Title: Patricia Marx Interviews: Arthur C. Clarke
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Appreciate my arts interview each week at this time your city station bring to an interview with a
leading figure in the arts politics or the sciences and here now to introduce
today's program is Patrice earmarks.
I'm delighted to have is my guest today the same science and science fiction writer Arthur
C. Clarke.
Mr Clark is author of Almost forty books which have been printed in some thirty languages and
they've sold about five million copies. He's also been awarded many prizes for
his science writing and originated the concept of communications
satellites. Mr Clarke's most recent nonfiction book entitled The promise
of
space came out this spring. Recently he made his debut as a writer
of screenplays by collaborating with the film director Stanley Kubrick on this
big tackler M.G.M. film about space
exploration in titled two thousand and one A Space Odyssey.
Mr Clark I understand that the screenplay for Space Odyssey was one of the first collaboration
you've ever been involved
with and I wonder how did this come about.
Well when I had finished. Dr Strangelove Stanley Kubrick became very interested
in space and he decided that he would go out into
space and he wrote to me it early in one thousand nine hundred sixty
four asking if I had any ideas on the subject he'd read a good many of
my stories and books by
then and he said that he heard I was coming to New
York and could get together and discuss a space project and I cast
around for ideas that would make a good movie and I thought almost immediately
have a short story of mine called The Sentinel which had written out a twenty years
ago. And I suggested this to him and we talked it over and.
Expanded this into a complete screenplay and novel.
Of the great number of stories that you've written why did you pick this
and well I've written and had about one hundred. Short Stories now
and the sentinel just it was a very short story about the discovery on
the moon something would have been buried there millions of years ago by some
extraterrestrial visitors. And this is found by explorers by.
Astronauts and it is in fact a kind of burglar alarm which has been deliberately left
there to detect the rise of intelligence on
Earth and when it's detected it sends off a signal and the story
of two thousand run radius tracing the signal does to its source to find out who
put the thing there and why and why they're interested in
us. Why did you see this in terms of this deal.
Well this is this idea is a kind of open ended one you can develop it in almost any direction
you see and how you get out of it not only into the future but into the past because a
flashback to three million years ago showing how
this how in the past does to
earth affected our destiny. So there's
this longest flashback in the history of movies the dawn of man and
then on to the future to what this all leads
to can you describe it all the the actual story.
The Silm contrast since well.
Very briefly the story opens on the moon after
this flashback I mentioned with the discovery of this device which is a large object. Birdied
X. down knew the stuff of the moon in the great Claytor Tycho and this is rather
interesting because we started doing
this like in the movie actually shooting at three years ago and only a few months
ago the last of the American space probes the surveyor space probes landed on
the outskirts of this crater and sent
back the first close ups of this crater Tycho the course when we made the movie we
had to imagine what it was like in close up and I'm happy to say that we've got
away with it. Does look very much like pictures sent back. And the way the
story shows the discovery of this NG and it admits a very very powerful
radio
signal. Which every bit of surprise is beamed towards the giant planet
Jupiter Jupiter is the largest of all the planets. It's eleven
times the diameter of Earth's enormous place.
And it's a long way from the sun it's extremely cold a couple of hundred degrees below
zero and there's a very deep dense atmosphere of
poisonous gases hydrogen ammonia and until recently it was thought absolutely
inconceivable that it could be any life there that we now know this is a very naive view
and then
fact you can make a case for Jupiter being a better place for life on the planet Earth and Sun The
Sun Assad does have. However.
To get back to the film this main story of the film is an exploration out to
Jupiter to see where this signal leads
and out among the ones of Jupiter the real action of the movie starts.
No is science fiction sixteen in the sense
of having being completely fantastic and having no basis in
the realm of possibility the possible.
Oh it's entirely science I mean everything in it is factual it could happen. It's based
entirely on scientific reality is and we know pains and expense have
been spared to make these realistic as
possible so you're saying actually that in the year two thousand when
this actually might happen.
Well certain the next century. I mean obviously I don't predict that when they get to their own we will find evidence
of extraterrestrial life there of higher intelligences But all
this kind of thing could happen and eventually something like this I believe will happen. But don't guarantee it
will happen in the year two thousand and
one o'clock why does it take so long to actually make this. I know it was
scheduled for release almost a year ago when you started back in the winter of sixty five.
Why was it so difficult to do.
Well first of all it's
not a single scene in this film which takes place on
our contemporary world.
The prologue of three million years ago in the
past the future sequences are all in space which means that everything had to
be constructed we had to design a spacecraft and we got the best people we
could from the space program to do this for us.
We had to build sets that show conditions on the moon and everything
was strange everything had to be designed from scratch and this involves the
most tremendous problem remember this isn't Cinerama no one has ever attempted to do this kind of
thing on the wide Cinerama
screen and a Stanley Kubrick is an absolute perfectionist.
