Arthur C. Clarke fiction spilling over into fact

When Apollo 8 astronauts became the first men ever to see the far side of the Moon, they were reportedly tempted to radio back to earth the discovery of a large black monolith on the lunar surface.

‘Alas discretion prevailed’, Arthur C. Clarke says now with only the faintest hint of a smile. If they had, few people would have been completely surprised, for it was Clarke’s brilliant fictional creation of space travel in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey Which not only provided a generation with its image of space exploration, but also predicted the existence of inexplicable monoliths on other planets.

It was an imaginative vision, which made Clarke the most successful science fiction writer of all time, and among the richest writers in the world.

Today the sequel to his original breath-taking vision of the future of man in space, called 2010: Odyssey Two, is published in England. There seems little doubt it will provide a new generation with its imaginative space vocabulary.

But although Clarke’s work is fiction, it seems forever on the very edge of fact. ‘Sometimes I think my prophecies are almost self-fulfilling’ he says. ‘Do you know they have even found something in the rings of Saturn that they can’t explain. It’s a very small intense source of radio noise and one theory is that it’s an artifact!

He can hardly conceal his glee that he predicted it in his first novel.

When 2001 was first written at the urging of the film director Stanley Kubrick, who wanted to use it as the basis of the proverbial good science fiction movie and went on to do so with spectacular success, the moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto were more pinpoints of light to even the most powerful telescope. This did not prevent Clarke describing them, and now since the Voyager space probes they are defined worlds ‘They are even beginning to discuss the theory that there is life in Europa’, Clarke says as again he had hinted in 2001.

In 14 years since 2001 was published, Clarke has always maintained it was impossible to write a sequel. Indeed, five years ago he even announced that he was retiring as a writer after more than 60 of his books he had been published and sold 20 million copies throughout the world.

‘But sometimes in my subconscious told me that I couldn’t’. I wanted to see what was on the other side of the next hill, to find out what happened’.

So he sat down and wrote a 10-page synopsis of what happened to the crew of the spaceship Discovery in 2001.

‘I sent it to my agent and he phoned me back at once to tell me I couldn’t leave it like that. If I’d write a sequel he’d get me a million dollars for it in 24-hours’. Clarke decided to go back to the world processor, which has now replaced his typewriter.