Playboy Interview: Arthur C. Clarke

For armchair space explorers, these are the best of times and the worst of times. On one hand, science fiction continues to flourish on best-seller lists, the Soviets have set up the first permanent manned space station and satellites are doing everything from sending back pictures of distant moons to bouncing our TV and telephone signals around the world at ever-increasing speeds. On the other hand, America's space effort seems stalled in the wake of the Challenger disaster, and the Reagan Administration keeps pressing---and the Soviets keep protesting---its multi-billion-dollar satellite-and-laser-beam Star Wars space defense plan. So at this crossroads in the history of space travel, with all these high-tech topics in the air, it seems an excellent time to ... go to Sri Lanka.

There's a reason, of course, and that is that Arthur C. Clarke lives in Sri Lanka. If anyone can be said to have a unique and central perspective on these currents, it is this genial British-born man of science and literature. He is the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey," the researcher who predicted the invention of communication satellites, the outspoken opponent of Reagan's Star Wars plan (see this interview for a change on that), the spinner of tales portraying a future in which space travel and contact with aliens is the stuff of everyday life.

The explosion of the space shuttle in January, which caused some to question whether or not space travel should continue at all, shocked Clarke but "did not surprise" him. He felt that the shuttle was faulty in the first place and says in this interview---before the explosion occurred---that a catastrophe in space was inevitable. He nevertheless feels strongly that space exploration, which is not only good for the soul but vital to the human race, should go forward with new tools.

Born (in 1917) and raised on a farm in Minehead, England, young Clarke took a job as an auditor at the Exchequer in 1936. In his spare time, he would devour the pulp science-fiction magazines that were published at that time, writing letters to them and consuming all the Jules Verne and H. G. Wells he could read.

After hours in London, Clarke found himself spending time with a group of people who shared his interests. These were early science-fiction fans, who would gather at local pubs, sharing the latest American magazines and talking about real space exploration---heady stuff for a farm boy whose head was in the stars. One of these pub groups went official and revived the British Interplanetary Society, founding a newsletter to which Clarke became a frequent contributor.

Meanwhile, Clarke extended his studies in mathematics, receiving in 1948 a degree from Kings College, Cambridge, in physics and pure and applied mathematics, and contributed to scientific journals. At the same time, he began to hone his fiction-writing style. It was not long before a prolific outpouring of books, short stories, articles and scientific papers began, eventually to total more than 600. He has received 25 literary, scientific and academic awards for his writing, including an Emmy in 1981 for his contributions to satellite communications.

His special moment in the sun, however, was unquestionably the writing of a short story called "The Sentinel," which led to his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on the film classic "2001." The movie went from being a cult favorite to being included on some critics' lists of all-time greats---including the lists of some who had panned it when it was released. Clarke waited 15 years to publish a sequel---"2010," an adaptation of which was first published in Playboy---which became a huge best seller. He collaborated with director Peter Hyams on the film version, which enjoyed only a modest commercial success and culled mixed reviews. Clarke also managed to write and host two television series for Britain's ITV, "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World," in 1980, and "The World of Strange Powers," in 1984---both widely syndicated around the world.

The fame he would achieve certainly did not seem possible to him when, at the outbreak of World War Two, Clarke left his accountant's job and joined the Royal Air Force as an advanced-radar instructor. He enjoyed the experience well enough---he was learning new technology---but at night, off hours, he was perfecting his mathematical theory about space-satellite transmissions. It paid off. In the October 1945 issue of the scientific journal Wireless World, he hypothesized a system of world-wide communications via transmission of satellite signals. His calculations showed that there was a belt around the earth 22,300 miles high in which a satellite's orbital period would be synchronous with the earth's rotation, thus making the satellite effectively motionless to earth stations below. By beaming signals to satellites at that altitude and relaying those signals between receiving stations, Clarke said, it would be possible to transmit information almost instantaneously from one point to another. The orbital area he proposed was called Clarke's Belt; and in 1964, with the launching of America's SYNCOM III, the first satellite with enough rocket thrust to take it up that high, Americans were able to watch, live, the Tokyo Olympics.

Noted physicist and inventor Dr. Norman Abramson says that today, a list of satellites in Clarke's Belt, "or planned for that orbit, has almost 500 entries, and the array of new services and new network architectures that will be provided by these satellites is always expanding."

T. A. Heppenheimer, of the Center for Space Science in Fountain Valley, California, points out another major example of Clarke's prescience, from a 1950 paper Clarke published on the topic of what are now called mass drivers---in effect, huge spaceships that can run indefinitely on solar power: "Their importance may well rival that of communications satellites in half a century or so."

The Fifties were a particularly prodigious period for Clarke, in both fiction and nonfiction. He published eight novels, four collections of short stories and ten nonfiction books, one of which, "Childhood's End," became a classic in the genre. On a research expedition for one of his nonfiction books, about Australia's Great Barrier Reef, in 1954---he was an avid diver who believed that the sea was "the closest thing to space"---he discovered the island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He vowed then to make it his home.

Clarke is often asked why he chose to live there. "The answer is simple," he says. "I fell in love with the place." Although in the early years he could not live on the Indian Ocean island for more than six months at a time, he established Sri Lanka as his home base. He began to travel widely, lecturing and writing. Between 1964 and 1968, he says, he spent much of his time holed up in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, working on the script for "2001" with Kubrick. But Sri Lanka has become his permanent residence. He has no plans to visit America again. "I've earned the right to live where I want," says Clarke.

In 1983, a team of Clarke admirers decided that the father of space communications should have his own satellite dish and organized an expedition to deliver one to him. One member of the team did some research and noticed something uncanny: "There are some places over the equator where the earth's gravity is so strong that satellites placed there don't need fuel, because they never drift out of position. It turns out that one of the most stable places on the planet is directly above the piece of property that Arthur bought in Sri Lanka. It makes you wonder where this man came from."

To find an answer, we sent free-lance reporter Ken Kelley from California to Sri Lanka, and this is his report:

"It took 35 hours by plane to reach the country, and that's one tough haul. When I arrived in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, and flopped down, exhausted, I figured that with all the reading I'd done, I could take a break from Arthur C. Clarke before the interview began. But what to my reddened eyes should appear but an in-house showing on the hotel TV of '2001'!

"The next day, I took a taxi to Clarke's home and became immediately aware of what Third World traffic means---there are no stop signs and no traffic signals in Colombo. The taxi competed with oxcarts, children rushing into the street from all directions, people dashing across lanes on bicycles, with no regard for life or limb. I just closed my eyes, and we made it. (Clarke later told me that Colombo has one of the worst accident rates in all of Asia.)

"When I arrived at the gates of his compound---one near that of the country's president, a beautiful layout originally built for the local Anglican bishop---I was greeted by Clarke, who was dressed in his casual attire, a loose shirt and a sarong. Speaking in his rapid-fire, very clipped English, he proceeded to show me around the place---which resembles a sort of earth space station: the huge satellite dish on the roof; the ubiquitous computers, manned by a staff performing mysterious clerical tasks for him; the walls hung with the myriad awards he's received, along with pictures of visiting celebrities, from movie stars to Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts. He asked me to sign his visitors' book; I signed my name beneath that of Carrie Fisher---Princess Leia of 'Star Wars,' who had been the last visitor to sign the register. Then we sat down to play an insanely complicated space-age video game. I, of course, was a total klutz at it, but he'd mastered it and played it with the exuberance of a kid.