I mean I've seen rushes which to me look marvelous which but he said they're not good enough and back ago and have to be done again.
And there's another point which I
should like to make Now this is the last space
film which will not be made on
location
the startling thought is Well that's the most stopping thought is that when this film is filmed
Cinerama run men will be landing on the
moon. This is really isn't so much fiction in the sense
of the way out future.
Well I think in fact we've gone a long way ahead of anything is going to happen in the next couple of decades so
it's reality isn't going to catch up with us.
I know you said about the whole experience working with
this to Kubrick and filming the film that was a wonderful experience streaked with agony
and what were the agonizing elements.
Well I don't know said that but. Considering the length of the collaboration the
problems involved. It was remarkably trouble free.
We never came. Blows very sad on this
agreed. As far as the storyline is concerned.
I think there are hardly any points of disagreement and I was like a sort of ping pong match I
mean we sort of batted ideas back and forth and at this date I cannot honestly
say who is responsible for what in the in the
movie this clocking Can you describe what it is that you really wanted
to say through the film. What the second. What would
you like to accomplish. By making a film like this.
Well rename for a great many things primarily of course as
any film must entertainment. So it's not a documentary it's
not a sermon is a very exciting story but we also aim to create a sense of
wonder. And to convey the beauty and strangeness of the
universe to make people realise to get some idea of man's
place in the let's say the cosmic hierarchy are
we until recently we've tended to think of ourselves as the lords
of creation.
We know now across that the Earth is just one very small planet an enormous
universe but this idea although it's accepted intellectually is not yet accepted
emotionally and I think this film will help people realise
this we may be quite low in the pecking order of the universe.
How do you personally except something like this do you find it an insult.
What is your emotional reaction to insights which is
that life find inspirational. The only way you can make progress in any activity
and the sport in art and
science is to realise the something better than you are someone has done better than you have
done and I see nothing I told a grating to think that we are part of
a cosmic or an evolutionary process between apes
and angels and that we have a long way to go
yet. Many
people are fascinated with the idea of for
instance the defied flying objects in the the existence
of intelligent life throughout the
universe frequently it's viewed as a threat and is something to be
frightened of no what is your attitude towards the intelligent life universe and
the the feasibility that will get in contact with
it but I think most scientists now do except for
the idea that there may be a great deal of life in the universe
and a great deal of intelligence and much of this intelligence is probably much more advanced
than we are because our a still very young in terms of the age of the stars and the planets we've
only been here
for a few minutes of cosmic time.
So we're probably very primitive.
Now is this a threat. Well
if it's hard. It could be in some ways I mean the
higher races may look on us much as we look on musky shows us slugs are
very mean and who can blame women and some of the things that we've been
doing. On the other hand I think that with great intelligence would also
grow compassion and understanding. So I do not regard the existence
of higher intelligence as a threat myself.
I'm really likely to make contact with this higher intelligence through
actual physical transportation or is it much like more likely to
be communication through you
like waves or radio and it's this is a subject of a lot of debate many
scientists are prepared to admit the idea that. We may make contact
with higher intelligence is through radio if not make contact we
may pick up their signals which would tell us that they exist even feed in fact we cannot answer
them
ourselves and these are very
interesting observations in radio astronomy quite recently they found some
pulsating red. Sauces which is which they have tentatively So that's it may be
an artificial
origin something of this man will probably happen. May not happen in the near future but within
a few hundred years I feel reasonably confident we will detect
other civilizations. Through their artifacts either through their radio or.
Radio emissions or something like
that now most scientists are prepared to admit this but very
few as yet are prepared to accept the idea of
actual physical
contact because of the stars or such enormous distances from our
sun that even light takes many years on the journey and
any consists Pede we can imagine with the sort of vehicles we like to
build in the next century or so that journeys would take not
centuries but thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.
So they say space travel to the stars interstellar flight is actually out of
the question. Well I don't believe this because we have seen so many apparently
impossible barriers reached in the
past that I feel confident that the advance of the advance of
technology that exists continues even on this earth.
We'll probably be able to reach the stars. We'll have a technology which would reach the stars in
the fairly near future when I say that had a near future I mean less than two hundred years.
You know when you see many scientists would you find on both sides of this argument.
Many scientists taking one side or the other you somewhat I would individual
in this know I'm I think very few scientists today except the possibility
of physical flights to the stocks but this is
changing and recently quite a number have come out in a fire pointing out
that we have seen the most fantastic increase of power in speed in the last few decades that
it's not reasonable to assume this progress won't fail to continue and if it does.
