The Cassutt Files
Across the Sea of Stars

In the misty, water-colored memories of my youth—before girls, at least—the discovery of a sci-fi book in a small-town library or the appearance of a television show with spaceships was better than ice cream, home runs or staying up late. It was a time when four names ran through my head like a mantra, those of the acknowledged masters of the genre:

Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein and Clarke.

Heinlein died in 1988, Asimov in 1992. At the age of 87, Bradbury is still going strong, publishing new work and showing up at bookstores and libraries in Los Angeles, as he has done throughout his career.

Arthur C. Clarke died on March 18 at the age of 90, in his adopted homeland of Sri Lanka—a country he had discovered in the 1950s, lured by warm weather and year-round scuba diving—surrounded by his extended family.

The numerous obituaries have been laudatory and warm, noting Clarke's pioneering concept of the geosynchronous satellite in 1945, his popularization of space flight in the 1950s (second only to Wernher von Braun as channeled by Walt Disney), his short stories and novels, such as Childhood's End, his writings about the sea.

And, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey—his collaborative effort with director Stanley Kubrick that resulted in one of the most controversial and still influential films ever made. (The 40th anniversary of 2001's release occurred this past week, on April 2.)

Clarke went on to publish several sequels to 2001, notably 2010, also made into an effective, if less groundbreaking, film, and a number of other works, including Rendezvous With Rama (1973) and my favorite of his later novels, Fountains of Paradise (1978)—one of the first works to feature the space elevator.

How the solar system was won

My first memory of Clarke was the Time-Life book Man and Space (1966)—which he was writing in New York when he was first approached by Kubrick about making a film called Journey Beyond the Stars—or, Clarke's joking suggestion, How the Solar System Was Won.

There was "Sunjammer," a story about solar sailing that appeared in Boys' Life, and Clarke's presence as commentator with Walter Cronkite on CBS News coverage of Apollo 11.

Only when Clarke was established in my mind as a writer about spaceflight did I discover his fiction—and not in paperbacks or genre magazines, which were largely unavailable to me at the time, but in omnibus volumes that combined several of his novels and story collections into a single book.

Across the Sea of Stars, published in 1959, contained two complete Clarke novels, Earthlight, his early novel about the exploration of the moon (the title later given to a lunar crater by the crew of Apollo 15) and the marvelous Childhood's End, as well as 18 short stories.

Ah, those stories. "Rescue Party," in which humans show aliens a thing or two. "The Sentinel," about an ancient, mysterious gift from rather different aliens. "A Walk in the Dark," about the unpleasant surprise awaiting a space colonist.

From other books, "The Star," an explanation for the Star of Bethlehem, and "The Nine Billion Names of God," with its lamasery and unforgettable last line, "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

(For a professed agnostic, Clarke wrote quite frequently about religion.)

Clarke deserves an adaptation

His influence on the sci-fi genre—indeed, on spaceflight and the way we perceive the future—was unique and, with apologies to Heinlein and Asimov and Bradbury, unsurpassed.

Over the years, I managed to meet all four of these demigods, never becoming friends, but, then, who needed to be friends?

I've worked on film or television projects for all four, scripting an episode of an Asimov television series (Probe), trying to relaunch Heinlein's "lost" television pilot (Century XXII), being a program executive and story editor for various proposed Bradbury adaptations.

But my greatest involvement was with the work of Arthur C. Clarke.

I had met Clarke briefly—a fan-to-idol conversation when he appeared at the University of Arizona in 1974—but I had no direct contact with him until the mid-1990s, when I was asked to adapt an original Young Adult concept by Clarke titled A Princess of Mars. (Yes, with apologies to Edgar Rice Burroughs.)

The story, to be honest, was rather thin. (Clarke was never a traditional dramatist or storyteller—ideas were what inspired him.) It told of a girl raised on Mars just as humans are about to begin terraforming the world ... who discovers a life form that could be destroyed by the process.

For a year or so I labored through three drafts, never satisfying all the parties involved, and, like many promising projects, A Princess of Mars just faded away.

Nevertheless, I had Clarke's phone number—Sri Lanka, I learned, was 13 and a half time zones away—and I spoke to him twice. He was gracious, polite and even generous when responding to my expansion of his story, variously retitled Martian Death Race, Life on Mars and, my personal favorite, Arthur C. Clarke's Red Planet. (Don't blame the studio or other producers—I came up with all of these.)

I only wish I'd seen it made.

I wasn't through with Clarke. Three years ago I got involved in a proposed miniseries based on a late Clarke novel, written in collaboration with another acclaimed sci-fi figure. Eighteen months, and a vast number of pages later (including four hours of teleplay), that, too, faded away.

I would have kept reading Clarke in any case, but these professional engagements gave me the perfect excuse to keep buying and reading his works.

Where I was continually amazed at his ability to look dispassionately into the near and far future ... his humor ... his amusing sense of connectivity—one of the pleasures of a Clarke story or article is the name-dropping—and his writing style, evidenced in his titles—Against the Fall of Night, Childhood's End, "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth," "The Songs of Distant Earth," How the World Was One.

Don't we owe him another adaptation? Another filmic tour of his vision? How about Childhood's End? Rendezvous with Rama? Fountains of Paradise?

That would be a fitting tribute to Arthur C. Clarke.