"Clarke's feeling for the fun in life pervaded the next two weeks I spent interviewing him, even though at moments we explored sensitive personal areas he has never discussed before. He is a man of many faces, an original, protean creature. Every day, we'd go to the Sri Lankan version of a country club, where he'd strip off his shirt, put on his tennis shorts and beat the hell out of most of the teenagers who came to play table tennis ('Don't call it ping-pong,' he would say firmly). His dexterity was amazing. I got up the nerve to play him one day, and he beat me so badly that I suggested we collaborate on a new novel---'2001 to 1.' Then he was driven home in his fire-engine-red Mercedes, attired himself in a loose white outfit, looking downright papal, and went to a function with the president of Sri Lanka.

"It is interesting to see him switch from one persona to the other. He will go from being a curmudgeon dealing with a mountain of requests from all over the world to being the gentle patriarch of his adopted 'family'---a Sri Lankan couple with two daughters for whom 'Uncle Arthur' will drop everything. In our conversations, I often didn't know to which Clarke I was talking.

"I do know that I'll never forget the 'Hah!,' the cackle he uses to punctuate so many of his points---that's a sound, unfortunately, that can't come alive in print. His ideas and his history, though, do."

[Q] Playboy: To begin, we wanted to ask------

[A] Clarke: Hold it. Here's a large ant on your neck. [Flicks it off] Oops! It's a spider. Some of them bite a bit here in Sri Lanka. Nothing fatal, though, if you ask the right questions. [Laughs] Take two.

[Q] Playboy: In terms of sheer quantity, you're one of the most prolific authors on earth, one of the planets you consider a home base. You've written 65 books------

[A] Clarke: Really?

[Q] Playboy: You don't keep count?

[A] Clarke: Well, there's some overlap, I guess. Books published under different titles---65, you say?

[Q] Playboy: Our research is impeccable.

[A] Clarke: I don't doubt it. My memory, I find, isn't. I was going through my list of published books last year and, quite by accident, I discovered two books that I'd forgotten about. Totally lost track of 'em.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't that give you pause?

[A] Clarke: Yeah, but then I thought about my friend Isaac Asimov---imagine keeping track of his. Actually, I'm sure he does, come to think of it.

[Q] Playboy: Still, we've added up the volume of your work---more than 600 short stories, articles and essays------

[A] Clarke: As many as that? Nonsense. [Pauses] Let me take that back. I guess it must be in the 600s if you include my books. Hmmm. So much for my reputation as a mathematician. Don't forget that you're talking about a 30-year period. That's not so much, really. I'm not a workaholic, like dear old Isaac. I don't just sit in my office with a typewriter---I've done a lot of traveling and lecturing, all that. Although now I tend to call myself a failed recluse.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning?

[A] Clarke: Not being able to say no to interviewers. You got the message I left for you when you arrived?

[Q] Playboy: Yes. We traveled halfway around the world to pick your brains; and when we arrived at our hotel, the first thing we found was a press release from you, announcing, "I am now completely fed up with talking about myself, and all my ideas are better recorded in my writings. I no longer have the time and energy to cope with mail and visitors---and media coverage makes matters steadily worse." That was some cordial greeting.

[A] Clarke: Oh, c'mon. [Laughs] That's the form I send to all people who ask me for an interview. Playboy is quite a different matter. Let me make this quite clear---the reason I'm doing the Playboy Interview is that I've had such a long and pleasant relationship with Playboyy. And I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Hef, ever since he told me about his security blanket with a bunny on it.

[Q] Playboy: The press release also says, "Don't ask me about my philosophy of life---I don't have one." That certainly seems to contradict your body of work. Many of your fans consider you a philosopher---of the future, of space travel and exploration.

[A] Clarke: I always feel a little bit embarrassed when I'm told that. Deep down inside, I suspect, I'm told rather shallow.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Clarke: I've had scientific training but never any formal studies in philosophy, and when I'm faced with serious issues, logic and so forth, I just can't be bothered---I shy away from that. It's my butterfly mind.

[Q] Playboy: Well, Asimov doesn't think so. On the cover blurb of your recent book 1984: Spring, in which you attack creationism, he wrote, "Nobody has done more in the way of enlightened prediction." Of course, you've always insisted that your writings are "extrapolation" rather than "prediction." Isn't that just a matter of semantics?

[A] Clarke: OK, obviously, when I'm extrapolating, somethings I am trying to predict. I'm flattered and somewhat embarrassed by what Isaac says, but I guess somewhere I accept some of it, and I certainly don't want to contradict the world's best seller of books when he's complimenting me, now, do I?

[Q] Playboy: Your most famous prediction was about the invention of communications satellites. Back in 1945, when you were a radar flight instructor in the Royal Air Force, you published a paper outlining how they could stay in geostationary orbits at a precise altitude of 22,300 miles. That part of space was immediately called Clarke's Belt---and still is. Wouldn't you call that a fair bit of predicting?

[A] Clarke: I guess so. But the point is this: All of the mathematical elements in what I published were familar to a great many people. The idea of geostationary satellites went back at least to the Twenties, when the concept emerged that you could have such a satellite.

[Q] Playboy: But you were the first one to publish the equations.

[A] Clarke: I really don't take too much credit for that, because I know half a dozen people who, if I hadn't published the suff in 1945, would have published it in 1946. So I was the first one---so what?

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you try to patent the idea? And didn't a lawyer tell you that the idea of sending signals to satellites in space was too farfetched---and that if you did patent it, the patent would expire by the time the satellites came into existence?

[A] Clarke: Yes. What that expreience mainly taught me was a lot about lawyers.

[Q] Playboy: What?

[A] Clarke: Lawyers are the sanitary engineers of society. A necessary evil. I should only earn as much money as they do. [Laughs] my favorite line from Mr. Shakespeare---"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyer's." Can't we talk about something other than dreadful lawyers?

[Q] Playboy: Let's go to the moon.

[A] Clarke: Fine with me.

[Q] Playboy: On this one, your prediction was off. You made a bet with the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, of which you were a member in the Thirties, about when the first landing on the moon would occur.

[A] Clarke: Yes, I wasn't very clever. I never really thought a moon landing would occur in my lifetime. But, you know, even the space enthusiasts of my youth didn't believe it would be in this century. When I wrote my book Prelude to Space in 1948, I put the landing 30 years in the future, in 1978. I remember thinking when I wrote it, This is hopelessly optimistic.

[Q] Playboy: As it turned out, during the moon landing in 1969, you were a commentator for U.S. television, along with you friend Walter Cronkite. You cried then, didn't you?

[A] Clarke: When you go to launch, it is an emotional experience. Television doesn't give any idea of it, really. Walter wiped away a tear or two, as well---as did Eric Sevareid. The last time I'd cried was when my grandmother died, 20 years before.

[Q] Playboy What did you think of Neil Armstrong's statement, "That's one small step for man, one giant step for mankind"?