Than in a couple of centuries should if we wish to be able to go to the stars on the other hand it may
turn out to be so
difficult that it isn't worth doing it's much easier to talk our exchange
T.V. signals and some people say why do you want to do more than this. If you can talk them and see them.
Why should you want to go there and I think men always want to go where they can go even as difficult and
dangerous because it is there. They're the kind of for
his but what real impact do you think
space travel might have on the on modern civilization
what changes my
me when I think they're going to be profound because space is the great new from here.
I've been thinking or writing about this for thirty years
now and that I have a book called The Promise of space coming up from
Hopper shortly. Which does great is devoted to this we need this
new frontier. We need space for many reasons practical reasons for
our new technologies like communications
meteorology and other space industries starting up space even space
tourism by the end of the century and then we show a Helton orbiter hotel in
two thousand and one and I believe a space tourism is going to begin after all who would have thought
of tens of thousands of tourists flying across the Atlantic every
week. Only twenty years ago that were going to the moon in the next century.
You really see it is that frequent in the argue is this living
out in space and make it really relatively unpopular.
Now we're going to develop the solar system over the next year centuries in just the same way
that we develop this planet. We're going down into the sea or going out into space.
We need these from tears we're going to work off I aggressions there. If we didn't have them we'd be
doomed if we didn't have this outlet for our
activity for our exploring an inquisitive
spirit. So in fact you see space and space exploration is the great. Hope for
mankind. They are essential their essential physically and also psychologically.
What is your reaction to the attitude expressed by Louis Munford
that space will actually be the death
of civilization and that any man that lives out in space is
living in a culture as quoted in your book in fact it
is compares most unfavorably to the desk old worship of
the
Egyptians across Louis nonvoters is talking utter
nonsense space.
Spaces beautiful strange one before. All these positive adjectives can be applied
to it I mean some of the emotional reactions of the astronauts already and of and
the beautiful films that are being brought
back have already shown how ridiculous it is to make this statement which someone
for did actually the father was in a space
flight and he said we were a lot of mommies traveling
out but in fact
that the people have been into space being very reluctant to come back some of
them. Are you putting yourself to to go into space.
Oh I have every intention of going to the mourners a tourist in my old age.
What
really do you think that you or anyone else
within the near future thirty forty fifty years can find they are that
we can find on Earth.
Well across the first place we're going to reach the morning and the morning
is of great scientific value because it's going to carry on
its surface a record of events to be happening over the last few million years which are lost on the
earth that. When and. Whether have Iraq.
Someone once said the morning going to be the earth the Rosetta Stone of the solar system that will carry much of
the history of the origin of our world.
And anything we can learn about the way our world came into existence is. Gonna be a
colossal practical value of a scientific value it may tell us you know where to look
for minerals
and so forth.
There's also a possibility the idea behind the two thousand one a fact that on the one
we may find evidence of visits from
other civilizations from other creatures. Because if anyone ever came to the earth in the remote policy it is quite
possible to be no trace of it now it would have been
destroyed on the moon where conditions are probably stable for millions of years. You may
find the empty Coke bottles and so far left all that
equipment left by visitors. You know over a hands of
time. That's one theory for the origin of life business they were kind of the
refuse to ice travel we were the germs that are brought here in the trash in the trash and.
This you talk to is as it is down to quite an argument
among scientists which is more important to put emphasis on man getting the space
or more highly sophisticated machines
tools apparatus which side do you take in this
argument list is ready and entirely artificial sort of argument we will do whatever can be
done best with machines will be done with machines whatever can be done best man will be done with man.
There are many things in many cases where you wouldn't use a man but there are many things which a machine can
do whenever the some kind
of unpredictable events whenever something goes wrong.
A man can put it right in a second when a machine might not be able to cope a tall. They've been
examples of this already and they've asked us not flights where capsules would have been lost
because something that should or happen that a man was able to fix so no trouble a tall. No it's a
perfectly trivial
things that a rogue automatic equipment can't deal with since is the hatch jamming a man will
say OK Oliver there with a full listen there's something you know which can be programmed.
Moreover man is the best possible observer. You can only
design instruments to look for things you expect.
And a man
can observe things which no one was expecting and this is well
where scientific advances usually results the unexpected. This
is why we need man in
space when in a previous book of yours profiles of the future you
raise the question and the real possibility you. Will man become obsolete.
What is your thinking about this
now. Melissa's looking a good deal further ahead. Now one day we will
have robots automatic. Electronic intelligence as which may
be superior to mad and then what I've just said may no longer be entirely
valid but men will still want to go even if they are accompanied
by robots who may be more intelligent than they are because after all.
Men are adventurous men have emotional needs and one of those needs is
her demand for beauty for wonder for
excitement and this is why this is why spaces important altogether apart from its scientific
value will this kind of beauty and excitement be available only to
the super elite the highly trained astronaut so do you see this
becoming a democratic movement which is would have an effect on
the common man in the world.
