鈥淚 BET Arthur has forgotten this,鈥 British astronomer Patrick Moore tells me before launching into a story about Arthur C. Clarke, his old friend from the heyday of the . In those cold-war times, a group such as the BIS 鈥 which advocated space travel and collaboration with the Russians 鈥 was the object of official suspicion, not to mention derision from scientists working for the establishment. (In 1956, no less a figure than Richard Woolley, the UK鈥檚 astronomer royal, asserted: 鈥淎ll this writing about going to the moon is utter bilge.鈥)
Moore recalls that around 1950, Clarke went into a museum 鈥 it may have been London鈥檚 Science Museum 鈥 carrying a suitcase. 鈥淜nowing that he was a member of the BIS, one of the attendant officers insisted on looking into the suitcase to make sure it didn鈥檛 contain a bomb.鈥
Clarke has indeed forgotten the suitcase incident when I mention it over lunch on the veranda of his house in Sri Lanka, where he has lived for almost half a century, and where I first met him in the 1980s. This is hardly surprising, given that he turns 90 on 16 December. His memory, he says ruefully, has undergone a 鈥渄ata dump鈥, even if his mind ranges as swiftly and eclectically as ever. But he is curious to know what was in the suitcase. Perhaps, we speculate, it contained some futuristic, though no doubt technically sound, designs for a rocket put forward by the precocious enthusiasts of the BIS.
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Clarke鈥檚 fascination with rockets goes back to his teenage years in England, when he launched home-made ones from his mother鈥檚 farm in his native Somerset. His father, a post office engineer, died when Arthur was 13, from the lingering effects of being gassed in the first world war. Space rockets became possible, at least technically, with the launch of Germany鈥檚 V2 rocket during the second world war, when Clarke was serving in the Royal Air Force, working on radar. Looking back, that feels like the 鈥淛urassic鈥 period of his life, he says. Even the start of the space age 50 years ago is 鈥渟ort of ancient history 鈥 the Battle of Hastings so far as I鈥檓 concerned鈥.
By then he had fully embarked on his tireless advocacy of space travel in both fiction and non-fiction, through books such as The Sands of Mars, A Fall of Moondust, The Exploration of Space and Profiles of the Future. Nevertheless, he was amazed that the moon landing happened so soon, in 1969. He had not expected to see it in his lifetime. 鈥淎nd then I was also surprised, and disappointed, that it wasn鈥檛 followed up. We abandoned space for decades.鈥 Clarke鈥檚 screenplay and companion novel for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, made by in 1968, had imagined the construction of a moon base in the 1990s.
He still expects the establishment of scientific bases and perhaps colonies on the moon and in other parts of the solar system by the end of the century. But will people go to live in these outposts and regard them as their home planets? They probably will, Clarke says, pointing out that this has already happened on Earth in very 鈥渋mprobable鈥, inhospitable places. 鈥淲ith the technologies we have, or should have, I鈥檇 expect people to live, most certainly, on Mercury, Venus and Mars, the satellites of Jupiter and quite a few asteroids.鈥 As he once remarked, twisting Oscar Wilde: 鈥淲e have to clean up the gutters in which we are now walking 鈥 but we must not lose sight of the stars.鈥
There is an element of faith in Clarke鈥檚 attitude to space, though not the religious type. His attitude is more like a boundless optimism in the power of intelligence. Such optimism underlies his best-known novels, Childhood鈥檚 End, 2001 and Rendezvous with Rama. Kubrick, who tended to be sparing with his praise, once said of his collaborator: 鈥淎rthur somehow manages to capture the hopeless but admirable human desire to know things that can really never be known.鈥
鈥淐larke has a boundless optimism in the power of intelligence鈥
This visionary hopefulness is Clarke鈥檚 chief appeal to his legion of non-scientist admirers. These include Rupert Murdoch and Steven Spielberg, and a host of science fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury, Stephen Baxter and the late Gene Roddenberry, the brain behind the TV series Star Trek. Ronald Reagan was also an admirer, despite Clarke鈥檚 opposition to his 鈥淪tar Wars鈥 strategic defence initiative in the 1980s.
Many scientists 鈥 and astronauts 鈥 go further in their admiration, respecting Clarke for his unique combination of scientific knowledge, intellectual originality and literary flair. J. B. S. Haldane, Wernher von Braun, Luis Alvarez, Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan were all personal friends of Clarke, as well as fans of his writing. As a high-school student in the early 1950s, Sagan decided to become an astronomer after reading Interplanetary Flight, Clarke鈥檚 first book.
