Sir arthur c clarke: A true believer all his life. He ardently wished for a sign. That had nothing to do with religion...it concerned life elsewhere in the cosmos
By Nalaka Gunawardene
SIR ARTHUR C CLARKE, whose 91st birth anniversary falls on December 16, was a true believer all his life. He ardently wished for a sign from the heavens which, alas, he never received up to his death on March 19. No, this had nothing to do with religion, a notion Clarke publicly dismissed as a dangerous ‘mind virus’. Rather, it concerned life elsewhere in the cosmos — an idea that always fascinated him, and on which he wrote many stimulating stories and essays.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that this topped the three ‘last wishes’ Clarke mentioned in a short video released in December 2007, on the eve of his 90th birthday.
“I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life,” Clarke said wistfully in what turned out to be his farewell message to the world. “I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us – or give us some kind of a sign.”
He added: “We have no way of guessing when this might happen –- I hope sooner rather than later!”
That ultimate ‘call’ never arrived in time for Clarke. And we have no way of telling which of his wishes would materialise first (the other two being adopting clean energy sources worldwide, and achieving peace in Sri Lanka, where he lived for over half a century).
When it came to ETs, or extra-terrestrials, Clarke had a good idea of the probabilities of a positive result in his own lifetime. He knew how it had eluded at least four generations of seekers, including the inventor of radio telegraph itself.
Accepting the Marconi Prize and Fellowship in 1982, Clarke recalled how Guglielmo Marconi had been interested in this prospect. He quoted from a letter he (Clarke) had written to the editor of the BBC’s weekly magazine, The Listener, in February 1939: “…On other planets of other stars there must be consciousness; on them there must be beings with minds…some far more developed than our own. Wireless messages from such remote conscious beings must be possible.”
The letter ended as follows: “The only time I met Marconi, he told me of his search for such messages. So far, we have failed to find them.”
Absence of evidence
After a century of radio and 60 years since its inventor’s death, such proof has yet to be found. However, as Carl Sagan –- possibly the best known proponent of the subject — was fond of saying, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Clarke himself was widely attributed as saying: “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”
Clarke not only wrote and talked passionately about the subject for decades, but also supported — in cash and kind — various groups engaged in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, or SETI.
In 1993, when the US Congress abruptly terminated government funding for NASA’s SETI programme (a scientific bargain at US$ 12 million per year), Clarke joined three dozen top astronomers and science fiction writers from all over the world who urged President Bill Clinton to restore it. Sadly, that call went unheeded –- raising once again a question Clarke had often asked: is there any intelligent life in Washington?
Determined astronomers sustained SETI as a private scientific enterprise sustained by private and philanthropic donations. Clarke lent his name and credentials to these efforts, while also donating personal funds to some groups.
Clarke himself was widely attributed as saying: “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”
“SETI is the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently,” he once said in a letter supporting public donations to the SETI@Home project at the University of California, Berkeley.
When Steven Spielberg, director of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), donated US$ 100,000 for SETI efforts, Clarke applauded it saying, “It seems only appropriate that Steven… should put his money where his mouth is”.
He welcomed ET’s box office success, as it departed from the Hollywood tradition of depicting aliens as malevolent. By showing a highly intelligent being as both benign and vulnerable, the movie stretched the public’s imagination to consider other possibilities. Not all aliens would arrive here to take over our world – or to serve humanity, medium rare…
But Clarke realised how the vastness of space would make interstellar travel difficult and infrequent. It was more likely that signals (not spaceships) from advanced alien civilisations would roam the universe at the speed of light.
Clarke completely poohpoohed popular claims that assorted space ships of odd sizes and shapes were regularly visiting our planet (the so-called UFOs). His stock answer to all such reports was: “They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth.”
But he did not rule out the possibility that such alien visits might have happened during our planet’s long history. Indeed, that was the premise of his 1948 short story ‘The Sentinel’, about a cosmic ‘fire alarm’ buried on the Moon by advanced beings who came this way a million years ago. That concept was later expanded into the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Where do we fit in?
In that iconic movie and elsewhere, Clarke always explored the philosophical implications of SETI –- and its eventual success. It should be the concern of every thinking person, he said, “because it deals with one of the most fundamental questions that can possibly be asked: what is the status of Homo sapiens in the cosmic pecking order?”
Clarke believed the detection of intelligent life beyond the Earth would forever change our outlook on the Universe. “At the very least, it would prove that intelligence does have some survival value –- a reassurance that is well worth having after a session with the late night news.”
Clarke speculated that ETs may be continuously broadcasting an easily decoded “Encyclopaedia Galactica” for the benefit of their less advanced neighbours. “It may contain answers to almost all the questions our philosophers and scientists have been asking for centuries, and solutions to many of the practical problems that beset mankind.”
He was sometimes ambivalent about the value of such an influx of new knowledge, noting that even the most well intentioned contacts between cultures at different levels of development can have disastrous results – especially for the less advanced ones. He recalled how a tribal chief once remarked, when confronted with the marvels of modern technology: ‘You have stolen our dreams’.
But Arthur C Clarke, the perennial optimist continued: “I believe that the promise of SETI is far greater than its perils. It represents the highest possible form of exploration. And when we cease to explore, we’ll cease to be human.”
Clarke’s interest in ETs remained undiminished to the very end. The topic featured even in his last media interview, given from his hospital bed to IEEE Spectrum online magazine in January 2008. Responding to a question he’d been asked hundreds of times before, he said: “I’m sure the ETs are all over the place. I’m surprised and disappointed they haven’t come here already… Maybe they are waiting for the right moment to come.”
He then added, with a chuckle: “And I hope they are not hungry!”
