Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died earlier this week, at the age of 91. He was one of the best-known sci-fi writers of the 20th century, the author behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, among many others.
As is well-known, Clarke moved to Ceylon/Sri Lanka in 1956 — in large part for the year-around access to diving — and remained there until his death. The locale inspired at least one of Clarke’s novels, Fountains of Paradise:
Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, having emigrated there when it was still called Ceylon, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. Clarke held citizenship of both the UK and Sri Lanka. He was an avid scuba diver and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club. Living in Sri Lanka afforded him the opportunity to visit the ocean year-round. It also inspired the locale for his novel The Fountains of Paradise in which he described a space elevator. This, he believed, ultimately will be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete. (link)
I first read The Fountains of Paradise many years ago, and I pulled it off the shelf this afternoon for a refresher. There is an intense opening, set in the classical period, 2000 years ago, involving a “Prince Kalidasa,” who does not seem to resemble the actual Kalidasa (who was not a prince, but a poet). And there are some rich descriptions of the island of Sri Lanka (named “Taprobane” — Tap-ROB-a-nee — by Clarke). Here are a few paragraphs from the historical section involving Clarke’s Prince Kalidasa:
The air was so clear today that Kalidasa could see the temple, dwarfed by distance to a tiny white arrowhead on the very summit of Sri Kanda. It did not look like any work of man, and it reminded the king of the still greater mountains he had glimpsed in his youth, when he had been half-guest, half-hostage at the court of Mahinda the Great. All the giants that guarded Mahinda’s empire bore such Crests, formed of a dazzling, crystalline substance for which there was no word in the language of Taprobane. The Hindus believed that it was a kind of water, magically transformed, but Kalidasa laughed at such superstitions.
That ivory gleam was only three days’ march away – one along the royal road, through forests and paddy-fields, two more up the winding stairway which he could never climb again, because at its end was the only enemy he feared, and could not conquer. Sometimes he envied the pilgrims, when he saw their torches marking a thin line of fire up the face of the mountain. The humblest beggar could greet that holy dawn and receive the blessings of the gods; the ruler of all this land could not.
But he had his consolations, if only for a little while. There, guarded by moat and rampart, lay the pools and fountains and Pleasure Gardens on which he had lavished the wealth of his kingdom. And when he was tired of these, there were the ladies of the rock-the ones of flesh and blood, whom he summoned less and less frequently-and the two hundred changeless immortals with whom he often shared his thoughts, because there were no others he could trust.
Thunder boomed along the western sky. Kalidasa turned away from the brooding menace of the mountain, towards the distant hope of rain. The monsoon was late this season; the artificial lakes that fed the island’s complex irrigation system were almost empty. By this time of year he should have seen the glint of water in the mightiest of them all– which, as he well knew, his subjects still dared to call by his father’s name: Paravana Samudra, the Sea of Paravana. It had been completed only thirty years ago, after generations of toil. In happier days, young Prince Kalidasa had stood proudly beside his father, when the great sluice-gates were opened and the life-giving waters had poured out across the thirsty land. In all the kingdom there was no lovelier sight than the gently rippling mirror of that immense, man-made lake, when it reflected the domes and spires of Ranapura, City of Gold-the ancient capital which he had abandoned for his dream.
In this made-up history of the ancient kingdom of Taprobane, Clarke actually seems to know whereof he speaks; the injections of bits of Hindu culture seem to come from a position of knowledge.
And here is a little from the main section of the novel, set in the present day. The protagonist is a Sri Lankan named Raja (short for “Johan Oliver de Alwis Sri Rajasinghe”), who has retired from public life, and moved to an estate built on the site of “Kalidasa’s” original pleasure gardens:
That had been twenty years ago, and he had never regretted his decision. Those who predicted that boredom would succeed where the temptations of power had failed did not know their man or understand his origins. He had gone back to the fields and forests of his youth, and was living only a kilometre from the great, brooding rock that had dominated his childhood. Indeed, his villa was actually inside the wide moat that surrounded the Pleasure Gardens, and the fountains that Kalidasa’s architect had designed now splashed in Johan’s own courtyard, after a silence of two thousand years. The water still flowed in the original stone conduits; nothing had been changed, except that the cisterns high up on the rock were now filled by electric pumps, not relays of sweating slaves.
