There’s a new revised edition of the definitive biography, Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary, which was slipped out at the end of December 2017. Clarke was ‘Lovecraft inspired’ in a number of ways. Though these days the phrase ‘Lovecraft inspired’ is devalued by a tidal wave of cash-in and axe-grinding dross, to the extent that it’s now almost an insult. Which means I’m forced to qualify the phrase by saying that Clarke did it before others, subtly and in the best possible way. For discussion of the Lovecraft influence on Clarke see, for instance, “2001: A Lovecraft Odyssey” in the latest Lovecraft Annual journal (2018), and parts of Robert H. Waugh’s fine chapter on Lovecraft’s influence on science-fiction, in Lovecraft and Influence (2013).
Sadly the release of this new ‘500-page monolith’ edition of the Clarke biography has had the effect of erasing the previous Kindle ebook edition, and the book is now only available in paperback. Hopefully there will be a new Kindle edition in due course.
I recently edited a bumper Clarke tribute edition of Digital Art Live, the magazine for science fiction artists, which brought him back into my range of current interests. The magazine was published a while ago but I still find Clarke a fascinating personality in his own right, not simply because of the mild Lovecraft influence. Nearly everything he wrote before about 1977 is still very readable and enjoyable. His later work does tend to become more ponderous, discursive and technical, and for a first-timer to start on Clarke with the likes of the Rama books would be a mistake. But I recently heard Imperial Earth, The City and the Stars, Dolphin Island and a number of other novels and stories in unabridged audiobook readings, and they’re all still excellent. I had of course read all of Clarke, to about 1984, long ago — but on revisiting I was pleased to find that his stories were still fresh and lively.
For interested readers I should note that Clarke also published autobiographical books: Astounding Days is his fannish autobiography and has much to say on the era of the pulps and their fandom (also available as an audiobook); his Ascent to Orbit is the scientific autobiography, woven among a collection of his engineering and scientific articles; and his The View from Serendip includes a number of autobiographical pieces on his tropical home in Ceylon, scattered among various articles he wrote for magazines and a general audience. There are also several self-penned books specifically on his reef diving, including The Coast of Coral (Australia), The Reefs of Taprobane (Ceylon), and The Treasure of the Great Reef (treasure diving). There are even a couple of biographical books by others which are studies of the making of the famous movie 2001, of which the most recent is Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the making of a masterpiece (2018). So far as I’m aware there’s not yet an annual Journal of Arthur C. Clarke Studies, but there probably should be in the next few years.
I’m especially fascinated by Clarke’s writing on one his great loves, the ocean. Personally I’d welcome a new book collection, along the lines of ‘the best of Clarke’s writings on oceans and coasts in his non-fiction, autobiography and topographical fictional descriptions’. And ideally as an audiobook read over music and ambient environmental sound FX. And perhaps with a few new biographical essays on things like: his ocean diving and expeditions; his place in the historical context of that time (Jacques Cousteau, the Sea-lab missions, use of the sea by NASA to train astronauts for space weightlessness, etc); and his apparent behind-the-scenes involvement in shaping the early marketing profile for Ceylon’s coastline among western tourists and divers. Such a book might have had a tiny audience a few years ago, but today it might get a little more traction in our newly emerging era of advanced ocean exploration and sustainable coastal aquaculture.
