Dork Royalty: Arthur C. Clarke

FULL NAME: Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke
BORN: December 16th, 1917, Somerset, England
DIED: March 19th, 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka
OFFICIAL SITES: The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

TRIVIA:
- As a boy he enjoyed stargazing and reading old American science fiction pulp magazines.

- During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defence system.

- Was widely considered to be gay, though he never came out himself. In the July 1986 issue of Playboy, he stated "Of course. Who hasn't?" when asked if he has had bisexual experiences.

- He maintained a vast collection of manuscripts and personal memoirs, referred to as the "Clarkives." He dictated that his private diaries will not be published until 30 years after his death because "There might be all sorts of embarrassing things in them."

- His first three published novels were written for children.

- He lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, having emigrated there when it was still called Ceylon.

- He was an avid scuba diver and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club.

- He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka". The same year he became the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004 and he also served as Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.

- He was knighted on May 26th, 2000. The award of a knighthood had been announced in 1998, but, at his request, the knighting was delayed because of an accusation by a British tabloid of pedophilia. They subsequently published an apology for the accusation after an investigation, and Clarke was finally knighted.

- His "Arthur C. Clarke Diving School" at Hikkaduwa was destroyed during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami. He made humanitarian appeals, and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation worked towards a better disaster notification systems.

- On his 90th birthday, Clarke recorded a video message to his friends and fans bidding them goodbye.

DORK CREDENTIALS:
- "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" (1980), "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe" (1994), "Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers" (1985): host, creator

- He is considered one of the "Big Three" sci-fi writers, along with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He authored many works, most notably the Space Odyssey series (the first of which, 2001, was adapted into what many consider the greatest sci-fi movie of all-time). His other major works include the Rama series, Prelude to Space, The Sands of Mars, Childhood's End, A Fall of Moondust, Imperial Earth, The Fountains of Paradise, The Songs of Distant Earth, Cradle, The Ghost from the Grand Banks, and The Hammer of God.

- He became the Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946-1947 and again from 1951-1953.

- Although he was not the originator of the concept of geostationary satellites, one of his most important contributions may be his idea that they would be ideal telecommunications relays. He advanced this idea in a paper privately circulated among the core technical members of the BIS in 1945. The concept was published in Wireless World in October of that year. In recognition of his contributions, the geostationary orbit (36,000 kilometers/22,000 miles) above the equator is officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union as a "Clarke Orbit".

- Living in Sri Lanka and learning its history inspired the backdrop for his novel The Fountains of Paradise, in which he described a space elevator. This, he believed, would make rocket-based access to space obsolete and, more so than geostationary satellites, would ultimately be his scientific legacy.