The Man Who Foretold 2001

Sci-fi visionary Arthur C. Clarke dead at 90; partnered with Stanley Kubrick to change Hollywood F/X

By Joal Ryan Mar 19, 2008 12:46 AMTags

Arthur C. Clarke was a man ahead of his time. By 33 years, to be precise.

Clarke, the prolific author and noted futurist who, with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, helped grow up the science-fiction movie with their 1968 collaboration 2001: A Space Odyssey, died Wednesday in Sri Lanka.

He was 90, and had suffered from post-polio syndrome for decades.

Starting in 1964, Clarke and Kubrick spent years developing their clear-eyed tale of man versus a machine called HAL. According to a 1966 New York Times profile on Clarke, the two men were brought together by a Hollywood studio executive who happened to have just the address that Kubrick, the acclaimed director of Spartacus and Lolita, thought he'd never track down: Clarke's. (The British-born author had moved to Sri Lanka for keeps in 1956.)

Once the two were connected, Clarke set about sifting through his wealth of material for just the right tale to develop for the big screen.

"I picked out a story called 'The Sentinel,' " Clarke told the Times, "about the discovery on the moon of the first extraterrestrial artifact."

Clarke went on to describe the story as "terrible," but 2001 viewers will recognize his description of it as the film's famous prologue.

In the end, 2001 was a critical and popular success that helped rescue science fiction from the tractor beam of every low-rent spaceship flick that preceded it. Within three years of its release, George Lucas would direct THX 1138; within four years, Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running would further the cause; and within the next decade, Lucas' Star Wars would make sci-fi a blockbuster genre.

Clarke shared an Oscar nomination with Kubrick for the 2001 screenplay. (The pair lost to Mel Brooks, who won for The Producers.) Kubrick died in 1999.

The 2001 script spawned the best-selling Clarke-penned book of the same name. It was followed, in the 1980s, by 2010: Odyssey Two, which itself spawned the 1984 Peter Hyams movie, starring Roy Scheider, and, even later, by 2061 and 3001.

Born Dec. 16, 1917, Clarke published his first story, "Rescue Party," in Astounding Science in 1946, his official biography said, and went on to acclaim as an author of both science and science-fiction works.

In 1998, Clarke was tapped for knighthood. He asked that the ceremony be delayed after a newspaper published a story accusing him of being a pedophile. Clarke denied the story, and he was formally knighted in 2000.

Clarke's visions of the future seem sure to live on. His 1972 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, is currently being developed by se7en's David Fincher. Morgan Freeman is set to star.