Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
Clarke was a science fiction writer, an avid populariser of space travel, and a futurist of distinguished ability. He wrote many books and many essays for popular magazines. In 1961, he received the Kalinga Prize, a UNESCO award for popularising science. Clarke's science and science fiction writings earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age". His science fiction writings in particular earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership, made him one of the towering figures of the genre. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely regarded as one of the most influential films of all time.
Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system using geostationary orbits. He was the chairman of the BIS from 1946 to 1947 and again in 1951–1953.
Clarke emigrated to Ceylon in 1956, to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year, he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient original Koneswaram Temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his popularity in the 1980s, as the host of television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death.
Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989 "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka". He was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.
Biography
Early years
Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard. As a boy, he lived on a farm, where he enjoyed stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his secondary education at Huish's Grammar School in Taunton. Some of his early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925. Clarke attributed his interest in science fiction to reading three items: the November 1928 issue of Amazing Stories in 1929; Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon in 1930; and The Conquest of Space by David Lasser in 1931.In his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the society's journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarke's request, she added an "Astronautics" section, which featured a series of articles written by him on spacecraft and space travel. Clarke also contributed pieces to the "Debates and Discussions Corner", a counterpoint to a Urania article offering the case against space travel, and also his recollections of the Walt Disney film Fantasia. He moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. He and some fellow science fiction writers shared a flat in Gray's Inn Road, where he got the nickname "Ego" because of his absorption in subjects that interested him, and later named his office filled with memorabilia as his "ego chamber".
World War II
During the Second World War from 1941 to 1946, he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early-warning radar defence system, which contributed to the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semiautobiographical Glide Path, his only non-science fiction novel. Although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, after several years of development it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949. Clarke initially served in the ranks and was a corporal instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School, RAF Yatesbury in Wiltshire. He was commissioned as a pilot officer on 27 May 1943. He was promoted to flying officer on 27 November 1943. He was appointed chief training instructor at RAF Honiley in Warwickshire and was demobilised with the rank of flight lieutenant.Post-war
After the war, he attained a first-class degree in mathematics and physics from King's College London. After this, he worked as assistant editor at Physics Abstracts. Clarke served as president of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946 to 1947 and again from 1951 to 1953.Although he was not the originator of the concept of geostationary satellites, one of his most important contributions in this field was his idea that they would be ideal telecommunications relays. He advanced this idea in a paper privately circulated among the core technical members of the British Interplanetary Society in 1945. The concept was published in Wireless World in October of that year. Clarke also wrote a number of nonfiction books describing the technical details and societal implications of rocketry and space flight. The most notable of these may be Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics, The Exploration of Space, and The Promise of Space. In recognition of these contributions, the geostationary orbit above the equator is officially recognised by the International Astronomical Union as the Clarke Orbit.
His 1951 book, The Exploration of Space, was used by the rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun to convince President John F. Kennedy that it was possible to go to the Moon.
Following the 1968 release of 2001, Clarke became much in demand as a commentator on science and technology, especially at the time of the Apollo space program. On 20 July 1969, Clarke appeared as a commentator for the CBS News broadcast of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
Sri Lanka and diving
Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. Initially, he and his friend Mike Wilson travelled around Sri Lanka, diving in the coral waters around the coast with the Beachcombers Club. In 1957, during a dive trip off Trincomalee, Clarke discovered the underwater ruins of a temple, which subsequently made the region popular with divers. He described it in his 1957 book The Reefs of Taprobane. This was his second diving book after the 1956 The Coast of Coral. Though Clarke lived mostly in Colombo, he set up a small dive school and a simple dive shop near Trincomalee. He dived often at Hikkaduwa, Trincomalee, and Nilaveli.The Sri Lankan government offered Clarke resident guest status in 1975. He was held in such high esteem that when fellow science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein came to visit, the Sri Lanka Air Force provided a helicopter to take them around the country.
In the early 1970s, Clarke signed a three-book publishing deal, a record for a science fiction writer at the time. The first of the three was Rendezvous with Rama in 1973, which won all the main genre awards and spawned sequels that along with the 2001 series formed the backbone of his later career.
File:Prins Claus en Arthur C Clarke.jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.05|Clarke receives the Marconi International Fellowship Award from Prince Claus of the Netherlands in 1982
In 1986, Clarke was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
In 1988, he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, having originally contracted polio in 1962, and needed to use a wheelchair most of the time thereafter. Clarke was for many years a vice-patron of the British Polio Fellowship.
In the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours, Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka". The same year, he became the first chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004. He also served as chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.
In 1994, Clarke appeared in a science fiction film; he portrayed himself in the film Without Warning, an American production about an apocalyptic alien first-contact scenario presented in the form of a faux newscast.
Clarke also became active in promoting the protection of gorillas and became a patron of the Gorilla Organization, which fights for the preservation of gorillas. When tantalum mining for mobile phone manufacture threatened the gorillas in 2001, he lent his voice to their cause. The dive shop that he set up continues to operate from Trincomalee through the Arthur C Clarke Foundation.
Television series host
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Clarke presented his television programmes Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe.Personal life
On a trip to Florida in 1953, Clarke met and quickly married Marilyn Mayfield, a 22-year-old American divorcee with a young son. They separated permanently after six months, although the divorce was not finalised until 1964. "The marriage was incompatible from the beginning", said Clarke. Marilyn never remarried and died in 1991.Clarke also never remarried, but was close to a Sri Lankan man, Leslie Ekanayake, whom Clarke called his "only perfect friend of a lifetime" in the dedication to his novel The Fountains of Paradise. Clarke is buried with Ekanayake, who predeceased him by three decades, in Kanatte Cemetery, Colombo's main burial ground and crematorium. In his biography of Stanley Kubrick, John Baxter cites Clarke's homosexuality as a reason why he relocated, due to more tolerant laws with regard to homosexuality in Sri Lanka. Journalists who enquired of Clarke whether he was gay were told, "No, merely mildly cheerful." However, Michael Moorcock wrote:
In an interview in the July 1986 issue of Playboy magazine, when asked if he had had a bisexual experience, Clarke stated, "Of course. Who hasn't?" In his obituary, Clarke's friend Kerry O'Quinn wrote: "Yes, Arthur was gay ... As Isaac Asimov once told me, 'I think he simply found he preferred men.' Arthur didn't publicise his sexualitythat wasn't the focus of his lifebut if asked, he was open and honest."
Clarke accumulated a vast collection of manuscripts and personal memoirs, maintained by his brother Fred Clarke in Taunton, Somerset, England, and referred to as the "Clarkives". Clarke said some of his private diaries will not be published until 30 years after his death. When asked why they were sealed, he answered, "Well, there might be all sorts of embarrassing things in them."