Securing this history-drenched piece of land for his retirement had given Johan more satisfaction than anything in his whole career, fulfilling a dream that he had never really believed could come true. The achievement had required all his diplomatic skills, plus some delicate blackmail in the Department of Archaeology. Later, questions had been asked in the State Assembly; but fortunately not answered.
He was insulated from all but the most determined tourists and students by an extension of the moat, and screened from their gaze by a thick wall of mutated Ashoka trees, blazing with flowers throughout the year. The trees also supported several families of monkeys, who were amusing to watch but occasionally invaded the villa and made off with any portable objects that took their fancy. Then there would be a brief inter-species war with fire-crackers and recorded danger-cries that distressed the humans at least as much as the simians – who would be back quickly enough, for they had long ago learned that no-one would really harm them.
Reading this, I can’t help but think of Clarke himself, one of the world’s most famous writers, living in a remote part of Sri Lanka — away from it all.
After the opening, the novel has a more conventional science fiction story arc — the goal is to build a kind of massive space elevator from the top of a mountain in Taprobane…
Here’s NASA’s take on the death of Clarke. Short and not too Glamorous !
Dwayne Brown Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1726 dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
March 19, 2008 RELEASE : 08-083 NASA Statement on the Death of Arthur C. Clarke WASHINGTON – The following is a statement from Alan Stern, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington, regarding the death of Arthur C. Clarke:
“Arthur Clarke was a gifted writer of science and science fiction, and an unparalleled visionary of the future, inspiring countless young people throughout the middle and later 20th century with his hopeful vision of how spaceflight would transform societies, economies, and humankind itself.
“Although his personal odyssey here on Earth is now over, his vision lives on through his writing; he will be sorely missed.”
One of the protagonists (the computer HAL’s creator) in Clarke’s Space Odyssey series was named Chandra. But when Hollywood made that into a movie Chandra was played by a white actor….
His most intriguing character with a desi name is of course the eponymous alien ship in ‘Rendezvous with Rama’, named so because (according to the book) astronomers have run out of Greek and Roman mythological names by the 22nd century, when the story takes place.
Rendezvous with Rama, is also, IMO, his best work.
Though debatable whether we’ve run out of Greek/Roman mythology names, non-Greek and non-Roman names have started sprouting up. Three that I recall are Varuna (Hindu), Sedna (Inuit) and Quaoar (Native American).
In the book, how is this space elevator imagined? I mean in terms of structure and technology, how does it work?
Along with Asimov, one of the greatest SF writers of this century. In 2001, Chandra is depicted as quite geeky which I thought was stereotypical but amusing.
Two aspects of Clarke’s writing that I enjoyed were first, that his characters were more fully realized than that of most science fiction writers of his time, and second, that he could write stories that evoked emotions other than awe or gee-whiz wonder. I suppose this dates me somewhat, but having lived under the shadow of nuclear war, it’s hard for me to read say, Clarke’s If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth… without feeling a lump in my throat. There was also a streak of irrepressible optimism that ran through most of his fiction, even when dealing with doomsday scenarios, which my younger self found quite appealing.
I had not read anything by Clarke in a while but the news took me right back to a long time ago. I had begged to stay up a little longer than usual since I could not put down “Childhood’s End”. Dad was supposed to monitor this but he was lost in the radio commentary of one of India’s World Cup cricket matches (this was in 1983) and forgot so we both stayed up all night, Dad lost in cricket and me in another reality. Arthur C. Clarke’s writing was unmatched!
I was almost in tears when I read he passed away (instead I cried in my blog post). His book “2001:A Space Oddyssey” was my gateway to science fiction, science and reading. More than writing, he was a great human. He refused to patent/copyright/whatever his satellite prototypes. Clarke sketched out the idea of orbital communication satellites in 1945, when he was 28!!! Wired has a great collection of interviews with Jeff Greenwald. RIP.