[A] Clarke: Well, I took him up on that statement afterward, because he dropped out the "A." It was supposed to be "That's one small step for a man." He just fluffed it. When I talked with him about it later, he said, "That's what I thought I said, and that's what I meant to say." He did all right, though. I remember there was a magazine article on what the first words should be, and one astronaut suggested, "Help!" [Laughs] Can you imagine what that would have been like, as he sank into the lunar dust?

[Q] Playboy: The crew of Apollo Eight circled the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968---the first men ever to see the dark side of the moon. Didn't the commander of the mission later tell you they'd been tempted to radio back to earth that they'd discovered a large black monolith, as in 2001?

[A] Clarke: Alas, discretion prevailed.

[Q] Playboy: How much do you think 2001, which you began envisioning with director Stanley Kubrick in 1964, inspired actual space exploration?

[A] Clarke: Although most people thought space travel was inevitable by then---President Kennedy had called for a mooon before the end of the Sixties---I think the movie did stir people's imagination about the future. I'm especially proud of how well the film stands up---even the moons-of-Jupiter stuff. The only thing we were wrong about scientifically---everybody was wrong, because the information was incomplete---was the surface of the moon as we depicted it in the film.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Clarke: We never dreamed the surface would be so smoothed. The idea had been that there would be no weathering on the moon; everything would be fresh and sharp-edged. Because of all meteor bombarment, there has been a lot of weather on the moon---but it's taken a long time.

[Q] Playboy: After the Apollo 11 moon landing, you said that "history and fiction became inexticably interwinded." What did you mean? That extrapolations such as yours were now coming true?

[A] Clarke: Yes. But it was another Apollo launch that made that point even more clearly---and that is, how uncannily nature imitates art. During the Apollo 13 flight in 1970, the space module that housed the crew had been christened Odyssey. Just before the explosion that caused the mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Strauss's Thus Spoke Zarathustra theme, now universally identified with the movie. Immediately after the loss of power, Captain Jack Swigert radioed back to Mission Control, "Houston, we've got a problem"---the words used by the computer HAL, who went crazy in 2001, to capain Frank Poole. I feel strange when I think about that....

[Q] Playboy: And NASA administrator Thomas Paine was the one who later sent you a copy of the book, saying, "Just as you always said it would be, Arthur."

[A] Clarke: Now I'm embarrassed again. It makes it sound as if I were playing God, or something, and that I don't want to do. Although I've been accused of it more than once.

[Q] Playboy: In your epilog to the new edition of 2001, you describe the curious evolution of the movie and the book. Actually, the genesis of it was a short story you'd written years before, The Sentinel------

[A] Clarke: Yes, and Kubrick read it, contacted me and said, basically, "We're going to write the best science-fiction movie of all time," based on that.

[Q] Playboy: You published the book in July 1968, shortly after the released of the movie. You continue in the epilog, "Thus I often had the strange experience of revising the mauscript after viewing the [movie] rushes based upon an earlier version of the story---a stimulating but rather expensive way of writing a novel." You've also said that that period was "streaked with agony." Why?

[A] Clarke: Well, I guess agony was a bit too strong a word. There were lots of frustrations and financial worries, because I didn't want the novel to come out until after the film, and I was afraid I wouldn't get a good deal on the novel if that happened. I had no idea how successful, if at all, it would be.

[Q] Playboy: Still, did it surprise you that the movie became such a cult hit?

[A] Clarke: At the beginnning, it was a flop. I can well remember, at the premiere, an MGM executive's saying, "Well, that's the end of Stanley Kubrick." And the day of the premiere was right after President Johnson announced he wouldn't run again. I remember one of the MGM people saying, "Well, today, we lost two presidents," meaning also the president of MGM. The reviews were disastrous, too---The New York Times' Renate Adler panned it. I later called her "the critic who came in from the cold," because she went back and saw it again and wrote something to the effect that, hmmm, maybe this isn't so bad, after all.

[Q] Playboy: But it didn't take long for the word to get out, as we recall.

[A] Clarke: No, only about a week. It took poor Herman Melville, who's been such a tremendous influence on me, about 50 years for Moby Dick to become a hit, and poor Kubrick only about a week to sweat over it.

[Q] Playboy: You've said that the famous opening sequence, in which the bone throuwn into the air by the prehistoric manapes becomes the space vehicle Discovery, came about by accident.

[A] Clarke: Yes, Stanley and I were trying to figure out that crucial transition. We were walking back to the studio in London and, for some reason, Stanley had a broomstick in his hand. He threw it up into the air, in a playful way, and he kept doing it, and it was at that moment that the idea of making the broomstick into the bone that gets turned into Discovery came about. I was afraid it was going to hit me in the head. [Laughs] So later we filmed it with some sort of bone. That shot was the only one in the movie done on location. It was shot just outside the studio. There was a platform built and, just beneath it, all the London buses were going by.

[Q] Playboy: How did it feel to be a kind of visionary prophet in what was called the Age of Aquarius?

[A] Clarke: It was a fascinating time. I knew [James] Rado and [Gerome] Ragni very well back then------

[Q] Playboy: The team that wrote the book and the lyrics for Hair------

[A] Clarke: Yes, and I've got a lovely picture of them with one of the Skylab astronauts, taken at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. In fact, I'd taken a couple of the astronauts to the Chelsea, had them staying with me there. I won't tell you who. I loved Hair. The Apollo 13 crew didn't---they were quite upset with what they thought was the antipatriotic theme. But John Glenn did love it---kind of strange, in a way, because I suppose he's perceived as one of the stodgiest of the bunch. Actually, he's quite a liberal guy. But as for this visionary-prophet business------

[Q] Playboy: Well?

[A] Clarke: Yes, well, move over, Allen Ginsberg. [Laughs] I really never regarded myself that way. I must say, though, being kissed by Allen Ginsberg was quite an experience. In front of two astronauts! We were landing at an airport, I was met by a couple of astronauts and Allen was with them, and he came up and gave me a big smooch---he had his beard then, which is what I mean by quite an experience.

[Q] Playboy: You were living at the Chelsea then, right?

[A] Clarke: Yes. Off and on from about 1956 to about 1968. I came back from Australia in about 1956, after having done my book The Coast of Coral------

[Q] Playboy: You discovered Sri Lanka while doing the research on that book------

[A] Clarke: Yeah, and I wanted very much to live here, but I couldn't really afford it for more than six months of the year, because of the tax situation. So I had to have a base in New York, and I lived at the Chelsea---"beat scene" and all.

[Q] Playboy: What was the beat scene like?

[A] Clarke: Well, I met that scene only in the lobby, really---I never went to any orgies, alas, or parties. I spent most of 1964 working like hell on 2001 up on the tenth floor. But I got to meet William Burroughs, Ginsberg, Gregory Corso. I ran into Andy Warhol on Seventh Avenue.... When I met Burroughs, he was a nice, quiet businessman---like his family corporation.

[Q] Playboy: The success of 2001 allowed you to fulfill your dream and move to Sri Lanka. In fact, when you collaborated on the sequel, 2010, with Peter Hyams, you did everything via computer from Sri Lanka, right?

[A] Clarke: Yes, and I wouldn't have written it if I'd had to go to Hollywood. I don't want to leave Sri Lanka again for a long time.

