page_title: Arthur C. Clarke
section_title: Sri Lanka and diving
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur C. Clarke / Biography / Sri Lanka and diving
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Prins Claus overhandigt Arthur C. Clarke de Marconi International Fellowship Award 1982 11 juni 1982
context_page_description: Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
  He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science writer, an avid populariser of space travel, and a futurist of a distinguished ability. He wrote more than a dozen books and many essays for popular magazines. In 1961, he received the Kalinga Prize, a UNESCO award for popularising science. Clarke's science and science-fiction writings earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age". His science-fiction writings in particular earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership, made him one of the towering figures of the genre. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.
  Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system using geostationary orbits.
context_section_description: Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. Initially, his friend Mike Wilson and he travelled around Sri Lanka, diving in the coral waters around the coast with the Beachcombers Club. In 1957, during a dive trip off Trincomalee, Clarke discovered the underwater ruins of a temple, which would subsequently make the region popular with divers. He subsequently described it in his 1957 book The Reefs of Taprobane. This was his second diving book after the 1956 The Coast of Coral. Though Clarke lived mostly in Colombo, he set up a small diving school and a simple dive shop near Trincomalee. He dived often at Hikkaduwa, Trincomalee, and Nilaveli.
  The Sri Lankan government offered Clarke resident guest status in 1975. He was held in such high esteem that when fellow science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein came to visit, the Sri Lanka Air Force provided a helicopter to take them around the country. 
  In the early 1970s, Clarke signed a three-book publishing deal, a record for a science-fiction writer at the time. The first of the three was Rendezvous with Rama in 1973, which won all the main genre awards and spawned sequels that along with the 2001 series formed the backbone of his later career.
  In 1986, Clarke was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
  In 1988, he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, having originally contracted polio in 1962, and needed to use a wheelchair most of the time thereafter. Clarke was for many years a vice-patron of the British Polio Fellowship.
  In the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours, Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "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. He also served as chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.
  In 1994, Clarke appeared in a science-fiction film; he portrayed himself in the telefilm Without Warning, an American production about an apocalyptic alien first-contact scenario presented in the form of a faux newscast.
  Clarke also became active in promoting the protection of gorillas and became a patron of the Gorilla Organization, which fights for the preservation of gorillas. When tantalum mining for mobile phone manufacture threatened the gorillas in 2001, he lent his voice to their cause. The dive shop that he set up continues to operate from Trincomalee through the Arthur C Clarke Foundation.
caption: Clarke receives the Marconi International Fellowship Award from Prince Claus of the Netherlands in 1982.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Prins Claus overhandigt Arthur C. Clarke de Marconi International Fellowship Award 1982\n*11 juni 1982", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:06:28 14:17:00", "Image Artist": "Rob C. Croes / Anefo", "Image Copyright": "http://proxy.handle.net/10648/ad197bc4-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84", "Image ExifOffset": "388", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "526", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6291", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2163", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1622"}