Moore considers the greatest science fiction books to be Last and First Men and Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, but 鈥渢hese were Stapledon鈥檚 only two great books, which is why on balance I must make him number two to Arthur鈥. Martin Rees, the UK鈥檚 current astronomer royal, agrees: 鈥淭he geostationary satellite idea 鈥 just one of his far-sighted concepts 鈥 was 鈥榬ediscovered鈥 after Sputnik, and soon became reality. But his other concepts still lie far ahead 鈥 some, indeed, in a post-human future billions of years hence鈥 杏吧原创s can derive more benefit and stimulus from him than from routine science fact.鈥
Clarke鈥檚 influence on the development of satellites is profound. John Pierce and Harold Rosen, the two engineers principally responsible for the design of communications satellites in the 1960s, regarded him as the 鈥渇ather鈥 of satellite communications on the strength of his technical article 鈥溾, published in Wireless World in late 1945 while its 27-year-old author was still in the RAF. This acknowledgement has now entered encyclopedias 鈥 much to the satisfaction of Clarke, who regards the article as 鈥渢he most important thing I ever wrote鈥, even above his novels. Though he has never been one to downplay his science fiction, or indeed any of his achievements 鈥 witness his annual self-styled 鈥淓gogram鈥 newsletter to friends and acquaintances 鈥 Clarke is probably right about his 鈥渃omsat鈥 idea: it will be his most enduring legacy.
He cannot recall exactly how the basic idea came to him, though he says it emerged from a combination of his family鈥檚 connection with post office engineering, his passion for rockets and his work during the war on ground-controlled radar, later fictionalised in Glide Path. 鈥淲hile working on radar I remember thinking: could the beam be powerful enough not just to detect the other guy but also to shoot his plane down? Power-beaming was one of the ingredients in the comsat idea, I鈥檓 sure.鈥 But deferring to the engineers who made his 1945 concept a reality, he prefers to style himself not as the father of satellite communication but as its godfather. 鈥淚f I hadn鈥檛 written that paper in October 1945, 10 people would have done it the next year.鈥
鈥淗e styles himself as godfather to satellite communications鈥
While this may be uncharacteristically modest, it is true that a similar idea had been discussed by others before 1945, and that Pierce鈥檚 first paper on the subject was published a decade later without knowledge of Clarke鈥檚 pioneering proposal.
One irony of all this is that Clarke now depends on comsats, since he can no longer travel far due to the debilitating effects of . For years, he has sent video messages via satellite to conferences across the globe 鈥 most recently on the 60th anniversary of his 1945 article. Yet as a 鈥渇ailed recluse鈥 addicted to email, he is ambivalent about the benefits of everyone being able to communicate instantaneously. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the fractal future,鈥 he says. 鈥淎lthough everybody is ultimately connected to everybody else, the branches of the fractal universe are so many orders of magnitude away from each other that really nobody knows anyone else. We will have no common universe of discourse. You and I can talk together because we know when I mention poets and so on who they are. But in another generation this sort of conversation may be impossible because everyone will have an enormously wide but shallow background of experience that overlaps by only a few per cent.鈥
Prescient though many of his ideas are, Clarke is aware he is as vulnerable as anyone to what he calls 鈥渢he perils of prophecy鈥. In his 1945 article he assumed that the three geostationary space satellites required for a global communications service would need a crew, with supplies ferried up by a 鈥渞egular rocket service鈥. The radar he was in charge of in 1945 contained over 1000 vacuum tubes, at least one of which burned out every day, so it seemed inconceivable to him that any complex piece of electronic equipment could function in space without on-the-spot engineers. 鈥淲ell, along came the transistor, and then the microchip. So within a decade, electronic equipment that was once as large as a house could be put in a hatbox.鈥
The other major scientific idea that makes him proud is the space elevator 鈥 an energy-efficient alternative to rockets, which envisions carbon-fibre ribbons stretching from the Earth鈥檚 surface to a geostationary orbital station some 36,000 kilometres up. Unlike comsats, Clarke didn鈥檛 invent the space elevator; it was conceived in 1960 by Russian engineer (who called it a 鈥渉eavenly funicular鈥). It was independently reinvented at least four times by American scientists in the 1960s and 1970s. But it was Clarke who brought it to popular attention with his 1979 novel The Fountains of Paradise, in which the elevator rises from the summit of a sacred mountain on an equatorial island remarkably similar to his adopted home. The novel, and his subsequent technical writing on the elevator, helped to spawn a large new field of study. There is now an annual competition to encourage the development of a workable space elevator 鈥 the Spaceward Games, organised by the and NASA鈥檚 programme.
It may sound like outlandish fantasy, but in 1945 so did communication satellites and landing on the moon. He doesn鈥檛 always get it right, however: in 1999 he predicted the last coal mine would close in 2006. Nevertheless, Clarke maintains that the space elevator will be built 鈥50 years after everyone stops laughing鈥 鈥 probably sometime this century. Whenever this fabulous structure is finally constructed, some aspect of it will surely be named after him. Sir Arthur 鈥 who already has a geostationary orbit and an asteroid for namesakes 鈥 would expect no less.
