by Stephen Baxter

(A version of this interview first appeared in SFX Magazine, April 1997)

It seems entirely appropriate that I should speak to Arthur Clarke by using communications nets to link a dismal December morning in Britain with a balmy evening in Sri Lanka. And it also seems appropriate that the first thing Clarke wants to talk about is speculation on time travel.

‘...By the way, these quotations about time travel ... I see they quote Stephen Hawking about this argument against time travel being the remarkable absence of time travellers. I’ve been saying this for years. But I think there’s a rather simple explanation of that. A science fiction story many years ago pointed out there wouldn’t be any time travel until someone builds a receiver. And then they’ll come pouring in! That seems to me the obvious answer ...’

With a wrench, we move from time travel to the future. As co-authors of the Time Odyssey sequence, we speak of his novel 3001, the final volume in the Space Odyssey series. Three decades after his work on the film and book 2001: A Space Odyssey, what drew Clarke back to the story?

‘Very simple answer. My publisher waved green paper at me until my eyes glazed over. And you can quote me on that! I wouldn’t have done it unless I wanted to do it, of course, no matter what the money is. There are some things I want to do I’ll do for no money at all. But I realised that this would help me to graduate from the rich poor to the poor rich.

‘Whenever anyone throws a project at me my first reaction is “I’m sorry, I’m not interested, I’m too busy”. But then what usually happens is it attracts an interesting idea. I’ll think about it. I’ll wake up in the night, and I’ll lie there brooding it over - I get some of my best ideas when I’m swimming too - and it slowly gels...’

Clarke undertook a long creative odyssey of his own to reach 3001. It all started with a short story called ‘The Sentinel’, first written for a BBC contest in 1948 (ironically, for such a significant story by the eventual sponsor of Britain’s premier science fiction prize, it didn’t win!) about the discovery of an ancient alien artefact standing enigmatically on the Moon. In 1964, Clarke began discussing ideas for ‘the proverbial good science fiction movie’ with Stanley Kubrick, and ‘The Sentinel’ formed the seed for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). (Clarke recorded this process in The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972).)

2001, perhaps the best-known and best-loved sf story of the twentieth century, expands the tale of the lonely lunar sentinel, now the famous black Monolith. When it is uncovered it sends a signal to its much more powerful brother, in orbit around Jupiter (Saturn in the novel): a warning to those who left the Monoliths that humans have become able to reach beyond their own world. Astronauts Dave Bowman, Frank Poole and balky computer Hal travel to Jupiter to study the alien presence. Poole is cast adrift by Hal, but Bowman survives to reach the Jupiter Monolith - which proves to be a gate to the stars, and transcendence.

Clarke was first inspired to return to the 2001 universe by results from the US Voyager probes, which flew past the giant planet in 1979. In 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), a joint US-Soviet expedition to Jupiter encounters the transfigured Bowman. Jupiter is collapsed into a star-like object, for the Monoliths are seeking to promote life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. (The filming of the story by Peter Hyams in 1984 was written up by Clarke in The Odyssey File (1985) with Hyams.)

Clarke intended to wait until the Galileo probe reached Jupiter before turning to 2061: Odyssey Three (1988), but the Challenger disaster delayed Galileo by the best part of a decade, and Halley’s Comet returned in 1985, and will again in 2061 ... In Odyssey Three, humans reach the surface of Europa and encounter the life forms there. It becomes clear that the Monoliths, though enormously powerful, are not conscious: these chilling, soulless machines are, in a sense, less than us - and they are certainly not infallible.

So we come to 3001 - ‘the fourth book of the trilogy’, as Clarke says - written even as the first Galileo images were at last being disseminated by JPL on the Internet.

‘I guess the actual moment when 3001 gelled was getting the key idea of rescuing Frank Poole. And that was it. Conceivably there might have been alternative storylines but when I had that, I realised, I’ve got to find out what happened to him ...’

Told in Clarke’s characteristic limpid style, and full of the latest scientific speculations, 3001 is the tale of astronaut Frank Poole, lost in space in 2001, retrieved and revivified. Poole is drawn to confront the mysteries awaiting mankind in the Jupiter system. And there, in conjunction with the transfigured ghosts of Dave Bowman and Hal, Poole prepares at last to challenge the Monoliths themselves.