[Q] Playboy: You had vowed never to do a sequel to 2001---what prompted you to do it? The $1,000,000 advance you got?

[A] Clarke: Not in the least. I can't really pinpoint it. I thought that The Fountains of Paradise, in 1977, would be my last novel and that I'd said everything I had to say. Writing it had drained me emotionally. The Voyager mission to Jupiter was the key thing. It still seems incredible to me that whereas in 2001, I assumed that we wouldn't know what the moons of Jupiter were like until men landed there in 2001; by 1979, we knew what both Jupiter and its moons were like, because of the photographs transmitted by Voyager. That had a profound effect. Without that, I couldn't have written 2010.

[A] Ever since I'd published 2001, people kept asking me, "What about a sequel; what happened next?" And I kept saying, "Well, I painted myself into a corner with the ending, didn't I? No way you can get out of that." But it was obviously an intellectual challenge, and so, subconsciously, I was probably always working on it. And then I discovered a major factor in my writing career.

[Q] Playboy: What was that?

[A] Clarke: The movie outline, which is a way of getting in a whole novel in about six pages, having all the fun but none of the work. Then I got a letter from a guy in South America suggesting an idea for bringing HAL back to life---a good idea, one of the few I've taken from anybody else. So I sat down and wrote a ten-page movie outline, sent it to my agent, so then I could exorcise Odyssey II and forget the whole damn thing. And, of course, my agent sent it right back and said, "You can't do this; you've got to write the whole thing." And I cursed him for a minisecond or so, then realized he was quite right: I had to do the whole thing as a novel.

[Q] Playboy: Since in 2010 Jupiter turns into a sun and a Utopian world is created out of one of its moons, you could send the crew of a third Odyssey there, right?

[A] Clarke: There's no way I can even think about that now. It all depends on the launch by NASA of the spacecraft Galileo, whether it makes it to Jupiter or not.

[Q] Playboy: That could be years away. So why, on your remarkably precise schedule of your future plans, which you have printed up, do you announce a delivery date to your publisher of December 16, 1989, for The Final Odyssey, as you call it? You're obviously thinking about it. What's your advance on the new one?

[A] Clarke: The whopping sum of one dollar, and, OK, I guess I am contradicting myself---but at least I won't burn my publisher too badly if I fail to deliver, will I? [Laughs] You must understand this: It all depends on Galileo. If Galileo gets launched this year, then it'll take some two years for it to get to Jupiter, just before my 71st birthday; and then, for several months, it'll be cranking around all of Jupiter's moons, not just doing a fly-by, as Voyager did. Yet without Voyager, I couldn't have written Odyssey II------

[Q] Playboy: Why not? This is science fiction, after all---the other creatures and planets you've made up aren't dependent on NASA launches.

[A] Clarke: That is true, but then it would be sheer fantasy, not fiction, in a sense, because the only thing I could have done was make up the moons of Jupiter. The Voyager mission did give me the round truth and, therefore, make the whole thing more realistic. I write science fiction only about things I know are reasonabley true, even though the extraplations may not be known.

[Q] Playboy: You think Jupiter could turn into a sun, then?

[A] Clarke: It nearly made it. It's not as farfetched as it seems. It's something called a failed sun---there again, we're talking about very advanced technology, and in advanced technology, you can assume you can do anything that isn't incompatible with logic. If you even compressed it until it ignited---Jupiter is very much like a very large diesel engine.

[Q] Playboy: Do you also think it's in the realm of human possibility that Jupiter's moon Europa could become a Utopian paradise, inhabitable by human beings?

[A] Clarke: It's fiction, but it's probably possible. In fact, the possibility of life on Europa is very real, and a lot of people are taking that very seriously. There's ice, and the idea of ice with liquid water underneath---it's a very real possibility. A lot of scientists have sent me studies from working on this. I got my idea from them, and now there's feedback from both directions on that.

[Q] Playboy: At the end of 2010, the astronaut played by Roy Scheider tries to define the monolith. He says to his son, "I still don't know what the monolith is. I think it's many things. An embassy for an intelligence beyond ours------"

[A] Clarke: Those aren't my words; they're from the movie. I didn't write those words. I like to think of the monolith as a sort of cosmic Swiss army knife---it does whatever it wants to do.

[Q] Playboy: Presuming it gets written someday, will we find out in Final OdysseyII what the monolith wants to do?

[A] Clarke: I just don't know. And if I did, I certainly wouldn't tell you. You see, it took me 15 years or so to build up steam for 2010---most of the time denying that there ever would be an Odyssey II. I'll gladly refund the dollar advance if I don't turn it in on time.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to your extrapolations, you also predicated in a 1966 New York Times Magazine article that you would go to the moon by 1980------

[A] Clarke: Did I say that?

[Q] Playboy: Sure you did; we have the clipping right here.

[A] Clarke: Well, if The New York Times said it, I guess I must have. All the news that's fit to print, I guess. Nineteen sixty-six, you say---I don't think anyone had even heard of me in 1966.

[Q] Playboy: In that same 1966 New York Times piece, you also said that by 1980, we'd have landed on other planets.

[A] Clarke: Nobody's right all the time------

[Q] Playboy: And you went on to say that by the year 2000, there would be actual colonization of other planets. How are we doing on that schedule?

[A] Clarke: You're trying to pin me to the wall, and, believe me, it's a tough job being a prognosticator---for instance, the success of Apollo and then trying to recover from the immediate post-Appollo emotions. I remember standing next to Vice President Spiro Agnew, just after he'd seen the Apollo Two leave, and hearing him say, "Now we must go to Mars." And everybody thought we'd go to Mars. It seemed quite reasonable that we'd be on Mars during this century. And we would have if the momentum had continued.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't it continue?

[A] Clarke: Oh, Vietnam, Watergate, all of the social turmoil in America. But even if there had been no war, no scandal, there probably would still have been some feeling of letdown. So, no, I don't think we'll be colonizing other planets by 2000. I'll be pleased if we're back on the moon by 2000.

[Q] Playboy: To do what?

[A] Clarke: To develop it.

[Q] Playboy: When you say "we," do you mean the Russians, too?

[A] Clarke: Yes, that's the obvious way to do it. It would be very difficult, even without the political difficulties, in terms of interfacing America's and Russia's different technologies. I remember one of Russia's chief space scientists once saying to his American counterpart, "If we tried to cooperate, there would be no space program," and there's some truth to that. Still, there are many things that can be done with mixed crews.

[Q] Playboy: You've also said that by 2030, there will be contact with extraterrestrials.

[A] Clarke: That, of course, can't be anything but a guess. Nobody knows if there are any extraterrestrials, let alone if you can contact them.

[Q] Playboy: The author of Childhood's End, the book that's synonymous with a belief in extraterrestrials, is now saying that they may not exist? What a letdown!

[A] Clarke: I hatte to let my readers down, as you put it, but there may be no extraterrestrials. I think that it's almost infinitely improbable that that's so, but quite a number of scientific papers have appeared now on the theme that there are not. That we are all that is, in this enormous cosmos, which is a mind-boggling possibility. That there may be nobody else.

[Q] Playboy: You don't really believe that?

