the sometimes bellicose heinlein was especially marked and the two men fell out over ronald reagan’s strategic defense initiative, aka “star Wars”. “heinlein was the voice of the updated Us frontier myth that permeated mid-century sf, with all its wonder, and all its plunder,” says baxter, “whereas Clarke followed his countryman Wells as an internationalist. he believed technology should guide us to unity and a world state, which was why he opposed star Wars, the militarisation of space. We needed that countering voice – although to be fair to Asimov, he too had a much wider perspective.” After 2001, Clarke’s career entered a new phase. he was by now famous enough to be called upon by Cbs to help with its tV coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. in 1980, Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World was sold on Clarke’s name. there were major novels too, including Rendezvous With Rama (1973) and three sequels to 2001, the sequence concluding with 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). he became such an eminent figure that he would eventually be knighted (in 1998), although curiously this was one of the few times his life was touched by controversy as it coincided with an allegation of sexual misconduct by The Sunday Mirror. the paper issued an apology after the charge was found to be baseless by the sri lankan police. As he got older, he also
passed the baton to other writers, notably by financing the Arthur C Clarke Award, which each year honours the best sf novel published in britain. it’s a gong that’s sometimes criticised for being too, for want of a better term, literary, yet that’s rather the point. Clarke himself, points out baxter, became a China miéville fan after reading him because he won the Clarke.
“right up until the end, he was very supportive of the exact principle the award was founded on, that it would have a very broad definition of science fiction,” says hunter.
it’s a remark in keeping with Clarke’s curiosity about the world, which helped lead to some unlikely encounters. When Clarke met beat poet junkie William s burroughs, michael moorcock has recalled, the two got on famously. “oddly, they have a lot in common, including sexual orientation, preference for drinking orange juice, interest in technical developments, dislike of rock music,” noted moorcock, wryly.
islands in the sky
it’s a personal insight into a man who liked to keep his private life private. Another insight comes from his ex-secretary and sister-in-law, dorothy Jones (formerly Clarke), who remembers Arthur as a “kind and gentle” figure who, without fuss or fanfare, often made contributions to individuals and causes he wanted to help. “i never saw him lose his temper or even get angry,” she says. “he was very disciplined with his writing. After breakfast he would go to his typewriter and start work. When i first started working for him he wrote by hand – until he bought himself an electric typewriter! After finishing a book he would come downstairs, kick the skirting board and complain he had nothing to do, then go upstairs and start another book.”
from 1956, Clarke lived in sri lanka. While he was briefly married, he was gay. he described leslie ekanayake (1947-77) as his “only perfect friend of a lifetime” in a dedication in space elevator construction epic The Fountains Of Paradise (1979). he was a keen scuba diver who helped locate the ruins of the ancient koneswaram temple off trincomalee on sri lanka’s east coast.
Clarke’s was an eventful life, but it’s the work that lingers longer in the memory than any biographical details. As hunter says, trying to describe Clarke’s exploration of big themes, “he’s levering open the top of your head basically and expanding your brain.”