Arthur Clark

Family background
Personal life
Last years
Science fiction writer
Arthur Clark
• Arthur C. Clarke was a British science fiction writer, inventor, and futurist who is
widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20th century.
He was born on December 16, 1917, in Minehead, Somerset, England, and passed
away on March 19, 2008, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Clarke’s childhood was marked
by his fascination with science and technology. He was an avid reader of science
fiction and was particularly interested in the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

• He also had a keen interest in aviation, and in 1936, he joined the British
Interplanetary Society, a group dedicated to the study and promotion of
astronautics. Clarke attended King’s College. During World War II, Clarke served
in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist. After the war, he pursued his interests
in science and technology, and began writing science fiction stories. In 1948, he
published his first short story, “Travel by Wire!”, in the magazine Amateur Science
Stories. He soon became a regular contributor to science fiction magazines, and his
stories were noted for their scientific accuracy and imaginative concepts
Arthur Clark
• Arthur C. Clarke, (born December 16, 1917, Minehead, Somerset England—died
March 19, 2008, Colombo, Sri Lanka), English writer, notable for both his science
fiction and his nonfiction. His best known works are the script he wrote with
American film directorStanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968) and
the novel of that film.
• Clarke was interested in science from childhood, but he lacked the means for higher
education. In 1934 he joined the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), a small advanced
group that advocated the development of rocketry and human space exploration. He
worked as a government auditor from 1936 to 1941. From 1941 to 1946 Clarke served
in the Royal air Force, becoming a radar instructor and technician. In 1945 he wrote an
article entitled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays” for Wireless World. The article envisioned
a communications satellite system that would relay radio and televion signals
throughout the world; this system was in operation two decades later. He began selling
short stories in 1946 to science fiction magazines in the United States and Britain.
Clarke was chairman of the BIS from 1946 to 1947 and from 1951 to 1953.
Space Odysseys
• In 1948 Clarke secured a bachelor of science degree from King’s College in
London. His first nonfiction books were Interplanetary Flight (1950) and The
Exploration of Space (1951). His first novels were routine stories of space
exploration: Prelude to Space (1951), about the first flight to the Moon; The
Sands of Mars (1951), about the colonization of that planet; and Islands in the
Sky (1952), set on a space station.
• Clarke’s next novel, Childhood’s End (1953), is regarded as one of his best and
dealt with how first contact with aliens sparks an evolutionary transformation in
humanity. As humanity is about to make its first flights into space, the alien
Overlords arrive in gigantic spaceships. The Overlords have come to Earth to
foster humanity’s union with the Overmind, a galaxy-wide intelligence. Decades
after the Overlords’ arrival, the children of Earth begin to develop psychic
powers, merge into a group intelligence, and, as humanity’s last generation, join
with the Overmind. Clarke would return to the themes of first contact and
evolutionary leaps throughout his career.
Space Odyssey
• In the 1950s Clarke wrote two short stories that became science fiction classics.
In “The Nine Billion Names of God” (1953), a Tibetan monastery buys
a computer to finish its centuries-long task of compiling the possible names of
God. In the Hugo Award -winning “The Star” (1955), an expedition to a
distant planet finds the ruins of a civilization that was destroyed when
its star went supernova. A Jesuit priest on the expedition has his faith tested
when he discovers that the supernova was the Star of Bethlehem. Clarke
developed an interest in undersea exploration and moved to Sri Lanka in 1956,
where he embarked on a second career combining skin diving and photography.
He produced a succession of books, the first of which was The Coast of
Coral (1956). That same year, he expanded an earlier novel, Against the Fall of
Night (1953), as The City and the Stars. One billion years in the future in one
of Earth’s final cities, Diaspar, a young man, Alvin, rebels against the static
computer-controlled status quo and escapes to find out the true history of
humanity and its place in the universe.
Spaceship Discovery
• Beginning in 1964, Clarke worked with director Stanley Kubrick on
adapting Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” (1951) into a movie, which
eventually became the hugely successful 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
The film begins with prehuman apes encountering an alien monolith that
sparks a technological and intellectual leap, the first tools. The action
jumps forward to 2001, when another monolith is excavated on the
Moon and sends a transmission to Jupiter. A spaceship, the Discovery, is
sent to Jupiter, but the two astronauts Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) and
Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) are caught in a battle for their lives against
the Discovery’s malfunctioning computer, HAL 9000. In the film’s final
section, “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” Bowman journeys into a
gateway in space opened by the monolith orbiting Jupiter and is reborn
as the next step in human evolution the “Star Child.”
Space Odyssey
• Clarke wrote a novel based on the script, and both he and Kubrick
were nominated for an Academy Award their script. 2001: A Space
Odyssey is often cited by film critics and historians as one of the
greatest films of all time.
• After 2001 Clarke became even more famous when he
joined Walter Cronkite on CBS as a commentator for the Apollo
11 lunar landing, in 1969. He was one of science fiction’s leading
figures. He won the Nebula Award for best novella for “A Meeting
with Medusa” (1971), about an expedition that discovers life in the
clouds of Jupiter.
Works
• Imperial Earth (1975) was a tale of cloning and solar system
colonization set in the 23rd century. The Fountains of
Paradise (1979) chronicled the construction of a space elevator on the
island country of Taprobane (a fictionalized version of Clarke’s
adopted home Sri Lanka) and won the Hugo and Nebula awards for
best novel. The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), an expansion of a
short story from 1958, was set on a distant planet whose society is
disturbed by the arrival of the last survivors from a destroyed Earth.
Clarke also wrote two sequels to 2001: A Space Odyssey during this
time: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982, filmed 1984) and 2061: Odyssey
Three (1988).
Novels
• Most of his later novels were written in collaboration with other
authors and with varying degrees of involvement from Clarke. Among
them were sequels to Rendezvous with Rama (Rama II [1989], The
Garden of Rama [1991], and Rama Revealed [1993], with Gentry Lee)
and The Light of Other Days (2000, with Stephen Baxter), about
a wormhole-powered technology that allows the viewing of past times.
He did write three solo novels in this period: The Ghost from the
Grand Banks (1990), about attempts to raise the Titanic; The Hammer
of God (1993), about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth;
and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), the final book in the Space
Odyssey series.
Final novel
• Clarke’s final novel, The Last Theorem (2008), which concerns an
alien invasion and a new short proof of Fermat’s theorem, was
completed by Frederik Pohl. In addition to his many collections of
essays, Clarke wrote two autobiographical volumes. His scientific
papers, including “Extra-Terrestrial Relays,” were collected in Ascent
to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography (1984). He wrote about the
influence that the magazine Astounding Stories had on him as a young
science fiction fan and later as a writer in Astounding Days: A Science
Fictional Autobiography (1989).
• Clarke was knighted in 2000.
Assignment
1. To know detailed biography of Arthur Clarke
2. To read A Space Odyssey
3. Writing:
a) the writer suggests that human progress began when earlyman-apes
learned how to use weapons and to kill. Many people would disagree.
Write your own views on this subject.
b)After TMA-1 is discovered, a meeting is held in Washington to decide
whether to tell the people of the world about intelligent life in space.
you have bben asked to give your views. Write your speech.
c)The book A Space Odyssey appeared in 1968. How accurate were
Arthur Clarke’s ideas about life in the year 20023?