[A] Clarke: It's not a question of belief. I'm not trying to disillusion my readers, which I would do if I said there were no extraterrestrials, but there is that possibility. A remote one, but maybe it is true. I am just a human being, and even though I use my imagination to create still-unseen possibilities---well, nobody really knows anything about the true nature of the cosmos. I'm flattered that the books I produce excite my readers to imagine the way I imagine; but when it comes down to the cold, hard facts, we really have no proof of anybody else out there.

[Q] Playboy: And that would naturally apply to UFOs, wouldn't it?

[A] Clarke: I had lunch a while back with a friend who is an ex-deputy director of the CIA. He told me a fascinating story. When he was hired, one of the first things he did was get all his scientists together and say, "OK, boys, what's the truth about UFOs?" And they all told him the same thing---one, we're pretty sure there's a lot of life out there in space and, two, there's not the slightest evidence of their ever having contacted us. And, of course, that's exactly what everybody knows, but it was nice getting it from that level. But even if that conversation were made known, it still wouldn't convince the nuts who always believe there's a cover-up.

[Q] Playboy: We were talking about Soviet-American cooperation earlier. How did you feel when Ronald Reagan quoted you in his remarks to the National Space Club in 1985, in which he discussed his Strategic Defense Initiative---nicknamed Star Wars by the press---to build a laserbeam shell to defend against Soviet missiles? You'd already denounced the concept as impossible, hadn't you?

[A] Clarke: Yeah, he invoked what I call Clarke's Second Law, which basically says one should protect oneself. I wish he'd invoked what I call Clarke's First Law.

[Q] Playboy: Which is?

[A] Clarke: I quote myself: "When a distinguished and elderly scientist says that something is possible, he's almost certainly correct; when he says something is impossible, he's very probably wrong." And that's something that's been thrown back at me ever since I criticized Reagan's Star Wars concept to begin with.

[Q] Playboy: In fact, your most famous criticism of it was a harsh video tape you presented to a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, at its invitation, shortly after Reagan announced S.D.I.

[A] Clarke: You know what? I don't feel comfortable talking about the subject now.

[Q] Playboy: Why? You haven't changed your position, have you?

[A] Clarke: I guess I've changed my attitude quite a bit, yes. [Pauses] I think in the long run, what Reagan did, announcing the S.D.I., may turn out to be very beneficial just in terms of focusing attention on the practicability of it. For one thing, it may make people think seriously about what we have instead---MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction---which the United States has had in place for years as a response to any Soviet attack. It really is an apt acronym. I just think Reagan's Star Wars may turn out to be a stroke of political genius, even if his motivations and political conclusions are quite wrong. Do I make myself clear?

[Q] Playboy: Not really. Are you retreating from the charges you made in your Senate video tape---that the program is a fantastically expensive and unworkable scheme?

[A] Clarke: I don't mean it to sound like I am. Theoretically, everything that's said about killing missiles from space can be done, by a team of trained experts, a certain number of times. But the idea of an effective space-based defense system, meaning anything that shot down even 50 percent of incoming missiles---no, I still don't think it would be worth while even to attempt to build such a system. But I've begun to think there are all kinds of subtle matters, reasons you maybe should do it even if it doesn't work, reasons you should say you'd do it even if you don't intend to.... It's an extraordinarily complex issue.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds to us as if you're saying you support the idea of a gigantic bluff.

[A] Clarke: It could be. And if it is a bluff, one shouldn't even suggest the possibility.

[Q] Playboy: Wait. This is confusing. Your opinion is listened to. Are you or aren't you supporting S.D.I.?

[A] Clarke: I'm saying that although the only long-term solutions are political---banning the weapons---in the short run, there may be a case for developing, experimenting with and perhaps even deploying some systems. The over-all idea of building a laser umbrella over cities, much less a country as vast as the United States, is utter nonsense. Nevertheless, I'm not as anti-S.D.I. as I was, because I think some research should be done, if only to keep up with the Russians, who've been working on this for a couple of decades. The first experiments were made by the Americans, who then gave them up because they found out that exploding atom bombs in outer space was far too effective---it knocked out everything. Then the Russians, perhaps scared by that, developed their own primitive antisatellite systems.

[Q] Playboy: Then do you subscribe to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger's theory that the reason the Russians are so eager for the U.S. to give up S.D.I, is that they're so far behind us in technology?

[A] Clarke: I do think Weinberger has a point. I think one of the reasons the Russians are so scared of it is that if the Americans do it, the Russians will very rapidly spend a lot of money to get far ahead, spending a lot of money they don't really have, because their economy is in such trouble. There again, it's the big-bluff area.

[A] I don't know if S.D.I. is some kind of brilliant U.S. bluff, but I'd like to point out some problems the two countries are up against. First, any system, as it gets more and more complex, becomes less reliable. In a test with the American space shuttle, they aimed a laser at the mirror on the shuttle and missed, because the computer had been programmed in nautical miles instead of feet or something stupid like that---a simple programming error. Of course, it doesn't really matter on a test. But these are the little stupid glitches that invariably happen, and the more complex the system, the more inevitable the glitches. So there's a 100 percent certainty that something will eventually go wrong.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't that apply to S.D.I.? And if so, doesn't that frighten you?

[A] Clarke: It terrifies me. That's what's so scary, the people who are saying, "We can do these things," when most of them don't know the problems.

[Q] Playboy: Then let's nail this down: Although you've shifted your position on S.D.I., what do you think is the responsible position?

[A] Clarke: People who do know all the facts should study them dispassionately. I'd call for some benign neglect and a little less religious fervor. That process includes educating the President. There's no human being who can possibly know all the things a President has to know. People make fun of Reagan, but I have a great admiration for him.

[Q] Playboy: For his politics?

[A] Clarke: No, but in many other ways. I admire him as a man---he's courageous, witty and intelligent. He's not a genius---obviously not---but that's OK. I think it's very appropriate that a movie star should become President of the United States---and I'm not joking.

[Q] Playboy: You're not?

[A] Clarke: No. Movies are one of the great art forms of the modern world, and he's been in so many of them. I've seen Bedtime for Bonzo and all that, but that was something he did as a young man and---well, I guess he had to make a living, just like anybody else. I mean, a barber and haberdasher from Missouri named Harry Truman turned out to be a great President.

[Q] Playboy: Returning to the theme of your predictions, you also said that by 2060, artificial life would be created.

[A] Clarke: In a sense, that's already happened. It depends on what you mean by life. The building blocks of life, you know, have already been assembled. I think, actually, it's very unlikely that we'll have to wait till 2060 for some fairly complex sort of organism, at least at the amoeba level, to start to crawl around in some scientist's laboratory.

[Q] Playboy: And you said that by 2090, there would be the chance of immortality.

[A] Clarke: Well, there again.... I don't know if immortality is possible, and I'm even less sure that it's desirable. It would mean that no more children could be allowed, unless, of course, you have room to expand------

[Q] Playboy: Space.

[A] Clarke: Exactly. You're getting the point.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you once think immortality was desirable? From reading some of your works, it seems as if you did.

