Childhood's End: Sir Arthur Clarke
Famous Science Fiction Writer who Wrote '2001 - A Space Odyssey'
Aug 13, 2008
Although best known as a science fiction writer, with his name inextricably associated with Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke was a visionary and versatile thinker who predicted many of the inventions and discoveries we take for granted today.
He first became known in scientific circles in 1945 when he predicted in a scientific journal, some twenty years before they became a reality, that orbiting satellites could be used to relay radio transmissions around the earth.
Today, such geosynchronous satellites that can each carry several TV programmes and many thousand phone calls are an essential part of worldwide communications. In tribute, their orbit around the earth is known as the Clarke Belt.
Years before they were invented, he confidently predicted things like facsimile services and mobile phones to allow communications between moving individuals anywhere on earth, and immediate access to all the world’s great libraries and information centres via simple computer-type keyboards and TV displays.
During his lifetime he was the recipient of innumerable awards such as UNESCO’s Kalinga prize, a knighthood from Britain and in 2005 Sri Lanka’s highest civilian honour, Sri Lankabhimanya.
Sir Arthur’s love affair with the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka where he spent almost half his life, began in December 1954. En route from England to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef, his serendipitous meeting with Rodney Jonklaas, an underwater enthusiast, was to have far reaching effects on his life.
Jonklaas suggested that once Clarke finished his trip to the Great Barrier Reef, he return to explore the waters surrounding Sri Lanka. Making no promises, Clarke sailed away to Australia, where with his friend Mike Wilson he shared several adventures both above and below the seas - but perhaps the memory of that one day visit to Sri Lanka made him decide, once they had completed their work in Australia that their next underwater adventure should be in the Indian Ocean.
He finally returned in 1956 and soon headed south with Jonklaas and Wilson to commence diving. Within a few years, they had located and explored several historically significant shipwrecks. The highlight was their discovery of a wreck on the Great Basses reef containing a treasure of thousands of silver Moghul coins which resulted in a TV documentary and book Treasure of the Great Reef.
With his frst novel Against the Fall of Night published in 1948, he continued writing in his new home. Over the years he produced a host of novels - including: Childhood’s End (1953), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),scififantasyfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/movie_2001_a_space_odyssey_1968 Rendezvous with Rama (1973) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) plus three television series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, World of Strange Powers and Mysterious Universe - all of which established his place in the sci-fi universe.
Though he originally intended to stay for a couple of years, Sri Lanka’s imagination-enhancing environment gradually wove its spell, enticing him to stay permanently. In 1956 he wrote “The contrast between here and England is fantastic, and it’s strange to feel free after all these years. I have made up my mind - I’m settling here.”
Later he acknowledged “Many of the elements of Sri Lanka, including its mystical and religious elements, even if I do not necessarily agree with them, I respect them and have worked them into my books.”
His 1957 novel Deep Range, a story about whale breeding and undersea farming, showed how Buddhism was beginning to influence his thinking. “With the weakening of its three great rivals,” he predicted, “Buddhism was now the only religion that still possessed any real power over the minds of men.”
He was much respected in his adopted home country, serving as Chancellor of Moratuwa University, and consistently demonstrated a genuine concern for the past glories, the present problems and the future prosperity of Sri Lanka.
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