From its modest beginnings in ‘The Sentinel’ through to 3001, the 2001 sequence has epitomised an apparent paradox at the heart of Clarke’s work: that this man who, of all sf writers, is widely regarded as the most technologically knowledgeable - indeed, who originated concepts such as comsats and lunar mass drivers - should be drawn to the metaphysical.

‘There is a crack at me by Darvo Sukin in Foundation’ (no. 67, Summer 1996) ‘in which he refers to my pseudo-mysticism,’ says Clarke. ‘I can’t read Foundation - I just skim it - these long arguments about linguistic theories, using words which I don’t even know what the hell they are, and namedropping French philosophers...

‘Anyway Darvo objects to my pseudo-mysticism. It’s not pseudo-mysticism, it’s real mystery! I’m very opposed to genuine mysticism, but not to mystery, you see. That’s the distinction I draw. Mystery - wonder and mystery, fine - but not mysticism, which is pseudo-mystery. That’s my pet hate: the flying saucer debate, and all the New Age nonsense ... There are enough real mysteries in the universe without having to create phoney ones.’ We’ve sent probes to Mars, for example, but the results merely serve as the basis for more mysticism about pyramids and giant faces.

‘... By the way I wrote a short story twenty or thirty years ago about the discovery of a human head on Mars. It’s a rather small human head - smaller than the real thing - but I was there first!

3001 - like its predecessors - is full of the sinewy technological prediction, drip-fed skilfully to the reader, which has always characterised Clarke’s work. And Frank Poole serves as an eyepiece for the remarkable worlds of 3001, complete with orbital sky cities and inertialess drives.

‘I have a lot of fun working out plausible futures. The original contract with Judy Lynn Del Rey referred to 20,001. I realise that nobody can imagine what it will be like in 3001 - look at the last thousand years - but at least there is a certain plausibility. I don’t think we’ll change very much biologically in that time - although we could, of course!’

Clarke’s technical prescience has led to him having a major impact on the real world, as well as his worlds of fiction. Scientists and engineers, it seems, take Clarke seriously. Clarke’s fame as originator of the concept of geostationary communications satellites is well known (deriving from a paper in the October 1945 issue of the journal Wireless World). At the time he was closely involved in the British Interplanetary Society, which pushed forward the boundaries of thinking on many topics. He featured ideas from a classic paper on atomic rocketry published by the BIS in 1948-49 in his first novel Prelude to Space (1951), ideas which would be developed in the US Rover and NERVA projects in the 1960s.

And Clarke seems to have been the first to publish the concept of the electromagnetic mass driver - for use, for example, in hauling resources from the surface of the Moon to Earth, or deflecting asteroids - in a 1950 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Later, Clarke became a well-known populariser of science, and continued to anticipate subsequent developments with uncanny accuracy. In his popular book The Exploration of Space (1951), for instance, he gives a description of unmanned probes to Mars reflected in almost every detail in the real Mariner probes thirteen years later. And in Rendezvous With Rama (1973), he outlined a ‘Spaceguard’ operation to monitor Earth-approaching asteroids, an idea which inspired a real-world follow-up two decades later ...

Of all sf writers, perhaps Clarke has the highest predictive ‘hit rate’.

‘You know this ice on the Moon business? I described that first in my non-fiction book Exploration of the Moon (1954), and again in The Hammer of God (1990), but it also plays a role in 2061 ...’

What do the remarkable possibilities opened up in recent years – the possibilities of life on Mars, ice on the Moon, water on Europa - mean for the future of human expansion in space?

‘It’s been said that space is a benign environment - in some ways more benign than the sea. Of course you’ve got to be careful. Another phrase I’m very fond of, which a leading space surgeon fed me is: the human skin is a pretty good spacesuit. Nice phrase, isn’t it? And if there are resources out there the exploration of space certainly becomes a lot more plausible.’

But in his valediction to 3001, Clarke gently chides himself:

‘Today, of course, it seems ludicrous that we could have imagined giant space-stations, orbiting Hilton hotels, and expeditions to Jupiter as early as 2001 ...’