The same thing is going to happen in space or perhaps not to. Quite such a great
extent as happened in aviation and is happening now an underwater exploration
a few pioneers at great risk to life and limb go there first and
ultimately becomes the accessible to almost anybody who is prepared to make the
effort. And I think in the next century in space travel at least to them alone and probably
to Mars and the nearer
planets a hundred years from now will be about the same level
as jets. Transportation on this pond is
today so close and it was in the
century first century but look what has happened in the last century and remember things are happening now.
And accelerating right. When you try to look forward not the art two thousand and one but said the
year two thousand and sixty eight hundred years from
now the change them expecting that century are at
least equivalent to the change of taking part in the last three or four centuries.
In fact a century from now in the future is about as far away as Columbus in the past.
Can you describe just briefly what you see could be the
major changes when you're talking about a century way.
Well by then of course we all have where you have to have a
stable political situation on the earth because if we haven't we'll have blown ourselves to pieces
before that so there will be a world society or World
Federation or
something on Earth by then.
And the world will be as McLuhan has called it already a
global village with instantaneous communication. And no point in earth to be
more than about forty five minutes from A.O.L. at any other point.
This isn't physical trends in physical transportation and tenth of a second
and electronic transportation
and communication. That will
be colonies kind of large
ones on the Mall on and Mars will be manned all
betting bases
around Jupiter Venus victory in fact.
Probably most of the planets. We will
of perhaps send our first automatic space probes heading out towards an era stars.
So I don't think anyone any will any will have reached the end I think we would have
probably established
contact with extraterrestrial intelligence is that we may not of
these from a detector that we may not have started to talk to them.
Well you're do you see man himself
be qualitatively different. For instance.
The possibility of being connected with. Ingesting
learning this kind of thing.
I think there will be some revolutionary changes in education.
Perhaps Possibly by that time direct imprinting of knowledge on the
brain which are second in need if we're going to keep up with the information
explosion. We'll be able to replace probably
every Bottomley all going to except the brain itself by
that time.
Do you think there will be such a thing as you were
telling this may be on the horizon immortality which seems
to intrigue everybody for all their obvious reasons.
Is
theoretically possible. And anything at sea are actually possible and usually turns
out to be practical but it would raise the most
appalling political and social problems I mean obviously people don't die. You can't
allow anybody anybody to be born it's nothing like not just a question of a population control
or control
it's got to say stop that's it using you know on us
with space exploration the two of them I go together might
make it was certainly act as an incentive to space
exploration but this is a space that expression isn't going to help the population problem is going to make it
worse like that first of all because the best and most active energetic people are going to
go off into space leaving the old fogies behind around the earth and that's going to make things worse here.
Moreover you know emigration never really helps the population because in a few generations a new cut a
new kind of justice full of the old
ones. So it's kind of what the central cities are facing
today with the exodus and this is very
big but it is it is possible and the only hope of that we made
such a mess of this planet already in the physical sense that our new chance is a start up for fresh and
profiting from our
mistakes. The for far far sighted realestate dealer
is going to start making claims and you've
written some of your. To try to solve it so the more of a don't think they've got a benevolent valve be able to
claim
that there are so many different attitudes expressed towards
the new technology and the technology of the future some
individuals feel completely threatened by this and others. Thrilled to
the possibilities and I wonder what is your attitude. In general
are you optimistic about the future.
Well I'm asked papers I wouldn't write so much about it I suppose if I stop
completely depressed I'd play write it I'd write something like one hundred eighty four and then go and shoot myself as if
I was an optimist and like our support of all that was the last thing he died on
after he wrote nine hundred eighty four.
Now I am an optimist which is for several reasons. The main one is
that I think you are an optimist you have a better chance of making the kind of future you
want come about you could might you may contrive what's called a self-fulfilling
prophecy believe it in as Robert Frost. Yes.
What is left for you where do you considered space you're in
the
now actively involved in the exploration of see where do
you want to go from here. Well no I
think the space and the sea give me all I need to stew for the next.
The rest of my active life or so hopefully another twenty years or
so. I hope I have done in fact very little underwater
exploration and I have a garage full of Aqua lines an air compressor and
skin diving here back in Salaam but I'm afraid. While this movie's been in progress had very little chance of using it
and I'm dying to get back down in the car reefs and the new notion again.
Well one thing to look forward to for even longer lifespan is to be able to read all your books and I want to
thank you very much for this interview. Thank
you my guest has been the distinguished science and science fiction writer Arthur
C. Clarke recently Mr Clark collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the
screenplay for the space the tackler two thousand and one A Space Odyssey.
Thank you and goodbye for now.