Taprobane isn’t a Clarke original, it’s what the ancient Greeks and Romans called Sri Lanka. [link]
I cannot wait for the movie version of Rendezvous with Rama. I am sure it will not do justice to the book but its been promised for so long.
Among the expats in Sri Lanka, Clarke was widely rumored to be a pedophile. Officials in that country turned a blind eye due to his international stature. He was allowed to exploit children in a developing country and no one took action – SM should take a closer look.
12 · SP2000 said
SP2000, here is something to keep you busy till Michael Jackson pops it. Have you been staying up nights watching Close Encounters Of The Third Kind & Earth Girls Are Easy on a double bill?
I too, in fact, always had the idea in my head that the pedophilia allegations were never addressed and I completely lost my earlier admiration for Clarke when I heard about them, but it seems like I was going off rumors rather than fact.
Here’s what I learned in the past couple of days: That the accusations of pedophilia were by the British tabloid, The Sunday Mirror, that they might have been something timed to embarrass Prince Charles as they were released just days before Clarke was to be knighted by him at Sri Lanka, that they were declared baseless after a 2 year investigation, and that the Mirror retracted the story, and Murdoch even apologized to Clarke for his paper’s allegation. The easiest way to check some of this out is the wiki entry for Clarke, and you can verify the rest by following the cited links in that entry, as well as from a Google search.
Now, it might still be that the official investigation cleared Clarke in spite of facts to the contrary, but absent some solid evidence, the allegation seems to fall firmly into the category of whisper-campaign and gossip – especially since Sir Clarke was gay, and pedophilia accusations have traditionally been part of the homophobia slander campaign – without some really strong evidence (maybe in 50 years when Clarke’s notes and diaries are unsealed).
First, with Asimov’s passing, and now Clarke’s, the dismal future begins. Rips in the First Law are appearing.
14 · Rahul said
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he was accused of pedophilia (light-heartedly if you can imagine, i.e. “He’s just another bugger”) in my own family many times (can’t tell if this really started before or after the Mirror story,) but this came in the context of rumors of euro travelers going south and soliciting children for unimaginably foul purposes. I’m not sure if they were true, but in any case it seems the pederast brigade has firmly ensconced itself in Goa and other points north of SL.
My only beef with Clarke was that he was always a big passive SL-booster, just like dear old creepy uncle Tony Grieg, but couldn’t bare to place a dainty foot in the the north (lest it be blown off by a land-mine no doubt).
Clarke was the last of the “Big Three” . He, Asimov and Heinlein shaped the shift of science fiction from the realm of the 1930s Buck Rogers & Flash Gordon pastiche of fantasy serials to “hard” science fiction, applying their various backgrounds of science and military service to the themes. Sadly, Asimov’s name was tarnished when his son David was found guilty of child porn possession some years ago.
That’s so sad!
I’ve read some of his earlier novels. One of my friends is a HUGE fan of his, though.
Interesting that he lived in Sri Lanka. I didn’t know that about him.
I’ve spent time in some of these places popular with the expats (white people mostly from Europe) and well, similar rumors have floated around. One guy was supposedly a convicted pedophile in his country of origin. Now I’ve heard these rumors from people, like my mom, who would otherwise never talk about such things (these kinds of things are too shocking). So my guess is they must have seen something.
Oh and while we are on the topic of expats, many of the women past their prime like the fact that it is so easy to get a young Indian lover. Sometimes they marry them to get Indian citizenship which btw is amazingly hard to get. In one town, a woman who will be 100 this year is reputed to have a 40ish beau. I guess there are dirty old men everywhere, but dirty old women go to India or Egypt.
My_dog_jagat:
Actually, older white women also go to Africa. Here’s a story I posted on facebook a while ago: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN2638979720071126?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Sorry, I didn’t link it properly.
Older White women join Kenya’s Sex tourists
The name Johan Oliver de Alwis Sri Rajasinghe is quite in line with names in Sri Lanka. have a look at names of the Bandaranake/Kumaranatunge’s bandaranayake ancestry
bandaranayake ancestry http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lkawgw/gen1001.html
Sir Arthur was a bachelor and a homosexual . Allegations of paedophilia were unsubstantiated rumors.