He says now, ‘I was there when Spiro Agnew said to Walter Cronkite, immediately after the Apollo 11 launch, that we must go on to Mars. In the event Agnew was lucky not to go to jail! Everybody was very euphoric at the launch. But it fell apart very quickly thanks to Vietnam, Watergate.

‘An analogy I like is with south polar exploration. We went there with dog sleds and many men died doing it, and we went back with jets and helicopters, but there was a gap of a generation before we could do that. But we were back at the Pole in the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and have been there ever since ...’

Clarke’s life and work has been woven inextricably with the unfolding Space Age. It’s well known that the Apollo 13 Command Module was named Odyssey, after the film. It’s less well known that the Apollo 8 astronauts, the first humans to see the far side of the Moon, considered reporting a huge Monolith there (‘I was annoyed at them for chickening out!’). I was in the audience when Clarke accepted an honorary doctorate from Liverpool University by videolink. It was an impressive performance, including stage magic with a vial of ‘Moondust.’

‘That was rather cheating, actually. I do have some Moondust but so little it’s hardly visible. What I actually showed was some simulated Moondust with exactly the same properties which they created here for study. So it’s the fake stuff I poured out, but I do have the real stuff ...’ And as Clarke said at the time, that is a treasure which could not have been bought by the richest man on Earth fifty years ago.

His involvement in the reality of spaceflight continues. ‘Damn shame about the failed Russian probe, Mars 96. It had on board my message ...’ This was a CD-ROM videodisc called Visions of Mars, replete with masses of science fiction and scientific illustrations and recorded messages from Clarke, Carl Sagan and others, available from the Planetary Society. ‘And so my message should have landed on Mars. I was very sorry for the scientists involved in Mars 96 who spent years of their lives on those experiments.’

Some of those collaborating scientists were British; does Clarke think Britain should do more in space?

‘I really can’t judge. People say we have so many problems here on Earth, and they do have a point. But many problems can be addressed by space technology - communications and Earth resources are the obvious ones.

‘We should do as much as we can with robots. That is what is happening now, particularly as a whole new generation of nanorobots is coming along now which can do fantastic things we never dreamed of. And then when we’re ready we’ll go back to the Moon and on to Mars. But this can be done. I’ve said before that if we knew there was a cure for AIDS on Mars we’d be there in five years.’ And perhaps it’s wise we didn’t follow some of the proposed routes of the past, like 1960s-designed nuclear rockets? ‘Oh my God, yes.

‘I would like to have seen a lot of things, but I have seen infinitely more than I ever imagined in my lifetime. I’ve seen space travel. In Prelude to Space (1951) I predicted a first flight to the Moon in 1978 and I thought that was ridiculously optimistic. Of course by 1978 we’d actually abandoned the Moon! I’d like to see men on Mars, but I’m very happy with what we’ve done.

‘If I had a choice, the only two things I hope to live to see technologically are the discovery of life elsewhere - which has a sporting chance, and might be confirmed by the new Mars flights - and the discovery of intelligence elsewhere, perhaps through SETI ...’

3001 left room for further sequels: because of light-speed restrictions, the response to the human challenge to the makers of the Solar System Monoliths cannot be expected for another thousand years. Has Clarke considered 4001, and beyond?

‘No real story is ever finished. But I think I’ve earned time off for good behaviour.

‘I have my friends and family here, who I love, and I’d like to spend more time with them. And I have so many marvellous gadgets - I like to spend time roaming around the Web, which can be really addictive and time-wasting. I have whole racks of records and videotapes I haven’t looked at for ages. I’ve seen only one or two movies this year, which is ridiculous ...’ In the mid 1980s Clarke developed post-polio syndrome, a debilitating and continuing illness of the nervous system; it is to his credit that he has maintained a considerable literary output and public presence despite this.

The 3001 future scenario for mankind is characteristically optimistic - almost Utopian, in fact. Clarke closes his valediction to 3001 in a moving fashion:

‘Perhaps it is better to be unsane and happy than sane and unhappy. But it is best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.’

