As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun.

Well, I actually don’t feel a day older than 89!

…Watch the video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qLdeEjdbWE

Sundown With Arthur

Jeff Greenwald in Wired:

When last I saw Arthur C. Clarke, in March of 2005, his memory was already fading.

It was late afternoon. We sat on the patio of the Galle Face Hotel, one of Arthur’s favorite spots in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It had been nine years since my last visit to his adopted island. Now I was back working with Mercy Corps, an international aid agency, on a tsunami relief project. Clarke sipped his tea and stared west, where the Indian Ocean stretched in an uninhibited arc to the coast of Somalia.

“I don’t remember anything about working with Stanley (Kubrick) on 2001,” he said, “or my months at the Chelsea Hotel. I don’t remember my last scuba dive, or what my mother’s face looked like. The only thing I remember with any real clarity is the first kiss with the love of my life — and our last words, before we parted.”

[Photo: Clarke stands by his private satellite dish, one of the first private dishes in Asia, on the deck of his Sri Lanka home.]

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For Clarke, issues of faith, but tackled scientifically

From the New York Times:

“Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral” were the instructions left by Arthur C. Clarke, who died on Wednesday at the age of 90. This may not have surprised anyone who knew that this science-fiction writer, fabulist, fantasist and deep-sea diver had long seen religion as a symptom of humanity’s “infancy,” something to be outgrown and overcome.

But his fervor is still jarring because when it comes to the scriptural texts of modern science fiction, and the astonishing generation of prophetic innovators who were his contemporaries – Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury – Mr. Clarke’s writings were the most biblical, the most prepared to amplify reason with mystical conviction, the most religious in the largest sense of religion: speculating about beginnings and endings, and how we get from one to the other.

[Photo: Keir Dullea in the film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”]

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Previously on Asian Window:

• Sir Arthur C. Clarke: RIP
• “The dawn of man” — a video clip from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Sir Arthur Clarke, who has died aged 90, was, for many, synonymous with science fiction, and in particular with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s film of his novella The Sentinel; his principal gifts, however, were his ability to popularise science and his genius as one of the most prophetic voices of the space age.

In the 100 or so books he wrote, co-wrote or edited, Clarke predicted, with remarkable accuracy, such developments as the moon landings, space travel, communications satellites, compact computers, cloning, commercial hovercraft and a slew of other scientific developments – though he was also, inevitably, often wide of the mark.

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And below, “the dawn of man” — an amazing clip from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdoA3AJ6zGE

Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke listed three wishes on his 90th birthday: for the world to embrace cleaner energy resources, for a lasting peace in his adopted home, Sri Lanka, and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings.

“I have always believed that we are not alone in this universe,” Clarke said in a speech to a small gathering of scientists, astronauts and government officials Sunday in Colombo where he lives.

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