[A] Clarke: I think about it a lot differently now that I'm getting older. First of all, I don't think any human mind could stand it. We just couldn't live forever---we'd have to flush our minds out, and then we wouldn't be the same person, anyway. I've now come to the conclusion that all one wants---and it's quite enough---is the ability to live as long as one wants to. Or maybe as long as your relatives want you to. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: How long do you want to live?

[A] Clarke: Well---I'd like to live no longer than my health permits. My father died prematurely of cancer, but most of my family lived long---my great-grandfathers lived long. My mother is now in her late 80s---we've got pretty good genes. As long as I can think and take an interest in life and enjoy music, I don't care.

[Q] Playboy: What music do you enjoy?

[A] Clarke: Sibelius and Rachmaninoff. Some of the moderns, too, like Michel Jarré.

[Q] Playboy: How about 2001's theme music, Thus Spake Zarathustra?

[A] Clarke: No, I never liked that piece. The opening is magnificent, but from then on, it's a big nothing. Kubrick discovered it---I just was not moved as much as I thought I should have been. My feeling was, So what?

[Q] Playboy: More letdown for your fans------

[A] Clarke: Well, back to the question of longevity, maybe this will console some people: I would like to live until we've made contact with some extraterrestrials---at least know if they're there. I've had fantasies about that a lot---a spaceship comes down and the first guy off the ship says, "Take me to Arthur C. Clarke."

[Q] Playboy: Meaning that they've read your books, so they're saying the proverbial "Take me to your leader" line.

[A] Clarke: Yeah. But again, of course, he might say, "Take me to Isaac Asimov"---that's the nightmare, isn't it? [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: What about going into space yourself? Ever fantasize about that?

[A] Clarke: I certainly don't expect it; but, again, it's rather more probable than the fact that there are no extraterrestrials. Maybe there's a one percent chance of going up into space myself---if only into orbit. Remember, the first passengers are going into orbit within the next ten years or so. There's already an organization booking seats with NASA. I don't know how serious it is, but it will be expensive.

[Q] Playboy: In fact, your friend Walter Cron-kite, along with many other journalists, has booked a flight.

[A] Clarke: Yeah, I know. If I can trample Walter Cronkite on the way to the gangplank, then I'll do it, even if I'm in a wheelchair.

[Q] Playboy: In one of your best sellers, The Fountains of Paradise, set in Sri Lanka, you describe a scenario in which several geostationary satellites are linked to the earth by cables and space elevators forming giant spokes. You say that the earth would, in fact, now become a sort of gigantic wheel, and passengers could now move up and down the spokes of the rim. In effect, the distinction between earth and space would be abolished, though the advantages of either could still be retained. That would sure beat space shuttles, wouldn't it, as a way of traveling into space---and of beating Cronkite to it?

[A] Clarke: Yeah. Then Walter and I could have a real race up the stairs!

[Q] Playboy: But do you really think that could ever happen? Is anything as outlandish as that even remotely possible?

[A] Clarke: Almost anything you can imagine that's feasible that is likely to be done is going to happen. It's almost exponential, the rate of knowledge---it's doubling every two years now, and it's only going to get faster and faster. That's the rate of progress and, of course, that also includes catastrophes.

[The following exchanges took place in February, after the explosion of the space shuttle.]

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, you were talking about the inevitability of catastrophes. How do you feel about the shuttle disaster, now that a short time has passed?

[A] Clarke: It's certainly a terrible tragedy and it's given me a lot of pause; but in the whole picture, I think the shuttle is now an idea whose time has gone. The time has come for something new. Rolls-Royce has a secret patent on something called HOTOL---for Horizontal Take-off and Landing---which is an air-burning rocket engine that takes off as a plane does, uses the atmospheric air on the way up, then turns into a pure rocket. It doesn't carry any oxygen, or at least nothing near what the shuttle carried. Besides being cheaper by a factor of at least ten, the HOTOL would also be safer: Horizontal take-offs are far safer than vertical ones, and I think the shuttle disaster proves that old-fashioned vertical take-offs have been stretched to the limits.

[A] When the final report is issued, it may turn out that the cause is such that nothing like that will ever happen again. But, of course, it might. The shuttle is far too complex, inefficient and expensive. It's a financial disaster; everyone knows that. In a way, this disaster shows the terrible complexity of the device and the fact that it's got to strain its guts to work.

[Q] Playboy: But do you think the shuttle disaster has set back space exploration?

[A] Clarke: I don't think so. I'm trying to think of a historical parallel.... I've got it---the Titanic. The great age of the big ships continued after the sinking of the Titanic. The sinking didn't stop the building of bigger and better ships. And the psychological impact of the Titanic's sinking was almost as great as---maybe even greater than---the shuttle explosion's. Space travel will be, in the long run, a lot more important in the development of the human race than transatlantic liners.

[Q] Playboy: In America, some people's immediate reaction was to demand that this sort of space exploration stop.

[A] Clarke: If I may coin a phrase, that's a very un-American reaction. In the past---look at Pearl Harbor---America certainly didn't surrender. Let me give another example. The Comet, the first British passenger jet, built after World War Two, which launched the jet age, suffered disastrous crashes. There was a design failure that permitted the jet windows to blow out. The aftermath was very interesting, too, because what it meant was that America then went ahead and became the leader in jet technology. If it hadn't been for the failure of the Comet at the start, Britain might very well have become the leader in the jet revolution.

[A] If America gave up on space exploration because of this, it would leave everything in the hands of the Russians, who, God knows, have had a few unpublicized disasters of their own. Americans should also be prepared for the possibility of other disasters' occurring---it is a risky business. The point is this: We should make it less risky; American scientists should be given the money to go back to the board and design a more effective system, re-employ some of the old-fashioned technology and think about some new things, such as the British horizontal-take-off system. The shuttle is simply the wrong system. It was designed, then redesigned by Congress---the proverbial camel, in that way. You know, the camel is a horse designed by committee. The original shuttle was designed to be a completely reusable vehicle, both halves of which could be used over and over again. Because of Congress, the present one is incapable of that. The original shuttle was planned to be the DC-3 of space, and it ended up being the DC-1 1/2. NASA built a very bad compromise, because it wasn't given the time or the money to do it right, so it had to go a different route---throwing half the thing away by using solid-fuel boosters.

[Q] Playboy: Should we junk the remaining shuttles, then, while developing new ones?

[A] Clarke: No, you must make the best use of them while the new technology is developed, because you've got nothing else at the moment. Just make sure they're safe and usable, and I'm certain the committee appointed to investigate the disaster will make sure that happens. Meanwhile, there should be immediate development of the HOTOL system.

[Q] Playboy: In the postscript to your book Ascent to Orbit, you talk about technology quite a bit. You have a lot of technology in your own home---your John Deere computer "Archie," your satellite dish, your Kaypro-II computer. Yet you write, "This power over time and space still seems a marvel to me, even though I have been preaching its advent for decades. But the next generation will take it completely for granted and wonder how we ever managed to run the world without it ... which we never did. May these new tools help them to succeed where we failed so badly." Do you still think that way?

[A] Clarke: [Pauses] Absolutely. That's why I'm so delighted that kids these days are not using their computers strictly to play games but are using them to process information. Knowledge really is power, and computer technology has increased an individual's potential for power considerably. I still think it's one's duty to be optimistic about the possibilities of that power, without being unrealistic. It's just that if one radiates doom and gloom about the possibilities of technology, one is in danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about self-destruction.