‘I [expected] to be in Salman Rushdie mode after the publication of that paragraph,’ he says. In Clarke’s 3001, there is still danger out there in the Universe, but humanity is not, at least, still endangered by its flaws within.

‘Really, in view of what’s happened in [the twentieth] century, I’m taking perhaps a rather Pollyanna-ish view, perhaps too optimistic. One sees the evening news and wonders if we’re going to make it to the next century.’ But can we rise above our flaws as a species? ‘One reason why I try to be optimistic is that if you’re optimistic you have a chance of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas if you’re pessimistic, ditto ...’

Clarke on Clarke: Sir Arthur comments on some of his best-known works

Prelude to Space (1951) In Clarke’s first novel, Britain funds an atomic-powered Moon ship by public subscription, and the great project builds towards the first launch from Australia ... in 1978. ‘I wrote Prelude to Space in July 1947 during my summer vacation as a student at King’s College, London. The writing took exactly twenty days, a record I have never since approached. This speed was largely due to the fact that I had been planning the book for more than a year and had made voluminous notes; it was already well organised in my head before I put pen to paper ... technical details may change, but how men get into space does not matter, compared with what they do when they get there, and the motives which inspire them. And of what I wrote on that in 1947, there is not one word I would wish to change. It is still my hope that ‘we will take no frontiers into space’.’ (Foreword to 1961 edition.)

Against the Fall of Night (1948) In a vividly imagined far future, Alvin, the post-human hero, tries to explore beyond the boundaries of the womb-city Diaspar. Expanded as The City and the Stars (1956), and sequelised by Gregory Benford (Beyond the Fall of Night (1990)). City is regarded as Clarke’s best book by many aficionados. ‘It is now more than half a century since Against the Fall of Night was born, yet the moment of conception is still clear in my memory. Out of nowhere, it seems, the opening image if the novel suddenly appeared to me. It was so vivid that I wrote it down at once, though at the time I had no idea that I would ever develop it any further ...’ (Foreword to 1990 edition.)

Imperial Earth (1976) In the quincentennial year of 1976, Duncan Makenzie travels across a colonised Solar System, becoming enmeshed in interplanetary intrigue. A fully imagined future. ‘Some readers may feel that the coincidences - or “correspondences” - that play a key part in this story are too unlikely to be plausible. But they were, in fact, suggested by far more preposterous events in my own life ...’ (Foreword, 1975.)

Fountains of Paradise (1979) The story of the building of the first space elevator on a close clone of Sri Lanka. ‘It seems a very strange - and even scary - coincidence that years before I ever thought of the subject of this novel, I myself should have unconsciously gravitated towards its locale ... at precisely the closest spot on any large body of land to the point of maximum geosynchronous stability. So in my retirement I hope to watch the other superannuated relics of the Early Space Age, milling around in the orbital Sargasso Sea immediately above my head.’ (Afterword, 1978).

Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990) An attempt to raise the Titanic in the twenty-first century. ‘RMS Titanic has haunted me all my life ... My very first attempt at a full-length science fiction story (fortunately long since destroyed) concerned that typical disaster of the spaceways, a collision between an interplanetary liner and a large meteorite ... In the last line I revealed the name of the wrecked spaceship. It was - wait for it - my ... Titanic.’ (Afterword, 1990)

The Hammer of God (1993) Well-worked-out near-future tale of an asteroid threatening Earth. ‘My involvement with the subject of asteroid impacts is now beginning to resemble a DNA molecule: the strands of fact and fiction are becoming increasingly intertwined.’ [Rendezvous With Rama (1973) outlined an asteroid-averting programme.] ‘In May 1992 I was flattered to receive a letter from Steve Koepp, senior editor of Time Magazine, asking me to write a 4,000-word short story which would ‘give readers a snapshot of life on Earth in the next millennium’ ... By creating a self-fulfilling prophecy I might even get to save the world - though I’d never know ... So I wrote ‘The Hammer Of God’ and rushed it off to Time ... I accepted the fact that ‘Hammer’ was really a compressed novel - and that I had no alternative but to decompress it.’ (Afterword, 1993)