Arthur C. Clarke: “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”

Credit: Astrobiology

Clarke believed that humans would one day build colonies on the Moon and Mars.

Credit: NASA

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

It was one of his most memorable sayings. Yet Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction writer who died on 19 March 2008, is best remembered for the saga 2001: A Space Odyssey, published 40 years ago.

The driving force behind that novel and the screenplay was the maverick American film director Stanley Kubrick, who had developed a fascination for extraterrestrial intelligence. Fired up by enthusiasm to make a science fiction movie that was accurate and set in space, he contacted Clarke, who was by then living in Sri Lanka, as collaborator.

The end result is outstanding for its scientific realism, and had enormous influence on bringing the possibilities of space exploration to a wide public.

2001: A Space Odyssey was crafted before the Apollo moon landings, in an era when the space exploration programs of the United States and the Soviet Union were in their infancy, and the Cold War made collaboration between these nations impossible. Kubrick’s direction and screenplay showcased the possibilities of space exploration, illustrating how lengthy journeys, involving suspended animation, might be undertaken. Clarke’s descriptions of the orbital manoeuvres needed are accurate, and even the zero gravity toilet is correctly envisaged.

Influenced by the Cold War

Clarke’s first sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two, published in 1982, had nothing like the same impact, but it is noteworthy because it describes a joint American-Soviet mission to Jupiter. When Clarke wrote this, the Cold War was at a new height, and the collapse of the Soviet Union lay nine years in the future.

Today the International Space Station is a major collaboration of the United States, Russia, and 11 European states. Humans have continually occupied it since November 2, 2000, all of which Clarke foresaw in his fiction.

The second sequel, 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) is breathtaking in its vision. Once again the action takes place at Jupiter. Fusion reactors power space travel, and interplanetary flight is now mainstream. There is alien life in Europa’s buried ocean. Fusion reactors have not yet been achieved, but ion drive, long envisaged by fiction writers, powered NASA’s Deep Space 1 launched in 1998. And, Europa’s warm ocean is now a major target of opportunity for future astrobiology missions.

Clarke believed that humans would one day build colonies on the moon, and NASA is now trying to make that vision a reality. In an address to the U.S. Congress in 1975, Clarke said, “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”

Clarke’s first two non fiction books, Interplanetary Flight (1950) and The Exploration of Space (1952) are platforms for his immense interest in what is now termed astrobiology, for which he used the expressions “astronautics” and “space exploration.”

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