[A] Of course, anybody should be able to say anything he likes, no matter how stupid. I'm always in favor of freedom of speech, unless one cries "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Including the matter of creationism, for that matter, which is just such utter nonsense---Jesus himself is quoted as saying, in the Scriptures, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Those Scriptures were written on purpose, I think.

[Q] Playboy: Does being set free include reincarnation, in your view?

[A] Clarke: No. On one of the programs I did in my British-produced TV series the World of Strange Powers---13 half-hour programs---the theme was reincarnation. I know it's a subject of great interest, and everybody believes in it. In one episode, we explored case histories from some remarkable children, about reincarnation, and we were able to follow up some of them. We found that some of the children had the ability to see a book, say, perhaps only once, perhaps even in a foreign language, and still be able to recapitulate it. And, quite unconsciously, the children would build up fantasies, sometimes involving real people, sometimes fictional people, in incredible detail, but from this totally forgotten source material they'd been shown. That means there are a lot of powers in the human mind, and that once you convince yourself that something like reincarnation is possible, from the power of any kind of suggestion, you believe it.

[Q] Playboy: You've talked about the way Buddhism has changed your life since you settled in Sri Lanka. How has it affected your way of thinking?

[A] Clarke: It's tough to talk about. I first wrote about it in The Deep Range. I talked a bit about what I thought I knew about Sri Lanka Buddhism. [Pauses] I guess it's that I think I have a different philosophical attitude. The pure Buddhist doctrine has become very much corrupted and overlain by other religious and political considerations, and even by superstition, which is a great tragedy.

[Q] Playboy: You're not at all superstitious?

[A] Clarke: I guess I am, in a weird sense---I deliberately walk under ladders, and I wouldn't bother to do that if I didn't have a trace of superstition, but I always have to see a little guy atop with a bucket of paint on it, first. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Back to Buddhism. You've described it as the one religion that will survive in the age of science------

[A] Clarke: Because it's not a religion, really. It's a philosophical outlook. When it does get involved in reincarnation and belief in gods, it weakens itself and endangers its possibility of survival.

[Q] Playboy: It's the dominant religion in Sri Lanka; how has it affected your life here?

[A] Clarke: I doubt that it really has influenced me very much. If it has, maybe it's in terms of its reverence for animals, because I was brought up on a farm. Unfortunately, for some practitioners of Buddhism in this country, that reverence doesn't always extend to a reverence for human life.

[Q] Playboy: You're referring to the civil war that's being fought now between the Singhalese people, who are primarily Buddhist, and the minority Tamil population, who are primarily Hindu.

[A] Clarke: Yeah, and it's a war that in a few short years has virtually destroyed this country's tourist trade, which used to be the mainstay of the economy. If the Buddhists would all behave as Buddha did, and if the Hindus would stay true to the beliefs of Gandhi and Nehru, everybody would be a lot better off, I must say.

[Q] Playboy: You are friendly with the rulers of Sri Lanka; the president lives down the street. Does your celebrity give you any special cachet?

[A] Clarke: You could put it that way---amazing things happen to me. I was appointed the chancellor of the University of Moratura here---the MIT of Sri Lanka, as we like to think of it---five years ago, without even being told first. I opened the local paper one morning and read, "Clarke to be head of University," and I thought, There aren't many other Clarkes in the country; I wonder who this could be. [Laughs] After I'd gotten over my astonishment, I felt compelled to prove my worthiness. I'd just been awarded the Marconi Prize [for scientific contributions to the advancement of communications technology], so I donated the $35,000 prize money to set up the Arthur C.Clarke Center, right next to the university, so we could build an institution concerned with promoting excellence in four areas: engineering, communications, space technology and robotics. At the moment, we've been able to erect only one small building, and the planned expansion is being stopped by the civil war. Many of our best people have left the country because of the uncertainty. We hope the center will bring them back. Meanwhile, I'm doing what I can to support my friends in America who have set up the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, U.S.A., to raise money to promote the ideas I've talked and written about.

[Q] Playboy: You juggle a lot of projects, don't you?

[A] Clarke: It's hard. I took time out to visit England for three weeks last summer, and it's the first holiday I remember having. I took it because I had nothing to do. I'd finished my latest book, The Songs of Distant Earth, a year and a half ahead of schedule. I got time to visit my old auntie, my mother's sister, who's 94, and I got the chance to bring back about 20 video movies.

[Q] Playboy: Including 2001 and 2010?

[A] Clarke: [Smiles] Those I already had.

[Q] Playboy: Were you disappointed that the movie version of 2010 wasn't as big a hit as the book?

[A] Clarke: It wasn't a big hit, but it's made money, and it will go on making money---forever. The video cassette is doing extremely well. I knew it couldn't be as much of a hit as the George Lucas stuff---Star Wars and so forth---because Lucas' movies had created a new kind of phenomenon, a much wider, nonintellectual, emotional appeal. And 2010, though I think it was accessible to everybody, didn't have the fantasy elements that appeal to the younger groups. I think, too, the younger groups lost some of the humor of it---there were many good one-liners in it. I've seen it now some five times, and I like it more each time I see it. But it's done very well in Japan and other foreign markets. I watch that stuff much more carefully now, because in 2001, I didn't get a piece of the action. As I've told you, in a way, I didn't even know if there'd be any action. And you know what? It's been only very recently that 2001 has made a profit! It was a bloody expensive movie---it cost some $50,000,000 in today's money, something like that.

[Q] Playboy: What's your own favorite work?

[A] Clarke: My latest one, The Songs of Distant Earth. And before that, The Fountains of Paradise, which we've discussed---I think of that as my magnum opus.

[Q] Playboy: In several of your books---Childhood's End comes to mind---you bring up the idea of "nonmaterial minds"------

[A] Clarke: That comes from William Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. He's a science-fiction writer from the Thirties who's most influenced all my writing, when you come down to it. But go ahead.

[Q] Playboy: You write about the mind's transcending, leaving behind, its material organic base, as you put it. And in your book The City of the Stars, you present the idea of a mind created and altered by a galactic culture as a new evolutionary stage for man. That may be what people mean when they talk about a mystical aspect to your work. Why do you regard the departure from the physical realm---leaving planet earth---as desirable? What should we leave the material world for?

[A] Clarke: I guess that it's just hard to imagine another direction in which to go. I hope I'm making sense. [Pauses] I guess it's just pure laziness on my part---I should think of a new evolutionary outcome. But I'm very much against any form of irrationality and mysticism. I guess I'm a mystic who's against mysticism.

[Q] Playboy: What does that mean?

[A] Clarke: [Long pause] I'm so very sorry you asked that question.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Clarke: It's tough to explain. This universe is so incredible, and we constantly find new things out; but what we know may be such a small part of reality, if, indeed, reality is finite---it may be infinite. But one must always allow for the totally unexpected. So, in a way, by talking about things that could be called mystical---well, I guess, I do try to allow for the idea that, as the famous scientist J. B. S. Haldane once said, "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it's queerer than we can suppose." I've changed the word queer to strange, because, of course, the word queer has taken on a different context. [Laughs] And that calls to mind what I call Clarke's Third Law, which is, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"---by which I mean things we take for granted now, such as transistor radios, that would be totally baffling, totally magical to even a man like Thomas Edison. I mean, if he saw a pocket computer, Edison would go totally crazy. He'd spend his whole life trying to figure out, "How does this work?"

