Kubrick was a formidable businessman, apart from everything else. They settled them, however, and Kubrick got a percentage of Arthur's income from the books. That's not to say they didn't have tense periods and misunderstandings, including when Arthur started writing sequels. They were in regular contact in the decades after '2001' was released.

And Christiane left me no doubt that Stanley also greatly valued Arthur, as the episode with his physically taping what he said with a handheld microphone directly off a BBC TV broadcast illustrates pretty well. I think Arthur really loved Stanley, and deeply respected both his artistic integrity and sheer brilliance. Clarke, pictured at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The late science fiction writer, scientist, inventor and author Arthur C. It's the kind of thing Arthur wouldn't have necessarily told me, it was too intimate, but he told Christiane, and thankfully she told me. The way that familiar media distancing - with each watching the other on TV - did the opposite, and actually brought them back together. I owe that story to a major contributor to my narrative, Stanley's fantastic widow, Christiane. What was Clarke's relationship with Kubrick like toward the end of his life? It's a deeply melancholy yet beautiful moment. The passage detailing an ailing Clarke bursting into tears on seeing his old 'intellectual sparring partner' on TV decades after the release of '2001' stuck with me long after I finished the book. He was a great man, and I miss being able to shoot him an email now and then. Have you heard the song? 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, said Wernher von Braun.' Anyway, I visited Arthur three times in Sri Lanka, the last with my family in tow.

I learned a lot from him, including about the ancient Greek mechanical geared astronomical calculator, the Antikythera Mechanism. We hit it off, and had quite a few lengthy discussions, and not just about '2001,' either. I actually met him in the year 2001, no less, in December. Clarke and what was your relationship with him like? These came from exceedingly generous fellow researchers such as '2001' researcher David Larson, Cinef ex magazine editor and publisher Don Shay, Arthur's biographer Neil McAleer, and last but not least, Dan Richter himself, who apart from playing the lead man-ape, Moonwatcher, wrote a book about it 30 years later called Moonwatcher's Diary, and conducted dozens of excellent interviews back then to refresh his memory of the production. Then came a seriously in-depth and fascinating set of transcripts from interviews not conducted by myself, which included discussions with key players who're no longer with us - people like stuntman Bill Weston Kubrick friend and consigliere Roger Caras makeup man Stuart Freeborn and the like.

Space odyssey by michael benson