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I am headed to Sri Lanka next week and
asked a mutual friend of mine and the late Arthur C. Clarke if it
would be possible pay Clarke a visit. "I'll try, but he is very weak", was the
reply. Clarke, of course, passed away yesterday. I spent a day in
1994 exploring the sandbox that is his mind while working on a
documentary on the future of travel.
I brought a copy of the first 3d
Studio, a then-primitive 3d design program, on an ancient laptop.
After muddling through a thousand page manual, I proudly created a
ball rolling down a ramp. A job at ILM was not in my future. Like a
couple of little kids, I showed him mine and he showed me his, a
digital re-landscaping of Mars, of the way it would look in thousands
of years once Smith and Hawken established its first branch there.
I have met few people like Clarke, with
an ability to dance from subject to subject, making sense -- common
sense -- of subjects ranging from space elevators to sumo wrestling,
often with childlike excitement and tearful emotion. He also
loved animals. His back yard has a pet cemetery with gravestones
marking his beloved companions. He introduced me to Pepsi, a
chihuahua he named Pepi, but his staff called Pepsi, so he changed
the name.
I exchanged messages with Clarke a few
times, but never got back to Colombo. I had always longed to return
to my get my brain batteries recharged...not to mention have a few laughs.
We sat down in his garden one morning
and talked about subjects ranging from virtual reality, to tourism's
effects on environments and cultures to Gandhi's views on capitalism.
I left a camera running an pulled a few clips.
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