[Q] Playboy: You don't believe in organized religion, yet a major theme in so many of your works seems to be a quest for God.

[A] Clarke: Yes, in a way---a quest for ultimate values, whatever they are. My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents. I can remember, quite vividly, growing up in England and being sent to Anglican Sunday school---we had to walk a couple of miles to get there and then listen to these horribly boring sermons, and then we were given these stamps that we had to stick in this book, and if you had this book full of stamps, you had the right to go on an outing, an ingenious form of bribery. I remember doing it for a couple of months and then saying, "This is a bunch of nonsense, and I don't intend to do it anymore." Never went again. It's kind of ironic, I guess, that the house I live in used to be the local Anglican bishop's compound. I remember lecturing at the University of Notre Dame many years back, after my short story The Star, about the star of Bethlehem, had come out---one of my most famous short stories, about a Jesuit priest who has this crisis of conscience when he discovers, to his horror, that the star of Bethlehem is a nova that has destroyed another civilization---and I remember this Jesuit priest telling me at the time, "You underestimate the Jesuits. I can't wait to go back to the Vatican with that news!" Wicked fellows, some of those Jesuits. [Laughs] Rather imperial chaps.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you give a speech at the Vatican last year?

[A] Clarke: Yes. I met the Pope. He's a very impressive man, though I don't approve of everything he stands for.

[Q] Playboy: What did you say to him?

[A] Clarke: I don't remember exactly. I do remember that I was, I think, the first man to tell a Polish joke in the Vatican------

[Q] Playboy: Which was?

[A] Clarke: I'm not going to repeat it---let's just say that it was in very bad taste and that people laughed.

[Q] Playboy: Did the Pope laugh?

[A] Clarke: He was out of earshot. I hope.

[Q] Playboy: When you mentioned "imperial chaps," it reminded us of your book Imperial Earth. That was banned by some school boards in the U. S. for its treatment of sex. The protagonist is a boy whose mission is to produce a clone of himself, who gets involved with a woman, though it turns out his former lover is a man.

[A] Clarke: I think lover is a bit too strong a word------

[Q] Playboy: You do?

[A] Clarke: Yeah, they'd just sort of mucked around as boys.

[Q] Playboy: It certainly didn't come across to us that way.

[A] Clarke: Really? OK, I won't argue. There's a whiff of that in Rendezvous with Rama, too. I guess I get more and more daring as I get older.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Clarke: I guess I just don't give a damn anymore. [Pauses] Maybe that isn't true, actually. One of my problems now is that I'm not just a private citizen anymore. I have to keep up certain standards, or at least pretend to, so that I don't shock too many people.

[Q] Playboy: The protagonist in Imperial Earth makes the selfless decision to clone his friend, rather than himself.

[A] Clarke: Yeah, I guess you're right; they must have been lovers.

[Q] Playboy: In fact, you conclude the book with the image of "two boys in a spaceship having a baby"------

[A] Clarke: [Laughs] I remember a cartoon in the early days of the Gemini program: There was a capsule on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and two astronauts emerge, saying, "First of all, I want to announce our engagement ...." I thought that was quite a riot.

[Q] Playboy: But we're trying to get to the bisexual, or homosexual, themes of your work. If we sound a bit shy------

[A] Clarke: Yeah, you are, like in Gore Vidal's famous remark: He was asked if his first lover was a man or a woman, and he said, "I was too polite to ask." Or better yet, when Quentin Crisp was asked, "Are you a practicing homosexual?" he said, "Certainly not---I'm perfect."

[Q] Playboy: Well, it is a delicate subject, and we're talking about you. Do you think bisexuality is inherently normal?

[A] Clarke: Oh, yeah. I think Freud said something to the effect that we're all polymorphously perverse, you know. And, of course, we are. Bisexuality is certainly a normal instinct for womankind. No question. But the point is that one of the interesting things about the human race is its incredible plasticity. The human race can adapt to almost any circumstance. Genetically, unless there are any physical malformations, we have all those potentials.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had bisexual experience yourself?

[A] Clarke: Of course. Who hasn't? Good God! If anyone had ever told me that he hadn't, I'd have told him he was lying. But then, of course, people tend to "forget" their encounters. I don't want to go into detail about my own life, but I just want it to be noted that I have a rather relaxed, sympathetic attitude about it---and that's something I've not really said out loud before. Let's move on.

[Q] Playboy: Sure. Let's finish with the theme of where technology is taking us. You once said, "Technology will improve remorselessly until we can be wired in so completely that we can't tell what's real and what isn't." How desirable is that?

[A] Clarke: I don't know. Technologically, it will be possible. But the danger is that it will happen to everybody, and only the robots will be around to keep changing the tapes, you see. [Laughs] I never said it would be desirable, only that it will happen. I've seen a couple of movies where there's an attempted move toward that end---it's very impressive. Sixty frames a second, wide screen, subsonics, the lot---I saw one and I felt really uncomfortable, really queasy. It was a movie where this dune buggy was riding close to the ground, and with subsonics, you felt it, too. I don't know how the young people felt about it---I guess it must be a thrill, something of what a merry-go-round, a carrousel was to people of my generation---but still, the technology does advance remorselessly, and if there were not a demand for it, and if people didn't want to feel as though they were somewhere else, it wouldn't exist. That was the point I was trying to make.

[A] You know, I feel so encouraged and delighted when I see that young people---new young people---are still reading my books and seeing 2001. It's rather rejuvenating. It keeps this old bird feeling young, I'll tell you that.

[Q] Playboy: Is that what keeps you going these days---that feeling?

[A] Clarke: I'm not really sure. [Pauses] It must be a part of it. I think, too, it's that I concentrate on ways to keep enjoying myself. I want to be able to keep enjoying staying around here in Sri Lanka, just waltzing around and seeing more of the country, seeing if another idea comes up that's not necessarily Final Odyssey. And if I do want to write that last Odyssey, I want to be able to write it in my home, surrounded by my friends. I know I have that freedom, too.

[Q] Playboy: Excuse the old question, but how would you like to be judged in history?

[A] Clarke: Well ... in The Fountains of Paradise, I brought together some themes that I think no other author---or Arthur, for that matter [laughs]---has ever brought up. I combined my Sri Lanka background and my space-technology background. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm boasting, but I think that book was the first ever that combined the two, and no other writer can say that. I think it was André Gide who said something to the effect that "what another would have done as well as you, do not do it." And I did something nobody else could do, I think, with that book---and with some style, I hope.

[Q] Playboy: Over the years, many have tried to analyze you and your work. One critic has said that "the thrust of most of Clarke's fiction is sentimental in its optimistic view of human destiny." True?

[A] Clarke: That's fair enough. That may not be true, but I'd like to think it is. You know the old prayer "The sea is so big, and my ship is so small, O Lord"---you can be totally despondent at moments in your own life but still be optimistic about life itself.

"I write science fiction only about things I know are reasonably true."